Is EURO a Strong or a Weak name?

Is EURO a Strong or a Weak name?

A few years ago I had this notion that EURO is a word whose connotations in English would be likely to be weak.
What this entailed for what societies, publics and nations would want to do in or with the EURO, I don't know - it is something it would be good to explore.

From time to time the notion crops up and I look in my records and  find that I have been going on about this for over a dozen years now. The earliest I found this morning was am email to an academic in Exeter University - in 2002!
I am still waiting to hear from her.

Anyway - here is the suggestion:

The Influence Of A Name: The Euro Case               An Experiment            Proposed by:    J.M.Wober

Introduction  A substantial literature indicates that the name of a person or an object influences how it is thought about, and this in turn can influence behaviour concerning the person or object. The Euro is a new 'actor' in European society, and one may hope that it is regarded as being reliable and durable as well as friendly, attractive and with other positive attributes. One of the elements of the introduction of the currency is the evocation of connotations by its very name. In English, two very closely sounding words are eros and urine; it is at least possible that some evocation of the connotations of these words may spill over into that of the Euro. It should be acknowledged that little is known about such matters and it would be wise, therefore, for some study to be carried out of the overtones of meaning that will (and already do) surround or suffuse the term, in the UK.

Theory  One relevant observation may be that the names for many existing currencies contain hard consonants; in many cases these come close to the start and or end of the word and thus provide what sounds like firm enclosure for it. A contrast would be with words which lack a hard consonant or which may have one but not at either beginning or end; such words are 'open-ended' in sound. It may be far fetched, or not, but it may at least be worth investigation that a new currency's name might more readily evoke the desired attributes if it sounds, like the names for so many other currencies, as though it conveys 'hard-ended closure' (franc, mark, dollar, pound, escudo, peseta, rand, baht, dirham, shekel, even lirra).

Method  A set of new and meaningless names should be made up. Half of these would contain hard consonants and afford substantial acoustic 'closure'. Half would have softer consonants, not placed at either end of the word and would thus sound less 'closed'. A set of semantic differential scales would be established on which a sample of observers would be asked to place each term, on the basis of how it sounds to them, and of which descriptions if evokes. Each new 'word' would contain two syllables. The rating could be required without context; or a context could be supplied. The most explicit context would be to say that terms for a real new currency are being studied, and one wants to explore the ideas and feelings each term evokes. A less explicit context (which I favour) would be to propose that a scriptwriter was considering names for a fictional currency, for a new science fiction tv series. An indirect context would be to say the same, but for names for fictional characters. Finally, people could be asked to assess the terms without saying what they applied to. This procedure could then be repeated for the terms pound, and finally euro. Some personal details of respondents would be taken, to learn whether stereotyping may occur in some ways amongst certain parts of the population more than amongst others.

Terms and Scales  Terms might include: delim, kinot, suled, bagup, galed. jubol, kedit (etc); aryo, uwiah, ehyor, oirue, ilwo,  (etc). Scales might include: worth 10p...£10; respectable/dis-; fast/slow; changeable/steadfast; reliable/un-; friendly/hostile; indestructible/in-; desirable/un-; etc

Hypotheses The null hypothesis would be that the terms are all meaningless (ie, words not in the dictionary, nor are the major syllables such words), and that a number not significantly different from 100% would choose the centre point on each scale. A variant of this hypothesis is that replies would be normally distributed around the centre, with a small distribution. The hypothesis of the introduction, above, is that some terms would tend to score high or low on various scales, in ways that imply imputation of character. In particular, terms with much closure would seem firmer, more reliable, more friendly and attractive.