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Antidepressants or Tolkien

antidepressantsortolkien.vercel.app

463 points by mdturnerphys · 99 comments

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blooalien

I'm really surprised at what a challenge that turned out to be. I was certain I was gonna have no problems distinguishing drugs from Tolkien characters, but I only got 15/24 in the end. Recognized a few obvious brand names and characters, but half the time I had to resort to straight-up guessing. Some of those drug names totally sound like Tolkien characters.

  • ren_engineer

    it's actually a due to a research field created/popularized by Tolkien

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonaesthetics

    all about studying pleasant sounding words, big pharma uses it for naming drugs. "Cellar door" was one of Tolkien's favorite phrases, you can see variations and modifications of it in many fantasy settings

    >Tolkien, Lewis, and others have suggested that cellar door's auditory beauty becomes more apparent the more the word is dissociated from its literal meaning, for example, by using alternative spellings such as Selador, Selladore, Celador, Selidor

    • retrac

      There's a related field, phonosemantics, about the inherent meaning of a word because of how it sounds. (Words which sound like what they should sound like are, I would guess, pleasing.) Onomatopoeia fall in this category: bang, crash, pow, glug-glug.

      Teensy eensy tiny itty bitty little bit. All /e/ and /i/ front vowels. The mouth is literally closed up. Grand large vast ginormous expansive gargantuan. All /a/ back vowels. The mouth is literally relaxed and open. There are of course exceptions (big, small being notable) but English has a strong tendency in this way with size terms. Big = back and open vowel. Small = front and close vowel. This tendency isn't restricted to English; it shows up across languages in unrelated language families.

      One of the classic linguistics experiments is Bouba and Kiki [1]. One of these shapes is called Bouba, and one is called Kiki. As you probably already instinctively know, the one on the right is Bouba, and the one on the left is Kiki. Arabic, Japanese, English, Swahili speakers all agree on this, with like 90% or greater concord across cultures being typical.

      And one thing I noticed myself I haven't seen written about elsewhere. Take a look at the letter forms for how we write these sounds. In English: Bouba, Kiki. In Japanese: ボウバ and キキ. In Arabic: بوبا and كيكي. Bouba is written with round glyphs that enclose spaces. Kiki is written with sharp straight lines. Maybe that is just a coincidence. I haven't done a larger sampling than those three writing systems.

      Other patterns tend to show up within a language, but not cross-linguistically, and are probably arbitrary associations formed simply because of existing patterns. For example with English:

      * gl- : related to light -- glance, glare, glass, gleam, glimmer, glint, glisten, glitter, gloaming, gloom, gloss, glow

      * sw- : related to a long movement - sway, sweep, swerve, swing, swipe, swirl, swoop, swoosh

      The last three are very fun: swirl, swoop, swoosh. Swirl ends in -rl which literally curls (oh, there's that rl again) the tongue. A swoop ends with a stop consonant. Accordingly, it has more finality, suddenness, than swoosh. So: a bird swoops in to grab its prey. And a bird swooshes by, when it misses that prey.

      [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Booba-Ki...

      • indigoabstract

        I've noticed that too. It's like some form of synesthesia, where one sense (audio in this case) influences perception in another seemingly unrelated sense (visuals).

        And, perhaps related, in addition to their regular meaning, a lot of things seem to also have an inherent symbolic value. Like going up/going down, on top/at the bottom, sharp/blunt, clear/foggy, etc.

        I think that most people, when asked, would prefer going up to going down, even though they have to push against gravity.

      • adastra22

        "slithering snakes"

    • Semaphor

      > "Cellar door" was one of Tolkien's favorite phrases

      Oh cool, so that is where Donnie Darko got it from ("the most beautiful word in the English language")

    • misstuned

      There is, or was, a radio/TV company in Europe called Celador - I always wondered where the odd-sounding name came from.

  • jltsiren

    None of the drug names sounded like Tolkien characters to me. I guess native English speakers are at a disadvantage, because they are more likely to consider the names as they would be pronounced in English. The intended pronunciation is usually close to Classical Latin, which means that pronouncing the names in any other European language is likely closer to the truth. And when you pronounce the names in that language, Tolkien characters and drugs tend to sound different.

    • sspiff

      I'm European and I studied Latin for 6 years in high school and yet I found the test very challenging.

    • fikama

      You got me interested, could you say more about how are doing this? What exactly sounds different to you, and maybe what is your first language too. I am European but my first language is polish so in this context it is useless :P

      • jltsiren

        My first language is Finnish, which has a very straightforward correspondence between spelling and pronunciation.

        I would divide the drug names into four categories based on how they sound:

        Obviously a substance: Amantidine, Sildenafil

        Generic fantasy names / pronounceable strings with no meaning: Azafen, Clédial, Cymbalta, Desyrel, Edronax, Luvox

        Could be Tolkienian, but it's spelled wrong: Sintamil

        Could be Tolkienian, but the final syllable is wrong: Elronon, Eskalith, Nardil

        Additionally, the two Tolkien characters I had to guess were both kings of Gondor: Minalcar and Narmacil. Their names are in Quenya, while the commonly used names for elves etc. are in Sindarin, which sounds different.

        • User3456335

          It sounds like you got by more on thorough knowledge of Tolkien than your knowledge of Finnish. I'm going to guess there's more speakers of non-English languages here than of Quenya and Sindarin (which may have been pharmaceutical names for all I know).

    • dawatchusay

      So you were 100% correct on the test?

      • jltsiren

        I got 23/24 this time, as I guessed one Tolkien character wrong. The last time I saw this test, maybe a couple of years ago, I got 24/24.

  • steve_adams_86

    Yeah, wow. It’s been years since I read and watched, but I expected this to be challenging for the uninitiated. That crushed me. I guess I just lost a bunch of nerd cred.

    It’s bizarre that I did about as well at getting drug names correct, and I can’t say I’m well versed in those.

  • jhbadger

    It depends if you've read The Silmarillion or not. Pretty much all the obscure Tolkien characters are from that and had no problem recognizing them. Also, they included accent marks on some of the names which is a dead give away (I can't think of any drug name that uses those). Still, if your exposure to Tolkien is just LOTR, I could see how this could be difficult.

    • thedanbob

      > Also, they included accent marks on some of the names which is a dead give away (I can't think of any drug name that uses those).

      There actually was one, Clédial. It caught me out because I was thinking the same thing.

  • blooalien

    Hey, thanks to everyone who responded to this comment with interesting and educational tidbits. That's the sort of stuff I very much appreciate about HackerNews. Can always count on finding new and interesting knowledge to explore here.

  • BerislavLopac

    24/24 here :P

saghm

Two of my favorites of this genre are "Ikea Furniture or Metal Band" and "Drug or Pokemon". I did terribly at the first one since I don't know enough metal I guess, but I aced the latter, despite realizing that "Remoraid" actually does sound more like some sort of join pain cream or something than a pokemon.

second_brekkie

21/24 That was fun, also surprised by the difficulty.

Kept slipping up on the less known Gondorian kings.

Also if your a filthy casual like me and cba to re-read the Silmarilion, Nerd of the Rings is a, solid YT channel.

https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCW0gH2G-cMKAEjEkI4YhnPA

geuis

23 of 24. Missed the last one due to a miss click.

(I've read the Silmarillion too much it seems.)

frutiger

If you’ve read The Silmarillion it’s not too difficult, as Elvish names have common construction patterns and sounds.

whalesalad

I’ve often wondered - who are the Madison Avenue don Draper crews of the prescription drug world? How do they all create these terrible names, and terrible commercials around them? There’s clearly some consistency and yet it’s all insane.

vaxintar

23/24

but there was a few I just got lucky, Clédial got me because I didn't expect a drug to have an accent.

PlunderBunny

The wonderful McSweeney's Internet Tendency [0] has a lot of this type of humour.

1. https://www.mcsweeneys.net

xenophon

Another classic of this genre, brought to you by McSweeney's: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/armed-band-of-thugs-or-m...

isoprophlex

I never knew sildenafil (marketed as viagra) acted as an antidepressant too, lol

  • elmerfud

    It's a curious link that they made. Many antidepressants can cause performance issues, which can be a big deal for a lot of people. Using sildenafil with it can restore that part of the vitality.

  • rconti

    Yep that was the first one i slapped my forehead at missing, because I actually knew what it was but figured it must ALSO be a tolkien character since I was sure it wasn't an antidepressant.

  • jonny_eh

    > Antidepressant-like activity of sildenafil following acute and subchronic treatment in the forced swim test in mice: effects of restraint stress and monoamine depletion

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5031750/

  • mjfl

    Now I'm thinking of an elf named Sildenafil.

    • debo_

      Sire of Erecthelion, who slew Gothmog the High Captain of the Balrogs at the battle of Gondolin.

TOGoS

Having recently listened to the Lord of the Rings audiobooks (the read by Andy Serkis ones) I thought this was going to be about escaping into fantasy novels as a way of keeping oneself sane without having to resort to drugs. I also found them to be one of the only effective means of occupying my mind as I was trying to fall asleep so that I didn't ruminate myself into insomnia, which of course would leave me in a worse mood the next day.

erickhill

Reminds me of the classic Sporcle quiz: "Drug or Pokemon?" https://www.sporcle.com/games/LinkinMarc/drug_or_pokemon

(and just as baffling)

g-b-r

How not finishing the Silmarillion comes back to bite you

dividendpayee

Did anyone do worse than me? I got 11/24 :S

  • rconti

    10/24. Wow. You'd think it would be hard to do worse than a coin flip. On the other hand, I guess many coin flip sets are going to end up "worse than a coin flip" :D

  • missedthecue

    10/24

    It got to the point that I was saying "ok this one has to be a trap"

  • officehero

    Read most of Tolkien's books as audiobooks and this is certainly an area where audio is a much worse medium than paper. You just don't get any bells ringing from the looks of words.

  • AdamJacobMuller

    I felt bad about getting 12/24 which is basically "randomly guessing," somehow you did worse than random :D

rossdavidh

21/24, and I have to say that there were a lot more tough calls than I expected. One wonders if reading JRRT's works has been tested as an antidepressant. I think "Farmer Giles of Ham" was pretty upbeat...

edgarvaldes

Like that classic Pokemon or Big Data

ChrisArchitect

(2020)

From it's previous home on https://antidepressantsortolkien.now.sh/

d0odk

Nardil is unfair

  • stargazer-3

    Yes, Nárdil (or Nárndil?) could've been a Tolkien name meaning fire friend in Quenya.

    • d0odk

      Impressive you know that. I simply confused it with the sword, Narsil. I just considered that close enough to be unfair haha

ivraatiems

For anyone who is looking for information on the different kinds of antidepressants mentioned in this game (which I failed most completely despite being broadly familiar), here is a great article from Dr. Scott Siskind (aka Scott Alexander of SlateStarCodex/AstralCodexTen): https://lorienpsych.com/2021/06/05/depression/

I am not a huge fan of Siskind on all things but he has a great ability to explain complex topics simply when he is an expert, and he is on this.

Obscurity4340

How is Sildenafil (Viagra) an antidepressant? Never mind, don't answer that

piersolenski

Reminds me of https://mariahormessiah.fun/

hdhdhegdv

Wtf I got sildenafil which isn’t an antidepressant or tolkien

bigmattystyles

Reminds me of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPx_X3DjXy8

lIl-IIIl

From the tweet that inspired this game:

"Three rings to block reuptake of neurotransmitters And to the post-synaptic receptor bind them."

xivzgrev

18/24 - at some point there was a certain pattern to the medications. But then it broke and I got 4 in a row wrong

throwanem

Sildenafil isn't an antidepressant.

cl0ckt0wer

Cledíal got me

  • munchler

    Me too, although it's actually "Clédial". I was certain no one would market a drug with an accented character in the US.

afarviral

If you got a good score, was it due to drug or tolkien knowledge? Or evenly both?

speed_spread

Why not both? Speedrun the damned ring back to fucking Mordor. Up yours, Sauron!

nindalf

21/24.

I’ll atone by re-reading now.

asimpleusecase

20 out of 24 not too bad.

trs83

This is beautiful.

leed25d

Enigma

bebop404

15/24, so only slightly better than a coin flip.

The names with tildes in them were giveaways, though.

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