Phonetic Identity Theory: Names as Compressed Social Algorithms

This paper introduces Phonetic Identity Theory (PIT), a unified framework proposing that personal names function as compressed social algorithms encoding multidimensional identity information within phonetic structure, and that this encoding operates simultaneously across three irreducible layers: the biological (autonomic nervous system response, mirror neuron activation, vagal tone modulation), the computational (implicit learning in language models, embedding space geometry, tokenization effects), and the social (class signaling, ethnic marking, generational timestamping). We argue that names are not arbitrary labels but information-dense carriers that are decoded pre-cognitively through physiological pathways, cognitively through learned cultural association, and computationally through statistical regularities in training corpora. We further propose that romanization systems function as identity transformation protocols, that the rise of digital pseudonymity constitutes a libertarian inversion of traditional onomastic power structures, and that the sound that summons a person into social existence, chosen before they have language, given not chosen, yet answered to for a lifetime, operates as the first and most persistent program shaping their interaction with the world. This framework synthesizes findings from phonosemantics, polyvagal theory, sociolinguistics, developmental neurobiology, and machine learning to propose a unified theory of how names carry meaning through the body, the brain, the algorithm, and the social field.