Numbers and letters just a form of communication right? They are the components that make up our language and allow us to convey a meaning to others but numbers often have a particular meaning attached to them. People become superstitious about numbers and have 'favourite' and 'unlucky' numbers, but is there a reason that we attach so much meaning to numbers? This article looks at some of the interesting qualities of numbers and the connections we create between them and makes a few suggestions as to why we maybe do this.
Numbers are often thought of as 'special' somehow, they signify something more than words but the irony of this is that numbers are associated with words and meanings and that is how they become 'special'. It's a sensitive subject admittedly but the attack on the World Trade Centre in America was carried out on September 11th 2001 which, in America is written as 9/11/2001 and the day has become known as 911. It doesn't take much to realise that this is also the Emergency Number for North America. It is therefore presumed that this is no coincidence and the attackers did it to convey a meaning of some description - what exactly that was shouldn't be speculated on - but the point is the numbers. They have been used as a sort of code which indicates a global understanding that numbers connote different meanings to simple words.
Although the aforementioned number is already 'special' because it's the Emergency Number for North America and therefore is known by the entire continent but people play with phone numbers and see what meanings they can extract from them. On a phone keypad, numbers from two to nine have a minimum of three letters assigned as a second function to them so for instance the '2' button can also be used for 'A', 'B' or 'C'. Therefore groups of numbers, such as phone numbers, can be interpreted as words. The connotations that can be found here can be read as meaningful or superstitious, or just fun, but whichever way you look at it there are double meanings to numbers they are not just face value.
Phone numbers can also be used in this way for advertising purposes - businesses can pay for numbers that spell out their product or business name in order to make them easier to remember and therefore people are more likely to call them. This works particularly well with food stuffs, a phone number that spells out 'pizza' for instance is likely to get a high volume of calls because if you're hungry for pizza but can't find a number it is more likely that you will remember this number.
Thank you taking an interest in this article. Please note that you can subscribe to our ezine page to receive notifications when we upload a new article. If you are interested in phones and their respective numbers then perhaps you would be interested in speaking one of the UK's biggest telephone service providers BT via the phone number listed here.
