The Shadow of Hiscox

I don’t know how to put this delicately: I’m being followed by Hiscox.

Whose cox? you may well ask. (Also: plural?)

Allow me to explain.

I first noticed an ad for Hiscox on LinkedIn a couple of weeks ago. I’d never heard of the company, so I clicked on the ad to check out the Hiscox website. In no time at all, thanks to the miracle of retargeting, I began seeing Hiscox everywhere. On retail sites. On Slate. On the New York Times home page.

What sort of business is Hiscox in? “Specialist insurance and reinsurance for businesses and individuals with unusual and often complicated insurance needs.” The company is traded on the London Stock Exchange  but incorporated and headquartered in Bermuda. It operates in 11 countries. Big-time, serious stuff.

So why was I giggling?

 

 

Well, wouldn’t you?

I’ll try to keep a straight face just long enough to explain that Hiscox is the surname of the company’s founder, Ralph Hiscox, and of its current president, the splendidly named Robert Ralph Scrymgeour Hiscox. It’s a very old surname, if this genealogy site is to be trusted (and it pays to be skeptical about most online genealogy sites)—as in Norman Conquest old. It’s derived, I learned, from Hitch, “a pet form of the name Richard,” and cock, “a medieval form of endearment” (hmm).

To sum up: a variation on Dick Cocks.

Oh, and “Scrymgeour”? It’s pronounced skrɪm-dʒər, according to this site. Wikipedia says the name is “believed to derive from the Old English word ‘skrymsher’ which means ‘swordsman’.”

Swordsman Hiscox. Ladies and gentlemen, I could not make this stuff up.

And it only gets better, at least if your brain works the way mine does.

Let’s take a stroll through the elegantly designed Hiscox website.

On the top menu: Hiscox in your country. (In my what, sir?)

Under “About Hiscox” (say it aloud; it sounds like a cover line from Cosmo): Hiscox in action. (In action!)

Here’s an ad for Hiscox.

I apologize if seeing “Hiscox” and “organ grinders” in the same ad makes you twitch.

And here’s another ad.

Ever felt like you’re missing … Hiscox?

Hiscox insures art, and Hiscox collects art. Here’s the very first image displayed on the HiscoxCollection mini-site.

“For His Own Good,” by Abigail Lane, 1996. Don’t tread on Hiscox.

Is there a tongue-in-cheekiness about all of this? It’s certainly possible. Englishmen in the noonday Bermuda sun, et cetera. After all, as we’ve seen, when your company name is the butt of a joke, you may as well have a good laugh yourself.

In Hiscox’s case, all the way to the bank.

Comments

[Patrick Neylan]

Hiscox is quite well known around here (London), where we still sometimes use "cock" as a term of endearment. Its (ahem) 'other' meaning prevents anyone using it for a female friend. It's almost aggressively informal.

[Amy Reynaldo]

At least it lends itself to ribald wordplay. Not so for the folks who run the Badcock furniture chain in the Southeast U.S.

[Diana Landau]

We employ only organ grinders?

Lovely, anyway. Plus, who wouldn't envy someone whose name included Scrymgeour? Minor footnote: Scrimgeour is the now-deceased Minister of Magic in the latter Potter books, played on screen by the ineffable Bill Nighy.

[Nancy Davis Kho]

Funny, on the same day you post this I am being entertained by a post and comments on The Mouthy Housewives, about racist vaginas in marketing campaigns ((http://www.mouthyhousewives.com/wtf/mouthing-off-the-racist-vaginas). It's all below the belt today.

The dog in the muzzle is extra creepy, by the way.