When Bernadette Sheridan hears your name, she doesn’t think about the spelling in a traditional sense. Her mind isn’t trying to figure out what letter goes after the other to form the name. Instead, she hears the name in swaths of color using her own “color alphabet.”
Sheridan, 49, is a synesthete. Or, in other words, someone with a neurological phenomenon known as synesthesia.
For as long as Sheridan can recall, letters and numbers weren’t just shapes and symbols. They were infused with color in her mind. A is red, B is blue, C is lime green and so on. For example, “Emily” — which happens to be Sheridan’s favorite name — is spelled with five bright, cheerful colors: yellow, navy blue, white, periwinkle and light yellow.
“I don’t see [the letters] literally in color. I see the letter in whatever color it’s in, but in the back of my head, it’s glowing in my color,” Sheridan says. “It’s almost as if a curtain of color bars comes in the back of my head.”
She even sees the days of the week and months in color. Sunday is dark blue, Monday is red-orange, Tuesday is gray-blue and Wednesday is yellow. January is light blue, February is light pink, March is yellow-green and April is raspberry.
