Me, My Sensory, and My Synesthesia

Words and Names

I mentioned in the intro that I see colors when I read. These colors take on the form of the word that I'm looking at. So, when I look at the word "life", I see the yellowish-white color spelling it out.

I see colors for the whole word rather than for individual letters, although sometimes a certain letter will stand out with its color rather than conforming to the rest of the word. And the words tend to take on the color of the first letter.

Most letters have their own color or their own shade of a color, but some, like D and E are the same (both a lilac-gray kind of color). I don't often see every word as a color when I'm reading, but I think that's because my brain turns whatever I read into a theater of sorts. Every thought is both words and an image. When there's no image to view is usually when the colors show up more, but even if there is an image, certain words will stand out. "You", for example. I always see the yellow of that word.

With the amount of "s" words in English, I get a bit tired of blue. Fortunately, "s" words use every shade of blue, dark and light. "Sh" words have one of my favorite shades: sky blue. And it doesn't have to be spelled out that way either; it just needs that sound. I used to get so confused, trying to spell "ocean" because it had the "sh" sound. For years, my brain told me it was spelled "oshen", but the color of that word has changed for me, darkening into a navy, so I don't have to worry about misspelling it anymore.

I also get tired of red words. H, J, R, and T are all red, and A is various shades of pink depending on the surrounding letters, so there's even more red in English than there is blue.

One thing I've found that makes me smile every time is those certain names that throw the colors to the wind.

V is a green color, like a yellow-green, but not quite. Somewhere between light green and yellow green.

Vivian is a right proper green name. Vance is a green. Veronica is a lavender name.

Where does that even come from??? XD

I've also noticed that there are some names where I see each individual color. Like the name Sam. I see the light blue S, the pink A, and the light green M. A few weeks ago I was fighting my insomnia again when I decided to just give up and I found myself trying to think the name Sam with the colors all scrambled up: green S, blue A, pink m. Man, it was the hardest and yet most fun thing I've done ever. Each time I managed to work out one of the colors, the other two would go back to their true colors.

I've also noticed that names can have background colors, similar to music, and these colors tend to reflect personality. These personality colors don't have as rigid of a "meaning" as other colors and a color that means one thing with one name can mean the opposite with another name.

Going back to letters, you would think that with "b" being orange and "d" being lilac-gray, I would be able to remember which was which, but I can't. I always have to pause and usually rewrite/type. I've got the same problem with "b" and "p", and "q" and "g", the later showing up more when I'm writing in cursive. These mix-ups I understand more because B and P are both shades of orange and Q and G are both gray-ish. But B and D? XD Two completely unrelated colors and I still can't keep them straight.

Also, I like the color words that match their colors: red, yellow, ... oh. Those are the only ones. The others also show up as the colors they name, but they shouldn't. The O in "orange" should make the word black, and "blue" has a B, which should make it orange.

I just simply love discovering new quirks and interactions about my colors.