Sweet Names: Why We Call People Honey, Sugar, and Cupcake

The oldest sweet name in the English language

The connection between sweetness and love is ancient. In the Song of Solomon (written around 950 BCE), the speaker tells their beloved: "Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue." That is nearly 3,000 years of humans using honey as a metaphor for the person they love.

In English specifically, "honey" first appears as a term of address in William Langland's Piers Plowman around 1362. Shakespeare used it across his plays. By the time a 1990 Deseret News survey polled American couples, 26% still used "honey" as their go-to pet name. Over 600 years, and it never fell out of fashion.

"Sweet" actually predates honey as an endearment. It showed up around 1300 as a way to address a loved one, with spin-offs like "sweetikins" (1500s), "sweeting" (1600s), and "sweetie" (1700s). The word "sweetheart" has been in continuous use since the 13th century. That makes it one of the most durable words in the English language.

The timeline: when each sweet name appeared

Not all food endearments are ancient. Some are surprisingly recent. Here is when each one entered the language as a way to address someone you care about:

Notice the pattern. Desserts and sweets were rare for most of human history. Calling someone "honey" in 1362 was like calling them something precious and indulgent. The metaphor worked because the thing itself was special. Sugar was a luxury import until industrial refining made it cheap. That might explain why it took until 1930 for people to start using it as a pet name: by then, sugar was everywhere, and the word had shed its exotic associations.

Why food? The science of sweetness as love

Linguists have a term for this: foodsemy, the process of using food as a metaphor for human qualities. And it turns out taste is the dominant sense humans reach for when describing love. Not sight, not sound, not touch. Taste. "She's sweet." "That's a bitter breakup." "Their relationship turned sour."

The reason probably comes down to how rare sweetness was for most of human history. Before refined sugar, the sweetest thing most people ever tasted was honey or ripe fruit. Sweet foods triggered a dopamine response, the same neurochemical involved in romantic attachment. The metaphor is not arbitrary. It maps onto the actual brain chemistry of desire.

Family dynamics researcher Carol Bruess studied this from the relationship side. Her 1993 research found that couples who used more "idiosyncratic communication" (pet names, inside jokes, private language) reported higher relationship satisfaction. She treats each relationship as a "mini-culture" with its own vocabulary. The pet name you pick is not just affection. It is identity. It says: we have our own language, and nobody else speaks it.

Same words, different warmth. The food endearment and the emoji together do what plain text cannot: they carry tone. In texting, where there is no vocal inflection, that is not a small thing.

What they call each other around the world

English is not unique in raiding the kitchen for love words. But the ingredients vary wildly depending on what each culture considers precious or endearing.

The pattern holds across languages. Sweetness and food are universal shorthand for affection. The only thing that changes is what each culture puts on the plate.

The emoji translation: which food emojis people search for

Food emojis have become the digital equivalent of calling someone "honey" or "sugar." But which ones do people actually reach for? Google Trends data since 2020 shows a clear hierarchy. 🍯 honey and 🍬 sugar trade the top spot depending on the season, with 🧁 cupcake holding steady in third place. "Babe emoji" and "sweetie emoji" barely register by comparison.

The food-based emoji searches consistently outperform non-food pet name searches. People are not just searching for "babe emoji" or "sweetie emoji." They are looking for 🍯 and 🍬, the actual food symbols. The 700-year-old metaphor has survived the jump to digital communication fully intact.

🍯 in particular functions as a dual-purpose emoji. It is both a literal honey pot and a stand-in for the word "honey" when texting a partner. Send 🍯 alone in a late-night text and it reads as a pet name. Send it in a recipe thread and it is just an ingredient. Context does all the heavy lifting.

The generational shift: from honey to babe

A Black Tux survey of 5,000 couples reveals how pet names have shifted across generations. The numbers tell a clear story: food endearments are losing ground to something more generic.

Here is the twist: Gen Z does not say "honey" out loud, but they send 🍯 in texts. The food metaphor has not disappeared. It migrated from speech to emoji. Younger generations did not abandon the pantry. They just started sending pictures of it.

"Cupcaking" is Gen Z slang for flirting. 🧁 in a DM is playful and sweet without the "grandma energy" that saying "honey" out loud carries for a 22-year-old. The word changed. The instinct did not.

Sweet emoji combos to send someone you love

Each of these pairs a food endearment emoji with a context that gives it warmth. Click to copy, then paste it into whatever conversation needs a little sugar.