Abstract
Numbers are not simply dry and abstract symbols for arithmetic quantities. Human minds also endow them with
rich and complicated personalities. Such personalities may be created and used consistently at a broad cultural
level, like the Mayan portrait glyphs used for the numbers 1 through 20. Or they can be found at a highly
idiosyncratic level in the form of synaesthesia known as Ordinal Linguistic Personification. Imagining personalities
for numbers involves cognitive systems that are linguistic as well as mathematical. Our brains create a space where
personal associations and broader social experience can mingle. The paper concludes with three of the author’s
poems in which numbers take on personalities that reflect contemporary urban experience.
