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초록
To determine what makes a brand name sound appealing and easy to pronounce by people of many nationalities and mother tongues, we surveyed 384 people from 45 native language backgrounds using 50 artificial brand names composed of 25 phonetically contrasting pairs. The results showed that the respondents preferred brand names that obey certain phonological principles, particularly the theories of markedness and phonotactic constraints. The results were robust and consistent, indicating the ability to explain preferences using two very different survey methods: (1) an onsite paper survey for members of an institute and (2) an online web survey for unknown volunteers. The results were also consistent across three different languages, English, Korean and Chinese, that belong to different language families. Based on these results, this paper proposes guidelines for creating phonologically well-formed brand names. This study adds an empirical explanation to the theories of markedness and phonotactic constraints.