 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Tetraphobia" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(August 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
.jpg)
Tetraphobia (from Ancient Greek τετράς (tetrás) 'four' and φόβος (phóbos) 'fear') is the practice of avoiding instances of the digit number4. It is asuperstition most common inEast Asian nations and is associated with death.[1]
| Language | Reading | |
|---|---|---|
| 四 (four) | 死 (die) | |
| Proto-Sino-Tibetan | *b-ləj | *səj |
| Old Chinese | /*s.lij-s/ | /*sijʔ/ |
| Middle Chinese | /siɪH/ | /sˠiɪX/ |
| Mandarin Chinese | sì | sǐ |
| Shanghainese | sy² | shi², sy² |
| Cantonese | sei³ | sei² |
| Hakka | si³ | si⁴ |
| Hokkien | sì, sù | sí, sú |
| Vietnamese | tư, tứ | tử |
| Korean | sa | sa |
| Japanese | shi | shi |
TheChinese word for "four" (四,pinyin: sì,jyutping: sei3) sounds quite similar to the word for "death" (死,pinyin: sǐ,jyutping: sei2) in manyvarieties of Chinese.[2][better source needed][3] Similarly, theSino-Japanese,Sino-Korean andSino-Vietnamese words for "four", shi (し,Japanese), sa (사,Korean) and tứ or tư (Vietnamese), sound similar or identical to "death" in each language (seeKorean numerals,Japanese numerals,Vietnamese numerals). Tetraphobia is known to occur in Korea and Japan (since the two words sound identical to each other in both languages), but not in Vietnam because the Sino-Vietnamese words have differenttones to distinguish the two words and the native Vietnamese words for "four" and "death" are much more widely used than the Sino-Vietnamese equivalents in everyday language.
Tetraphobia far surpassestriskaidekaphobia (Western superstitions around the number 13). It even permeates the business world in these regions of Asia.[4]
Chinese is a tonal language with a comparatively small inventory of permitted syllables, resulting in an exceptionally large number ofhomophone words. Many of the numbers are homophones or near-homophones of other words and have therefore acquired superstitious meanings.
The Chinese avoid phone numbers and addresses with fours because the pronunciation in "four" and "death" differ only in tone, especially when a combination with another number sounds similar to undesirable expressions. Example: "94" could be interpreted as "certain death"[citation needed]
The tetraphobia is not apparent for the military and government institutions of thePeople's Republic of China.Chinese Communist Party andPeople's Liberation Army make free use of the number 4 in many military designations for equipment, with examples including theDongfeng-4 ICBM,Type 094 submarine, andType 054A frigate. Chinese government policies also usually contain the number 4 for expression.[5] By contrast, the navies of theRepublic of China (Taiwan)[citation needed] and ofSouth Korea refrain from using the number 4 when assigningpennant numbers to their ships.
While inMandarin-speaking regions in China, 14 and 74 are considered unluckier than the individual 4, because 14 (十四, pinyin: shí sì) sounds like "is dead" (是死, shì sǐ). Additionally, in some forms of the language, 1 is pronounced as (幺, yāo), which sounds like (yào 要), which means "to want"; therefore, when combined with (四, sì), it sounds like "want death" (要死, yào sǐ). Likewise, 74 (七十四, pinyin: qī shí sì or colloquially 七四, pinyin: qī sǐ) sounds like "actually dead" (其实死, pinyin: qí shí sǐ) or "angered to death" (气死, pinyin: qì sǐ).[citation needed]
WhenBeijing lost its bid to stage the2000 Olympic Games, it was speculated[by whom?] that the reason China did not pursue a bid for the following2004 Games was the unpopularity of the number 4 in China. Instead, the city waited another four years, and would eventually host the2008 Olympic Games, the number eight being a lucky number in Chinese culture.[citation needed]
In recent years China has also avoided using the number 4 in aircraft registrations. An example is China Southern Airlines, with their A330s. One A330 is registered as B-8363, while the next is B-8365 and following B-8366. After B-8366 there is B-1062, B-1063 then B-1065, to avoid using the number 4 as in B-8364 and 1064. However, this policy only applies for aircraft that end with 4, so one will see B-8426 but not B-8264.[citation needed]
InHong Kong, some apartments such as Vista Paradiso andThe Arch skip all the floors from 40 to 49, which is the entire 40s. Immediately above the 39th floor is the 50th floor, leading many who are not aware of tetraphobia to believe that some floors are missing. Tetraphobia is not the main reason, but rather as an excuse to have apartments with 'higher' floors, thus increasing the price, because higher floors in Hong Kong apartments are usually more expensive (see39 Conduit Road). ForCantonese speakers, 14 and 24 are considered unluckier than the individual 4, because 14 (Cantonese Yale:sahp sei) sounds like "will certainly die" (實死,Cantonese Yale:saht séi), and 24 (Cantonese Yale:yih sei) sounds like "easy to die" (易死,Cantonese Yale:yih séi).
Due to the blending of East Asian and Western cultures, it is possible in some buildings that both thethirteenth floor and the fourteenth floor are skipped, causing the twelfth floor to precede the fifteenth floor, along with all the other 4s. Thus, a building whose top floor is numbered 100 could have just eighty floors.
In Japan, the number 4 is avoided in some apartments and hospitals. The number 49 is also considered unlucky, as its pronunciation is similar to the Japanese termshiku, meaning 'to suffer and die'.[6]
In Taiwan, not using house numbers ending in 4 without also skipping numbers on the opposite side of the road often results in the numbers on two sides of a street getting more and more out of sync as one advances.[7]
InMalaysia, especially in regions or neighbourhoods where ethnic Chinese are significant in population, the floor number 4 or house address with number 4 is occasionally skipped. The practice is more prevalent in private condominiums, especially those built by ethnic Chinese-owned companies. The fourth floor may be either omitted completely or substituted with "3A".
Singaporean public transport operatorSBS Transit has omitted the number plates for some of its buses whose numbers end with "4" due to this, so if a bus is registered as SBS***3*, SBS***4* will be omitted and the next bus to be registered will be SBS***5*.[8] Note that this only applies to certain buses and not others and that the final asterisk is thechecksum letter and not a number. For example, if the bus is registered as SBS8603J, SBS8604G will be omitted and the next bus to be registered will be SBS8605D.
Singaporean public transport operatorSMRT has omitted the "4" as the first digit of the serial number of the train cars as well as theSMRT Buses NightRider services.[citation needed]
InIndonesia since the 2000s, an increasing number of skyscrapers skip floors ending with, or containing implicit references to, the number 4 (as well as the 13th floor), especially in those funded byChinese Indonesians. For example, inLippo Mall Nusantara (owned byLippo Group, which was founded by Chinese IndonesianMochtar Riady), 4th floor is replaced by 3A. InThe Energy Tower and most high-rises developed by Agung Sedayu Propertindo, 39th floor is followed by 50th floor. Some buildings, mostly owned by non-Chinese, have a 4th floor. Examples are government buildings, theSarinah department store, and most buildings developed byIndonesian state-owned enterprises.
InVietnam, theSino-Vietnamese words for "four" (tứ ortư) are used more in formal contexts or in reference to the days of the week like referring to "Wednesday" (thứ tư). When spoken, its sound is differentiated clearly from the word for "death" (tử).Tử is also used in formal contexts and proper nouns,tư andtử have to be used in compounds likebất tử (immortal) orTứ Xuyên (Sichuan). The wordbốn is often used much more in the place oftư to refer to the number 4. Tetraphobia is not common in Vietnam as the Sino-Vietnamese words for four and death aren't as commonly used compared to their native Vietnamese equivalents,bốn andchết, respectively.
.jpg)
InSouth Korea, tetraphobia is less extreme. The number 4 sounds like the hanja for "death" (사) (although Korean has no tones), so the floor number 4 or room number 4 is almost always skipped in hospitals, funeral halls, and similar public buildings. In other buildings, the fourth floor is sometimes labelled "F" (for "Four") instead of "4" in elevators. Apartment numbers containing multiple occurrences of the number 4 (such as 404) are likely to be avoided to an extent that the value of the property is adversely affected. The national railroad,Korail, left out the locomotive number 4444 when numbering a locomotive class from 4401 upwards.
Efforts to accommodate tetraphobia-related sensitivities have been seen inCanada, particularly in areas with significantethnic Chinese populations.Richmond Hill, Ontario banned the number four on new houses in June 2013. Property developers inVancouver omitted the number from new buildings until October 2015, when the city banned non-sequential numbering schemes.[9][10]
In theAria Hotel inLas Vegas, among others, numbers 40-49 are skipped for the same reasons they may be omitted in China.
In someItalian regions (e.g.Tuscany) four meanscoffin and thus it is feared.[11]
The software platformSymbian, used byFinnish telecommunications firmNokia in theirSeries 60 platform, avoids releases beginning with 4, as it did when it was EPOC and owned byPsion (there was no Psion Series 4, and there was no 4th edition of S60). This was done "as a polite gesture to Asian customers".[12][13] Similarly, Nokia did not release any products under the 4xxx series, although some of Nokia's other products do contain the number 4, such as theSeries 40 platform, and theNokia 3410. However, as of theMobile World Congress 2019 event, the company had announced the Nokia 4.2.
Whenarea code 306 was nearing exhaustion in 2011, theCanadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission originally proposed that the new area code be 474.[14] However, representatives fromSaskTel requested that the new area code be 639 instead, to avoid the negative connotations of 4 in Asian cultures. 639 was subsequently approved as the new area code.[15]
The Chinesesmartphone manufacturerOnePlus chose to name its smartphone model after the3 and3T the5, avoiding the number 4.[16]
A 2001 article by authors Phillips et al published in theBritish Medical Journal reported a study that looked at mortality statistics in the United States over a 25-year period. The authors reported findings that on the fourth day of the month, Asian people were thirteen percent more likely to die of heart failure. In California, Asians were twenty-seven percent more likely to die of a heart attack on that day. The hypothesis purportedly tested in the study was that psychological stress caused by belief in this superstition could indeed trigger deadly heart attacks and other fatal incidents.[17]
Subsequent efforts by other researchers have failed to replicate the findings reported by Phillips and collaborators.[18] One such effort was by researchers who replicated the 2001 study's methods in a Hong Kong Chinese population which did not show evidence consistent with increased cardiac mortality on the 4th, 14th, or 24th days of the month.[19] Another such effort was by Gary Smith, an economist with expertise in debunking improper use of data in statistical analyses. A 2002 article by Smith was published in the same scientific journal as the 2001 article, and details Smith's replication of Phillips's study using the same dataset but more scientifically appropriate statistical comparisons. Smith's reanalysis of the data did not find evidence to support the conclusions drawn in the 2001 study. Furthermore, Smith's review of other scientific publications by Phillips identified inconsistencies in the 2001 study's methodology compared to the author's other published work, where the 2001 study was reported to include only a subset of cardiac deaths compared to work by Phillips on similar populations with similar definitions of cardiac mortality groups.[20]
Media related toTetraphobia at Wikimedia Commons
