Blog: My coloured alphabet

I have synesthesia. Don't worry, it's not catching.

I wanted to share about a neat thing I discovered about myself not long ago.

Letters have always had a colour in my mind. It didn’t dawn on me that it was out of the ordinary until my husband and I were choosing baby names and I vetoed some of his top picks because I didn’t like the way they “looked”. (Let’s be honest, Laser Wolf Morell just wasn’t going to make it). I explained to my baffled hubby that to me, names had colours, and actually each letter had its own colour. “Really??” he said. Oh, then not everyone sees this? Apparently it’s a thing and it’s called grapheme-synesthesia.

Synesthesia is a neurological condition where basically two senses get crossed. When a synesthete experiences one sense, it will automatically and involuntarily trigger another secondary sense. For example, some people can hear colour, where musical notes are consistently perceived as being imbued with colour, and some people will smell words. For example, this artistpaints music that she hears, with breathtaking results. It’s fascinating really. Grapheme-synesthesia is when someone sees letters and numbers as each having an assigned, consistent colour. Like me!

The alphabet in my head

Ever since I can remember, every letter has a colour, every word has a colour scheme. Some letters have a very distinct colour, others are more vague or faded. When I read words on a page, I see them as they are, in black and white. But as soon as those words go in, my brain turns it into a rainbow party. For example, A is always pink, N is always green, but U and H are more neutral, hovering around yellow and brown. I can’t turn it off, I didn’t learn these colours, they just are. I like (or dislike) words based on the colour scheme created by the letters (I can’t help it!) Sometimes I wonder if this has something to do with my creativity, if it pushes me toward colour, toward expression...

I decided to map out the colours that I see, to try to see the full picture of my colour-coded alphabet. It was a fun exercise. My husband was fascinated to finally see this mystery on paper.

I’ve always thought that I saw coloured words because the letters must have been colour-coded when I learned the alphabet as a child somehow became deeply imprinted on my psyche. Maybe on my kindergarten classroom wall? It was only in the past few years that I realized this is a thing, and it’s called synesthesia. Ah ha! I’m not crazy. Or maybe I am, in a cool way…

I'm convinced this has actually made me a better speller. Sometimes I remember how the word “looked” in my mind’s eye, which is how I know relevant is not relevent because the vowels are two red and one pink! I can picture a word in my head and “see” the letters as I spell.

Here are my kids’ names how I see them:

Now I’m curious, who else reads in colour?

-MH