phonemes are minimal units of sound. depending on the speaker’s accent, the english language has about 44 phonemes. in product naming, names that are phonetically easy to pronounce and that are well balanced with vowels and consonants have an advantage over those that are not. likewise, names that begin with or stress plosive consonant sounds b, hard c, d, g, k, p or t are often used because of their attention-getting quality. some phoneme sounds in english, for example l, v, f and w are thought of as feminine, while others such as x, m and z are viewed as masculine.