Thread:Jdogno7/@comment-5411265-20151202032738/@comment-27081137-20151202200414

Before I delve too deep into phonetics, first let me say that the sole fact that Lief is the protagonist should be enough to put him first in the listing.

But you wanted the technical stuff, so here we go. To put it simply, the order 'Lief, Barda, Jasmine' works so well because the names are listed in order of complexity. If you don't know much about the phonetic structures of words, this might be confusing, so bear with me.

We need to establish two things before diving in. First: Words are made up of sounds created when we move our mouths. Those sounds are classified by the ways in which they are made. (There are fricatives, plosives, stops, semivowels, liquids, nasals, sibilants, glides, and a wide range of vowel sounds. Sounds fun, right?) Second: Words are divided into syllables. With the knowledge of these two things we can begin to break the order down. (Are you still with me?)

'Lief', the name with the shortest number of syllables, comes first. Because it is monosyllabic, contains a short vowel sound, and ends in a fricative, it is undoubtedly the simplest of the names.

Both 'Barda' and 'Jasmine' have two syllables, so an argument could be made for either coming second. But if we look at their structures, we can see that 'Barda' should come next in order of complexity. Both of the vowel sounds within the name are the same, and though it contains two plosive sounds (b and d), they are both vocalized and the syllables are connected with the approximant 'r'. In other words, though 'Barda' has two syllables, because of the consonants that construct it, it does not require a lot of mouth movement.

'Jasmine' containes a vocalized sibilant/stop transition between its syllables. (That's the 's/m' thing in the middle.) The name also has two differing vowel sounds (a and i), and three consonants/blends (j, s/m, n). Notice how if you say her name aloud, your mouth has to move more than it does when you say 'Lief' or 'Barda'. 'Jasmine' is the most phonetically complex of the three names, and so comes at the end of the list.

Ok, I didn't mean to write a whole essay, but there's my answer. If this doesn't make sense or seems rather far-fetched to you, I'm sorry. I tried to keep it concise. (But I'm an overanalyzer and I enjoy language mechanics way too much. :P)