A Nasturtium by Any Other Name Would Smell As Sweet

[Wilson Gray]

On Aug 12, 2004, at 11:31 AM, Baker, John wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Baker, John" <JMB at STRADLEY.COM>
> Subject:      A Nasturtium by Any Other Name Would Smell As Sweet
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>         Amy Perfors, a linguistics graduate student at MIT, has
> received press coverage recently for her research finding that people
> take names into account in deciding on personal attractiveness.
> Unlike the example in my subject line, where "nasturtium" sounds less
> attractive than "rose" because it sounds nasty (I don't know what a
> nasturtium smells like

The perfume of its flowers is quite pleasant. To see how the plant got
its name, break a stem and take a sniff of that.

-Wilson Gray

> , but they look pretty, see
> http://www3.coara.or.jp/~j_web/wp/nature/spring/nasturtium-1024.jpg),
> Ms. Perfors has concluded that male names with back vowels, like
> "Paul," are less attractive than male names with front vowels, like
> "Matt" and "Mike."  (Clearly, this explains why my brother, Bill,
> always saw more action than I did.)  Her web page, with links to some
> news reports and a one-page report of the research itself, is at
> http://www.mit.edu/~perfors/.
>
> John Baker
>