Fritinancy

Risky Business

Who says you can't find good news anymore?

Here's the lede of a story in the Vital Signs column in today's New York Times:

For people over 55, an alcoholic drink a day reduces the risk of death, a new study has found, but having one drink or less a week is no help at all.

Wow! That should have been on the front page!

Here's what that study actually concludes:

Moderate drinkers have better risk factor profiles than nondrinkers, including higher SES and fewer functional limitations. Although these factors explain much of the survival advantage associated with moderate alcohol use, moderate drinkers maintain their survival advantage even after adjustment for these factors.

A "better risk factor profile" is not the same thing as a "reduced risk of death." The risk of death is always 100 percent. Guaranteed.

Word of the Week: Mongo

Mongo: A discarded item that is picked up, retrieved, and rescued. Also used as a verb: to pick up garbage for the purpose of redeeming it.

From "Dr. Garbage," Ben McGrath's 2006 New Yorker feature about Robin Nagle, anthropologist in residence with New York  City's Department of Sanitation:

Nagle’s interests lie more with the trash collectors than with the trash, although the two intersect on the subject of “mongo”—sanitation lingo for “redeemed garbage” or the act of collecting it. (Nagle consulted a lexicographer, looking for help in tracking down the etymology, to no avail.) “Within the department, if you mongo or if you don’t—there’s kind of a dividing line,” she said. “ ‘He mongos.’ ‘Do you mongo?’ ‘Oh, mongo, are you kidding? I wouldn’t mongo.’ ” She paused. “Hell, I mongo, absolutely. And I have some pretty nice things.”

Mongo is the first word to be considered in Slang: The People's Poetry, the new book by Indiana University English professor Michael Adams. (Adams is also the author of Slayer Slang: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Lexicon.) Here's the book's opening paragraph:

If I were to say to you right now, "Dude, I know where we can score some phat mongo," what would you do? Would you call the police? Would you come along to see what I meant by mongo? Would you look up mongo in the dictionary before we left, so that you knew what you were getting into? I mean, what kind of word is mongo? It doesn't sound like an English word. It certainly isn't a word you learned by studying for vocabulary quizzes in school. Is it a bad word for something good, or a good word for something bad?

Adams traces the popularization of mongo to a 2004 book by Ted Botha, Mongo: Adventures in Trash. But, he adds:

Mongo isn't a new word; the Historical Dictionary of American Slang ... records it from 1984, and rumor has it that the word had been around for at least a decade by then. Indeed, Grant Barrett, in The Official Dictionary of Unofficial English (2006), reports that "evidence from the unpublished Lexicon of Trade Jargon, compiled by the [Depression-era] Works Progress Administration, has a form of this word from before 1983, mungo, referring to the person who salvages discarded items, rather than the things being salvaged."

More citations for mongo are at Word Spy. None of them mentions the Cuban percussionist Mongo Santamaria, whose name was used in a pun in the Mel Brooks film Blazing Saddles ("Mongo! Santa Maria!").

By the way, I thoroughly enjoyed Slang: The People's Poetry, which showed up one day on my doorstep courtesy of the generous folks at Oxford University Press. It's a freewheeling yet scrupulously researched amble through the worlds of (for example) Cockney rhyming slang, 19th-century slang in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, drug slang (Ecstacy, or MDMA, goes by e-mail, Kleenex, gum, wafer, and clarity, to name but a few synonyms), snowboarding jargon, and the fake African-American slang taught to clueless manager Michael Scott in the American TV series The Office. (Authentic African-American slang takes up a large portion of one chapter.) There's a long and fascinating discussion of the various slang meanings of morning glory, and a spirited consideration of Flandersisms like okelly dokelly in The Simpsons ("Lexifabricography and the Lexically Meaningful Infix").

And my vocabulary is greatly enriched by the addition of lochrity, a Scottish slang term meaning "the condition of having many lakes."

Bad Brand Names: Vintage Edition

Une Femme d'un Certain Age wrote a serious post the other day about weight and dieting, but all I could focus on was the advertisement she used to illustrate it:

Did you catch the product name? It's there in the red callouts: Kelp-a-Malt. With a name like that, it's got to be ... extinct.

Une Femme doesn't reveal the source of the ad, but it's easy enough to find: just Google Kelp-a-Malt. My search ended at the Modern Mechanix blog ("Yesterday's Tomorrow Today"), where I learned that the ad appeared in a 1934 issue of Physical Culture magazine.

What an artifact. Remember when people wanted to "add 5 lbs. of solid flesh in 1 week" instead of being The Biggest Loser? Neither do I. But indeed, there have been times and places when people obsessed about being too skinny. The Great Depression, when money and jobs were scarce and thinness often signified poverty (rather than wealth, as it does now), was one of those times, and the United States was one of those places.

But that's just the beginning. There's a lot of text under the ad's headline, including this:

Kelp-a-Malt, the new mineral concentrate from the sea—gets right down to the cause of thin, underweight conditions and adds weight through a "3 ways in one" natural process. ... Three Kelp-a-Malt tablets contain more iron and copper than a pound of spinach or 7 ½ lbs. of fresh tomatoes; more calcium than 6 eggs; more phosphorus than 1 ½ lbs. carrots; more FOOD IODINE than 1600 lbs. of beef.

Mmmmmm: FOOD IODINE.¹

And the kicker:

Remember the name, Kelp-a-Malt, the original and genuine kelp and malt tablets.

Kelp-a-Malt. It's descriptive, it's derisory, it's disgusting. Doesn't it sound like something you'd whip up in the Super Bass-o-Matic? And like nothing you'd want to consume? Oh, how I wish I could have been at the creative session that produced that name. "How about Seaweedies?" "No, Blubber Up!" "Wait a minute, gentlemen, it's right here in the ingredients! Kelp. A. Malt. Kelp-a-Malt!"

Rest assured, I will remember the name. In fact, right now I'm sort of wishing I could forget it.

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¹ By the way, according to commenter #31, Kelp-a-Malt was eventually withdrawn from sale because of false nutritional claims.

What Does "Urban" Mean?

I'm not talking about the dictionary definition: an adjective meaning "of the city," derived from Latin urbanus and ultimately urbs, "city." Because that doesn't explain what "urban" is doing in this phrase, reproduced verbatim from a report I heard recently on my local public-radio station:

Like most urban cities, Oakland...

Like most city-ish cities?

No, of course not. "Urban cities" may seem redundant, but the reporter had something else in mind. Increasingly over the last few decades, "urban" has acquired a secondary meaning: "dominated by a racial minority, usually African-American."

Syfy Part 3: Setting the Record Straight

Last week, in the first of my two posts about the renaming of the Sci Fi Channel, I credited (or blamed) Landor Associates for the new name, Syfy. Now comes word from Landor Executive Director Ken Runkel, writing in the company blog, that Landor was an innocent bystander:

Yes, we worked with the Sci Fi Channel, and it hired us to consult on the project. However, Syfy was a name generated internally and pre-tested at the channel before our involvement. Once Landor was involved, we explored new names as part of the process, but it was the Channel's call to go with Syfy.

If I were Runkel, I'd want to separate myself from the Syfy name, too. What isn't clear is why Landor took more than a week to announce the disclaimer. I learned about it yesterday, when the agency's senior director of naming and branding, Jeremy Faro, posted a terse comment on a LinkedIn group discussion.

Word of the Week: Extimacy

Extimacy: The sharing of experiences or thoughts usually considered private. Coined to suggest an opposition to "intimacy."

Extimacy is the ambient mood of the website Vie de Merde ("Shitty Life"), which has become the ninth-most-popular search on Google's French search engine. Vie de Merde started as a personal journal a couple of years ago by Maxime Valette, now 20; last year the most popular posts were published in book form.

A March 21 article about VDM in the online Wall Street Journal quotes Swiss psychologist and author Yves-Alexandre Thalmann, who says the site's popularity stems from people's desire for recognition:

"In the past, people used to keep this kind of story to just a small group of intimates," says Mr. Thalmann. "Now they want to share this with as many people as possible" in hopes of winning approval from someone. He calls the phenomenon "extimacy."

Thalmann didn't invent the term; it was coined the French psychiatrist Jacques Lacan (1901-1981), who called it extimité. For Lacan and his followers, extimacy expressed "the opposition between inside and outside, between container and contained." Lacan died before the birth of the World Wide Web, but seemed to anticipate it, at least according to one observer:

We could look at the interface of the Web and, moreover, Web 2.0 as a mode of exercising extimacy with other people. A social networking profile is created and within that profile is a blending of various symbols from film, TV, art, others’ photography and so on. Contacting others and “friending” others based on similar web-surfing habits expands one’s online self and entwines within one, the interests and symbolization of another person. Moreover, when looking at the interface of the computer screen, one experiences the decentering of one’s self-image, a fragmented mirroring back of oneself occurs. Desires that are posted by other people, become one’s own desires, desires that one did not even know existed. By expanding one’s network, one comes to see oneself as projected by these other people. Again, there is an intertwining, a conjoining of self and other and in this conjoining, an extimate self is realized.

The meaning of "extimacy" is, contradictorily, contained within the root of "intimate": the Latin intimare, which means "to make known, announce, impress."

The founders of Vie de Merde have also launched an American version of the site, F My Life ("Everyday Life Stories"). A similar concept underlies the longer-running Post Secret and the newer Twitter counterpart, Secret Tweet.

See also: Overshare.

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Image: Möbius strip, from Instructables. A Möbius strip is a geometric paradox: a surface with only one side. It's a physical representation of the psychological concept of extimacy.

Syfy Redux, from a Real Sci-Fi Guy

John Scalzi has serious sci-fi cred: Yesterday he was nominated for three Hugo awards, the highest science-fiction honor in the whole wide universe. So although I shared a few modest thoughts about the renaming of the Sci-Fi Channel a few days ago, Scalzi's really the guy you should be paying attention to. Here's what he has to say in a post titled "The Venereal Disease Channel Imaginatizes Greatastically"; I can't help quoting almost all of it, because Scalzi's such a brilliant writer:

Apparently one of the motivating factors to change the name from “scifi” to a phase-changing-vowel-filled homonym was to have a name that was trademarkable and extensible, and it seems no one else in the world actually uses the word “syfy” for anything. Well, except Poland, where the word is used to identify crusty, scabby sexually transmitted diseases, and no, this is not a joke. No one there is going to use the word to associate with their product, any more than someone here might try to market, say, Chlamydia™  brand adhesive bandages.

Note to SciFi Channel: when your new brand identity means “venereal disease” in any language, it’s the sort of thing that — excuse the term — gets around.

You would think  NBC Universal’s brand people might have caught this (heh) ahead of time. They do have people for this. And maybe they did catch it, but figured, heck, who knows Polish? Aside from 40 million Poles? Problem is, this is one of those things that Those Perverse Internets, and the equally-perverse people involved in them (not coincidentally SciFi Channel’s primary viewing demographic) will find out almost immediately and then proceed to have a big ol’ jolly field day with. As they did, and are doing.

Look: When your core audience looks at your new branding and exclaims “Hey! It’s the Venereal Disease Channel!” from the day you announce it until the day, a few years later, when you find slink away from it and try to pretend it never happened, you may have chosen your brand identity poorly. Yes, “Syfy” is brand extensible. But then, the Polish “syfy” is extensible too, in its way, although not in a way most people would want. So, yes, this is a problem. Glad it’s not my problem.

To be honest, however, the incipient “Syfy” branding doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the new brand’s tagline: “Imagine Greater.” I mean: really? “Imagine Greater”? What, were complete sentences too dear down at the marketing shop? I know there’s a recession on, but maybe they could have checked in the couch cushions for loose change. Or if they were simply intending to break grammar into pieces, for jazzy, kicky effect, why not go all the way? “Imagine Greater” is settling for the bronze when “Imaginate Greatably” is within one’s grasp. And, hey, it’s brand extendable.

Read the whole post, and the comments, too.

Hat tip to attentive reader Wes Phillips, who writes a pretty cool blog himself.

Deprecating Remarks

So I was skimming TechCrunch—my go-to news source for next-generation technology and bad brand names—when I encountered this sentence, set off from the rest of the story:

We are announcing the deprecation of the Alexa Site Thumbnail service as of March 13, 2009. After this date, the service will be closed to new subscriptions.

I had to read it twice to be sure the word was in fact deprecation and not depreciation or depredation¹. I was still confused. Sure, I've deprecated plenty of programs and Internet services, usually by saying something like "What a worthless piece of crap!" On rare occasions, I've been commended for my self-deprecating wit. But I've never announced a deprecation.

The context cleared things up: "Amazon Web Services is discontinuing the Alexa Site Thumbnail service, which has been providing developers with programmatic access to millions of thumbnail images for the home pages of web sites that were stored in Alexa’s index since July 2006."

Aha! Deprecate can mean discontinue if you're talking about software.

Here's the primary definition of deprecate (from American Heritage Dictionary), the only definition I knew prior to yesterday:

tr.v. de·pre·cat·ed, de·pre·cat·ing, de·pre·cates

1. To express disapproval of; deplore.

2. To belittle; depreciate.

[Latin dprecr, dprect-, to ward off by prayer : d-, de- + precr, to pray; see prek- in Indo-European roots.]

And here's what Wikipedia says about software deprecation:

[F]or a standards document to state that a feature is deprecated is merely a recommendation against using it. This can be contrasted with the word obsolete, which means specifically that the feature has been superseded by a newer version.

The Wikipedia entry also points to "orphaned technology" and—I love this one—"abandonware."

I scurried over to Mike Pope's Blog for backup. Mike's a technical writer who also crafts intelligent prose for non-techies, and I was hoping that he'd devoted at least part of a post to this odd term. But although Mike has used the technical version of deprecate (e.g., "various versions of the offending deprecated items"), he hasn't seen fit to define or discuss it.

I like expanding my vocabulary, but this discovery made me feel sorta obsoleted. Or deprecated. But that's how it goes in technology: one day you're the new new thing, the next day you're abandonware.

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¹ Depredation—a predatory attack or raid—seemed almost appropriate here.

Introducing Balance Point Funding

I'm pleased to announce the launch of Balance Point Divorce Funding, whose name and tagline were developed by my consulting business, Wordworking.

Balance Point Divorce Funding was created to change the way divorces are fought and resolved, especially when one partner has more financial resources than the other. (The threshold net worth for Balance Point clients is $2 million.) Early in the naming process, founder Stacey Napp described her company as "a general contractor for the divorce process—we make sure everything gets done on time and properly." The company provides funding for attorneys', forensic accountants', and investigators' fees as well as for living expenses.

We started the naming process by asking questions about the scope of the new business and the story it needed to tell. It was clear from the outset that certain words and concepts were off limits. Although Ms. Napp is a lawyer, it was important that neither the name nor the tagline suggest that Balance Point provides legal advice. Similarly, we had to steer clear of any connotation of "loans" or "banking." Also ruled out was the suggestion of "getting even" or "getting what's coming to you."

We also developed a list of desirable concepts. High on that list were wisdom, authority, support, solutions, clarity, and—above all—fairness.

From a master list of more than 200 names we selected 10 for presentation to the client, who whittled down the list to four for comprehensive trademark review. Balance Point emerged as the strongest contender: not only did it lack competitors in its trademark class, but it also evoked a clear, positive image. "Balance," of course, suggests fairness and equity as well as a bank balance; "point" conveys a point in time (which in turn conveys a sense of urgency), a decimal point (suggesting money), and point-by-point attention to detail. "Balance point" also communicates physical equilibrium. (It's a term frequently used in Pilates technique, for example.)

Once the name was selected and submitted to the U.S.P.T.O., I began work on the tagline. The eventual solution—Comprehensive Resources. Equitable Outcomes—supports the name and suggests the company's scope without being overliteral.

I also consulted on domain registration. Our first choice, BalancePoint.com, was taken (by a very enigmatic entity), but fortunately the client was open to other solutions. BalancePointFunding.com was both appropriate and available.

My teammate in the creative phase of name development was the prolific and savvy Mark Gunnion. Trademark lawyer Jessica Stone Levy did the trademark review and filing. Mark Landkamer of Landkamer Partners designed the logo and website, and Deb Doyle of Stage 2 Marketing provided marketing strategy and web content.

Read about some of my past naming projects: Abound Logic, Sauté Your Way, Amia, BrightScale, TRIA, and New Routes To Community Health.

Name of the Year Brackets Announced!

March Madness has begun, but I'm not talking about college basketball. No, it's the annual insanity that is Name of the Year that has me studying brackets and placing side bets. Go here to read about the tournament and here to see the ballot.

As in the past, there will undoubtedly be some white-knuckle moments. I predict a sudden-death match between Chastity Clapp and Crystal Metheny in the Bulltron Regional, and a very close race between Moonlit Wang and Brooklyn Pope in the Chrotchtangle [sic] Regional. But I'm sure Uranus Golden, Nutritious Love, and Telephone Mtoko have their devoted fans as well.

The ballot went up at 12:01 a.m. (EDT) today, and already Nancy's Baby Names has picked a final four. How about you?

About NOTY:

Name of the Year was founded in 1983 on an Ivy League campus. Its mission has remained unchanged: to discover, verify, nominate, elect and disseminate great names. All names included here are, to the best of our knowledge, real. No malice is intended.