Do elephants have names?

Rumbles with a recipient

Elephant rumbles are low-frequency, harmonically rich calls that travel across kilometers of savanna, and a female-led family group exchanges them constantly during contact, greeting, and caregiving. Drawing on 14 months of intensive field recordings combined with archival cuts spanning 36 years in Kenya's Samburu and Amboseli ecosystems, the research team compiled 469 contact, greeting, and caregiving rumbles from 101 known callers directed at 117 known receivers. A random-forest machine-learning model trained on the calls' acoustic features predicted the intended receiver correctly for 27.5 percent of calls—far above random chance. [1][2][3]

• Researchers analyzed 469 contact, greeting, and caregiving rumbles from 101 callers and 117 receivers in Kenya
• A machine-learning model identified the intended individual receiver from acoustic features alone well above chance
• Different callers addressing the same receiver converged on similar acoustic patterns for that individual

The playback test

Statistical classification alone cannot prove that an elephant perceives its own vocal label, so the team tested 17 wild elephants in the field with paired speaker playbacks. Each subject heard one recording originally addressed to her by a family member and a control recording from the same caller originally directed at a different individual. On average, elephants approached the speaker much faster, vocalized sooner, and produced more reply rumbles when hearing calls originally meant for them than when hearing control calls from the identical caller. [1][3][4]

• Field playback trials tested 17 wild elephants using calls from the same family caller directed at different recipients
• Elephants approached the loudspeaker faster and replied more strongly to rumbles originally addressed to them
• Behavioral discrimination confirmed that elephants actively extract receiver identity from the call itself

Names without imitation

Bottlenose dolphins and orange-fronted parakeets also address specific individuals in a group, but they do so by copying the receiver's own learned 'signature whistle' or contact call. In the Kenyan elephant dataset, calls directed at a receiver were no more acoustically similar to the receiver's own rumbles than to other calls, indicating that elephants use arbitrary vocal labels rather than vocal imitation. Name-like rumbles were used most often over long distances when callers were out of sight and when adult females were soothing or summoning young calves. [1][3][4]

• Unlike dolphins and parrots that mimic a partner's signature call, elephants appear to use arbitrary vocal labels
• Receiver-specific rumbles occurred most frequently across long distances and when adult females addressed calves
• Arbitrary vocal labeling without imitation was previously thought to be unique to human language

Marmosets, and the open questions

Months later, a 2024 study in Science recorded paired common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) and found that their high-pitched 'phee' calls also encode individual-specific vocal labels for family members, with troop members converging on shared labels. Both research teams emphasize what remains unknown: elephant rumbles simultaneously pack in caller identity, age, sex, emotional arousal, and receiver label, so scientists cannot yet isolate the discrete 'name' syllable inside a rumble or test whether elephants also have referential labels for food patches or waterholes. [3][5][6]

• A 2024 Science study showed that common marmosets also label specific troop members inside their 'phee' calls
• Elephant rumbles blend caller identity, emotional state, and receiver label into a single complex vocalization
• Researchers have not yet isolated the exact acoustic segment carrying the name or tested for object labels

Related guides

• How elephants communicate with infrasound
• Why animals live in groups
• How animals care for their young