I am a synesthete, and I read in colors. There are many different types of synesthetes, all processing language through different parts of the brain. I process words through the color portion of my brain, specifically called grapheme–color synesthesia. For me every consonant has a different and unique color. Vowels do not have color, and are on the black/white spectrum instead – with the exception of U and Y which are almond and yellow respectively.

So when I experience a word, or more interestingly a name, I visualize a Pantone palette – a series of uniform shapes each with its own color side-by-side. But because the visualization is momentary, the color is blended into a single spectral entity, very much like many letters forming a single word.

For example, my name, C U R T, corresponds to red, almond, purple, orange, and visualizes like a campfire. I met a woman this morning named Jenna, whose name visualizes like a flowery meadow on a dry summer day: goldenrod, light gray, granny smith green, granny smith green, white. The colors don’t really have names in my brain, but for the sake of this explanation, I am using the familiar names from the Crayola 64 box that most people understand.

Now both CURT and JENNA would appear differently in the mind of another color synesthete. I see a C as red and J as goldenrod, but someone else with the same condition would have developed different patterns and might see a C as purple and J as green – or any other combination. Furthermore, I have yet to find documentation that anyone else breaks the nouns off the color wheel like I do.

But why?

A search of my memory offers few clues. I remember that it was important to me as a child. It probably goes back as far as my first words or exposure to Sesame Street (weren’t the letters on Sesame Street always colored?). It wasn’t something that I talked about with my teachers or that I assumed I did differently than my peers. It was just the color of the letters. Duh.

I can only speculate. I was a very good drawer as a child and would prefer crayons and Legos over a ball or a squirt gun. Maybe a connection? Or perhaps, I suffered from some sort of dyslexia, and this was my learning mind’s method of compensation (I am inexplicably incapable of telling my right from my left). But whatever the reason, I am now aware that this is the way I learned, and it does make me unique.

As the years passed, and I became a strong reader, this was no longer needed and forgotten. It wasn’t until I was at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management in the early 2000s that I told someone about it for the first time. I remember we were socializing, probably over beers. I brought it up as something mildly interesting that I had lost from my childhood.

The next time we were together, one of the women from that conversation, pulled me aside and said, “dude, that’s a thing!” I was stunned that it was documented and even had a name. I had never had a conversation with anyone about it. But as soon as it returned to my consciousness, all those colors started to light up again. Today, they are as bright and consistent as they were when I was in grammar school. It’s also a great party trick!

But still why?

My takeaway is that for all the ways we can imagine our fellow humans are similar, there are even more ways that we are different including some that we have yet to imagine. I keep this in mind as I ask my teammates to learn new things. Each has the potential to get there even if they all take their own unique path.

If you would like to know what your name looks like to me, send me a message with your first name and I will get back to you.