Fritinancy

How Chitika Got Its Name

A couple of weeks ago, commenter Ben Trawick-Smith* asked why the name of tech company Chitika is pronounced CHIT-ika instead of the more predictable (in some languages) chi-TIK-a.

Good question, Ben. It turns out there’s a good answer. Well, good-ish.

First, here’s what Chitika says about itself:

Founded in 2003, Chitika (pronounced CHIH-tih-ka), is a full-service on-line advertising network serving over 3 billion monthly impressions across more than 100,000 websites.

(N.B: Any company name that requires a pronunciation guide has a couple of strikes against it from the get-go.)

Chitika’s offices are in Westborough, Massachusetts, but the company name comes from another continent. Again, from the About Us page:

What does Chitika mean? When Chitika co-founders, Venkat Kolluri and Alden DoRosario left Lycos in 2003 to start their own company, they sought a name that would suggest the speed with which its customers would be able to put up ads on their Web sites. Chitika, which means “snap of the fingers” in Telugu (a South Indian language), captured this sentiment and Chitika Inc. was born.

Difficult as it is to refrain from Chitika-Chitika-Bang-Bang jokes, I shall do so. I’ll also refrain from observing what happens when you make a small change in the first syllable of the name. Instead, I’ll point out that Chitika has a certain onomatopoetic quality—fast and snappy—and it can be fun to say. However, although Telugu has about 70 million speakers—that’s 2 million more than French—it’s unlikely that many of them are in Chitika’s target market, which means that for all intents and purposes “Chitika” is an empty-vessel name, with all the marketing challenges that burden any such name.

Chitika has other tsuris unrelated to its name. From a March 18 TechCrunch post:

Search-targeted advertising network Chitika reached a settlement this week with the Federal Trade Commission over illegally tracking consumers [sic] behavior online. According to the FTC, Chitika allowed users to opt out of having cookies placed on their browsers and receiving targeted ads, but unfortunately, Chitika’s opt-out only lasted 10 days. After this period, Chitika continued to track these consumers’ behavior on the web even though they opted out. This took place from at least May 2008 through February 2010, says the FTC. Chitika says this was an unintentional error in their tracking systems.

The post continues:

How much was it worth to Chikita to flaunt the privacy rules? Not much. Chitika tells us that it earned an estimated $0.55 from the users who requested to opt out but were tracked starting ten days after their request instead of ten years.

And yes, that’s an incorrect use of “flaunt”; the word that’s wanted here is “flout.”

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* Ben is the author of the excellent new Dialect Blog, “a place for hobbyists, actors, linguists and curiosity-seekers to learn about and discuss the dialects of the English language.”

When Your Company Name Is the Butt of a Joke

If life gives you analytical technology, should you turn it into Analtech?

Analtech—I can only hope it rhymes with “channel deck”—makes thin-layer chromatography plates that are used in laboratories and have been featured on CSI: Las Vegas. Yes, they’ve developed a sense of humor about the name. And yes, they’re thinking about changing it.

Here’s the story:

The company was founded in 1961 as Custom Service Chemicals.

In 1964, the company paid a marketing firm (that shall remain nameless) to come up with a different name. They said, “Well, you guys do Analytical Technology - why don't you put the two words together and call it ‘Analtech’!”

And, here we are, nearly 50 years later - with the same name.

Nearly 50 years later, I bet those marketing guys are still giggling over the fast one they pulled.

On the other hand, maybe “Analtech” is an, um, asset. The company talked with “some experts in the field of marketing, branding, etc.” and heard this “general consensus”:

1. Analtech is a brand name known and trusted by the academic and science communities worldwide
2. Under normal circumstances, such a branding after nearly 50 years would be considered a huge success
3. Analtech faces certain challenges because of the "juvenile" humor that has developed in the past few decades and current web filters that may block the company name.

Sounds like a split decision. What do you say? Take a two-question survey (scroll down for the link) and help Analtech determine its future.

My own vote? I can’t get past this association.

 

 No, it does not look good on paper.

 

Thanks to reader Gene for the Analtech survey link. And thanks to Twitter pal Dustbury for this fundamental question:

 

Names in My Kitchen: Zutto

My coffeemaker broke. It was a no-name freebie, a long-ago inducement to buy Gevalia coffee. (I bought just enough coffee to get the coffeemaker, then quit the subscription program. Sorry, Gevalia.) I was reduced to consuming my emergency supply of Starbucks Via, which I’d been saving for the Big One.

I needed a replacement, stat.

I didn’t want a French press: I’d tried one and disliked the results (lukewarm, gritty). I didn’t want a cappuccino-espresso maker. I didn’t want one of those trendy single-serve K-cup models, which strike me as absurdly wasteful, especially if you want a little bit more than a single cup every morning. I didn’t want a 15-cup behemoth suitable for a medium-size office.

I wanted something compact, efficient, effective, and not too expensive.

One of my Twitter pals recommended a Braun four-cup model, but it seems to have been discontinued. Someone else recommended Technivorm, a Dutch brand I was tempted to buy on the basis of its name alone, but the smallest model costs $280, which is about four times more than I was willing to part with.

So I asked Amazon to suggest a four- or five-cup automatic coffeemaker with high marks from reviewers. And Amazon replied: “Zutto.”

I was intrigued. I’d never heard of Zutto, but I was charmed by the name. (I’ll get back to the name in a minute.) A little research revealed that the appliance’s Japanese manufacturer, Zojirushi*, was founded in 1918, which reassured me. Amazon gave the model I was considering, the EC-DAC50**, a solid four-star rating based on 124 reviews. Zojirushi also makes the much better-known Air Pot push-top beverage dispenser. And—whaddya know!—Zojirushi America Corporation is right down the road in Union City, California, in case I ever needed parts or service.

I’ll cut to the happy ending: I received my Zutto coffeemaker two days after I placed the order, immediately set it up, admired its handsome looks, and made a test pot. Excellent. Even with $7.99-a-pound Trader Joe’s coffee.

My new Zutto EC-DAC50.

But you didn’t come here for a coffee review. You came here to find out why the Zutto name works so well.

Word of the Week: Gazar

Gazar: A stiff silk fabric, sometimes described as four-ply silk organza. Rhymes with “bazaar.”

Gazar fabric was developed and named by Abraham Ltd., a Swiss company founded in 1878. In the 1940s, Gustav Zumsteg—who had started working at the company as an apprentice—became Abraham’s director. Zumsteg cultivated the stars of Paris haute couture, including the Spanish-born Cristóbal Balenciaga (1895-1972). It was for Balenciaga that Abraham developed gazar, which the couturier transformed into dramatic sculptural designs like this one:

 

 

Balanciaga “cocoon” dress, 1967. The dress is silk crepe; the “chou” wrap—“chou” is French for “cabbage”—is silk gazar. The design demonstrates why Balenciaga was called “the Picasso of fashion.” Photo from Threads magazine.

Merriam-Webster online gives 1967 as the “first known use” of gazar, but doesn’t provide a citation or etymology. However, according to the official Balenciaga website, Abraham created the fabric in 1958, and Balenciaga was using it at least as early as 1962; see, for example, this gown.

The American Heritage Dictionary provides a definition (“a loosely woven silk with a crisp finish”) but no citations; it says the word is “probably from ultimately from Arabic qazz, raw silk; see gauze.” “Gauze” came into English from French in the 1560s; the Online Etymology Dictionary says it’s “conjectured” to come either from Arabic gazz (a differently transliterated qazz) or from Gaza, the Palestinian city that was once associated with gauze production.¹

“Gazar” does not appear in the OED or in the US trademark database.²

I’m a fan of fashion and fabric history—at one time I sewed most of my wardrobe—and I’d heard of gazar fabric. But I hadn’t realized that it had been invented a mere half-century ago³ until I went to the opening last week of the magnificent “Balenciaga and Spain” exhibit at the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. Guest-curated by Hamish Bowles, Vogue’s European editor-at-large (and underwritten in large part by Google, which surprised me), the show includes 120 Balenciaga garments, hats, and headdresses presented in the context of Spanish cultural themes such as religion, flamenco, and the bullfight. The exhibition continues through July 4; here’s a review from Art Daily.

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¹ Many fabrics are named after their original production sites: denim (de Nîmes, France), calico (Calicut, India), cashmere (Kashmir, India/Pakistan), jersey (Isle of Jersey), etc.

² For the record, according to Wookieepedia, the source for all things Star Wars, a gazar may also be a sentient arboreal creature native to Veron. In Egypt, Gazar is a “diversified lifestyle application” for mobile devices.

³ Silk fabric was originally developed in China around 2700 BCE and remained a closely guarded secret for 3,000 years.

If the Name of the Shoe Fits

From “Sole Mate,” Lauren Collins’s profile of French shoe designer Christian Louboutin, in the March 28 issue of the New Yorker:

Self-serious monochrome people are not Louboutin’s target audience. (Shawna Rose, his head of communications in New York, refers to them as “the black-and-camels.”) He gives his designs onomatopoetic names, like Toutenkaboucle, or raunchy ones, like Zigounette (“tiny dick”). Once, he made the straps of a sandal out of tape measures. Another time, he put pockets all over a boot, like a safari jacket, and called it CNN Girl.

Online access to the full text of the article is restricted to subscribers, but the paper-and-ink version is available on newsstands now.

UPDATE: Commenter Amy asked how “Toutenkaboucle” could be onomatopoetic. Here’s what the shoe looks like:

The heel is 6" high; the platform is 1.5".

Unless those buckles go jingle-jangle, I’m skeptical about the name being onamatopoetic. It’s more likely a portmanteau of Tutankhamun (as in King Tut, although the reference is admittedly tenuous) and “buckle.” The name is definitely fun to say, but it didn’t help move product: the shoe is marked down to $156.99—a pittance, Louboutin-wise—here.

Names in the News

Why is the Libyan military operation called “Odyssey Dawn”? Josh Dzieza explains in The Daily Beast that the names of military operations are governed by regulations that dictate their length (two words), their tone (they can’t “express a degree of hostility inconsistent with traditional American ideals or current foreign policy”), and their legality (no commercial trademarks). Dzieza points out that the war formerly known as Operation Iraqi Freedom has since last year been called Operation New Dawn (I wrote about that name change here), and he interviews linguist Geoffrey Nunberg and two namers from Landor Associates for their perspectives. (Via @wayword.) (Read my other posts about military jargon and naming practices, including the rather popular “Beyond Snafu and Fubar.”)

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More Odyssey Dawn: Wired.com quotes a US Defense Department spokesman who says the name is “just the product of the Pentagon’s semi-random name-generation system.” The US Africa Command, or Africom, was given three sets of words it could begin the name with; the words begin “between the letters JF-JZ, NS-NZ and OA-OF, and those three groups give about 60 some odd words,” the spokesman said. Read more at “What’s in a Name? ‘Odyssey Dawn’ Is Pentagon-Crafted Nonsense.”

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Zeum, the children’s art and technology museum in San Francisco, will change its name later this year to Children’s Creativity Museum. When Zeum opened in 1998, it aimed for tech-y hipness, starting with the name, a truncation of “museum.” But according to a San Francisco Chronicle story, the clever name was an obstacle. “Research showed folks outside the tech circles just didn’t know what it meant,” said the museum’s executive director, Audrey Yamamoto. “My parents still don't know how to pronounce Zeum. They always say Zoom,” said Stanley Lin, a local high school senior who’s an intern at the museum. The new name, logo, and exhibit plan were all developed by local agencies that donated their time; the blandly descriptive name was contributed by business-consulting firm Bain & Company, not generally known for its verbal-branding work.

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The Coen brothers’ film-production company, Mike Zoss Productions, is named after Mike Zoss Drugs in Minneapolis, where the brothers liked to hang out when they were kids. The Farrelly brothers say they don’t know why they named their production company Conundrum Entertainment: “It’s a real head-scratcher.” Those and 32 other explanations of how production companies got their names are in the March issue of Vanity Fair. The story is titled “What’s in a Name?” because, as we have seen, that is the only permissible title for stories about names and naming.

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NZT—the fake productivity-enhancing drug taken by Bradley Cooper’s character in the new thriller Limitless—is shorthand for the equally fake yet very scientific-sounding thallanylzirconio-methyl-tetrahydro-triazatriphenylene. According the TheClearPill.com, an authoritative-looking website that launched last December to generate interest in the movie:

NZT is a nitrogen-based psychotropic that impacts specific brain activity in several ways but most significantly by elevating receptivity and synaptic sharing between the hippocampus, the amygdale [sic] and the striatum.  In controlled doses, taken over the course of a relatively short period of time, NZT significantly improves both short-term and long-term memory, memory capacity, and the analytical purposing of memory.  Because it also impacts the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, NZT can improve higher brain function, hand-eye coordination, muscle memory and even the body’s immune system.  In some people, NZT can even induce lucid dreaming and what is sometimes called ‘fugue state’.

NZT is “not recommended for vegans.”

(Speaking of The Clear Pill, “Clear” is used in Scientology to refer to a desirable state on the road to personal salvation. According to Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, “becoming Clear strengthens a person’s native individuality and creativity.”)

Mushy Stuff

MushRex? Isn’t that what you say to a sled dog?

 

I guess not. According to the manufacturer, it’s called MushRex because it’s an “immune-supportive mushroom complex” that contains

a patented, micronized mushroom heteropolysaccharide complex derived from: Lentinula edodes, Grifola frondosa, Coriolus versicolor, Agaricus blazei, Ganoderma lucidum, and Cordyceps sinensis, plus six full-spectrum organic mushroom species, consisting of the primodia, mycelia and fruiting bodies, along with their naturally-occurring bio-active extracellular compounds.

I have no idea how ingesting all those ’shrooms would do a body good. I do know, however, that there appears to be no enticing way to incorporate “mushroom” into a product name. (See my previous posts on Chocorooms and Mega-Mushroom Skin Relief Advanced Face Serum.) Why don’t these companies opt instead for word blends that use myco- (from the Greek word for “fungus”)? It’s elegant, it’s accurate, and it even has “my” in it.

Please, though: no Fungals.

 

These underpants for girls from Fruit of the Loom have already been nominated for Worst Product Name Ever. As a commenter on the tywkiwdbi blog pointed out, the boys’ equivalent should really be called FunGi. (Thanks to one of my own commenters, Stan, for sharing that info.) 

“Los Doyers”—Cheers or Jeers?

I’m the guest blogger today at Duets Blog, whose beat is trademark law and marketing. In honor of béisbol season, which opens next week, my subject is “Los Doyers,” an affectionate name for the L.A. Dodgers used by many native speakers of Spanish. When the Dodgers pursued trademark protection for the name last year, some fans cried “exploitation,” pointing to the $30 price tag on “Los Doyers” T-shirts sold at Dodger Stadium. Other observers cheered what they saw as an acknowledgment of the team’s many Spanish-speaking fans.

Read all about it—and about the telenovela-worthy story behind the scenes—at Duets Blog.

Word of the Week: FOMO

FOMO: Fear Of Missing Out. A “debilitating psychological condition . . . most commonly characterised by a subject’s obsessive, distressing, intrusive thoughts about whether somebody, somewhere else, might be having a better time than they are.” (Definition by way of the I Suffer from F.O.M.O. Facebook group, which has 494 members.)

Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr and Hunch, wrote about FOMO on her blog last week, while South by Southwest Interactive (SXSW) was taking place in Austin:

FOMO is a great motivator of human behavior, and I think a crucial key to understanding social software, and why it works the way it does. Many people have studied the game mechanics that keep people collecting things (points, trophies, check-ins, mayorships, kudos). Others have studied how the neurochemistry that keeps us checking Facebook every five minutes is similar to the neurochemistry fueling addiction. Social media has made us even more aware of the things we are missing out on. You’re home alone, but watching your friends [sic] status updates tell of a great party happening somewhere. You are aware of more parties than ever before. And, like gym memberships, adding Bergman movies to your Netflix queue and piling up unread copies of the New Yorker, watching these feeds gives you a sense that you’re participating, not missing out, even when you are.

FOMO first appeared in Urban Dictionary on October 2, 2006. An April 9, 2007, article in BusinessWeek, “Today’s Students: Living Large,” introduced the acronym to a different audience:

An epidemic has hit America’s top MBA programs. At Harvard Business School, it’s called FOMO: fear of missing out. Symptoms include a chronic inability to turn down invitations to any party, dinner, or junket attended by anyone who might be a valuable addition to one’s network—no matter the cost.

With their incomes about to get a big boost at graduation, many students are spending far more than absolutely necessary, in part on luxuries like leisure travel and in part on networking events. Nobody wants to quibble over the costs when they're partying with folks who may advance their career.

The article was published before the current recession; students—and the rest of us—may not be living quite as large these days, but FOMO can still be a powerful motivator (or affliction).

An Australian travel company, STA Travel, uses FOMO in a tongue-in-cheek sales pitch and contest:

Tell us the last time you had travel FOMO for your chance to WIN the trip you missed!

FoMo may also stand for Former Mormon. Fomo is the name of a company that sells products made from low-pressure polyurethane foam.

Note: FOMO should not be confused with MoFo, which is the abbreviation and Web address of a large law firm. And also something else.

Etymology Isn’t Enough: The Aegis Problem

One of the underwriters of my local public-radio station is Aegis Living, which operates “residential communities” for old folks in California, Nevada, and Washington. “Aegis”—which should be pronounced with a long E in the first syllable—has an appropriate meaning for this company: protection, sponsorship, guidance. The word comes from Greek aigis, meaning “goatskin”; in Greek myth, the shields of Athena and Zeus were made of goatskin. In contemporary English, we usually encounter “aegis” in a phrase like “under the aegis of.”

Great story, right?

Here’s the problem: Every time the morning radio announcer acknowledges Aegis, he mispronounces the word so that it sounds almost exactly like “ageist.”

Ouch.

That’s not just a mispronunciation; it’s a miscommunication. I’m sure Aegis would no more want to be associated with the negative connotations of ageism than it would choose to name a new residential community “Elder Abuse Lodge.”

I always encourage my clients to choose names with positive etymologies and good stories. But etymology and story aren’t enough: Names also need to be memorable and pronounceable. And a foreign-looking, relatively obscure word like “aegis” is almost guaranteed to confuse some readers and speakers, even well-educated public-radio announcers.

If a common mispronunciation can contradict your brand message, please think beyond etymology and story and choose a name that sounds right.