Fonemenaam

Fonemenaam is a term used in linguistics to refer to the label assigned to a phoneme in a given analysis. A phoneme is an abstract unit of sound that can distinguish meaning in a language; its name is a convenient label used to discuss that unit.

In phonology, phonemes are represented with slashes, such as /p/, /t/, /k/, /s/. The actual sounds realized in speech are called phones, and the same phoneme may have several allophones depending on context. The phoneme name can be the IPA symbol itself or a language-specific label. The choice of name helps researchers talk about the unit without tying it to a single pronunciation.

Names can be universal (IPA symbols) or local: for example, the English phoneme that occurs in “think” is /θ/, commonly described as a voiceless dental fricative. The name describes the category, not a single spoken sound. In practice, a phoneme name is used to refer to the abstract category across contexts and analyses.

Use: When describing a language, researchers list the phoneme inventory and assign names, along with rules of distribution and minimal pairs. Names provide stable reference across contexts, while orthography is not a reliable indicator of phoneme identity. The fonemenaam concept supports cross-language comparison by focusing on the underlying unit rather than its surface realizations.