Ratings of familiarity and pronounceability were obtained from a random sam
ple of 189 surnames (selected from over 80,000 entries in the Purdue Univer
sity phone book) and 199 nouns (from the Kucera-Francis, 1967, word databas
e). The distributions of ratings for nouns versus names are substantially d
ifferent: Nouns were rated as more familiar and easier to pronounce than su
rnames. Frequency and familiarity were more closely related in the proper n
ame pool than the word pool, although both correlations were modest. Rating
s of familiarity and pronounceability were highly related for both groups.
A production experiment showed that rated pronounceability was highly relat
ed to the time taken to produce a name. These data confirm the common belie
f that there are differences in the statistical and distributional properti
es of words as compared to proper names. The value of using frequency and t
he ratings of familiarity and pronounceability for predicting variations in
actual pronunciations of words and names are discussed.