Fritinancy

How BAM Architecture Studio Got Its Name

From a New York Times Q&A with Adam Ross Cole, a co-founder of BAM Architecture Studio in New York:

Q. What does BAM stand for?

A. That’s a good question. People have asked us that, and over the years we’ve tried to re-engineer it: maybe it stands for Better Architectural Methods. But it wasn’t where the name came from. We tend to do more complex, sophisticated projects, where there’s a lot of intricate thought required for the design aspect. So the idea was: Bam! What’s the big idea? So that’s where the name came from.

Hmm. I’d say that “Bam!” suggests the opposite of “complex, sophisticated projects” requiring “a lot of intricate thought.”

Names in the News: Summly

Congratulations to Nick D’Aloisio, the 17-year-old British programmer who this week sold his news-reader app for iPhone, Summly, to Yahoo for a reported $30 million. He invented the app when he was just 15.

 

 

It’s quite a business coup, and no surprise that the story made the front page of the New York Times.

Alas, the “Summly” name breaks no new ground at all. It may have been coined to suggest “summarize,” but it has an ambiguous sound (some? sum?) and a trite construction. Summly is the 147th pseudo-adverbial -ly name I’ve pinned on my Names That End in -ly Pinterest board.

Word of the Week: Wudu

Wudu: In Islam, the ritual washing of the face, hands, and other body parts in preparation for prayers. Wudu comes from Arabic al-wuḍūʼ; the closest English equivalent is ablution, although the latter word can also be used in non-religious contexts.

Wudu showed up in the news last week in obituaries for the Polish chemist and entrepreneur Wojciech Inglot, who died February 23 in Przemysl, Poland. He was 57.

Inglot had founded Inglot Cosmetics in 1983; in 2009, the company introduced O2M, a nail polish said to promote nail health by allowing oxygen (O2) and moisture (M) to pass through it. The polish – made from “a polymer similar to that in the newest generation of contact lenses,” according to a story in USA Today – sold poorly because of its high retail cost ($14 a bottle).

From the New York Times obituary:

Then last fall, a Muslim cleric and academic in Southern California who was working on a book about purification and prayer learned that some Muslim women were trying to determine whether O2M’s porous properties might make it acceptable for wearing during prayer. Muslim women who wear nail polish often remove it as part of a ritual, called wudu, that involves washing with water before daily prayers.

After the cleric published an article saying O2M was “good news” for devout Muslim women, “a craze” built up around the brand, USA Today reported:

Though the Muslim holy book, the Quran, does not specifically address the issue of nail polish, some Islamic scholars have said that water must touch the surface of the nail for the washing ritual to be done correctly.

Some Muslim women might put nail polish on after finishing the last prayer of the day before going out, and then take it off again before dawn prayers. They can also wear it during their periods, when they are excused from the prayers, but some find it embarrassing to do so because it could signal they are menstruating. Some simply don’t want to take the trouble of getting a manicure that won't last long.

The late success of O2M caught Inglot by surprise, USA Today reported:

“I don't think there is a single Muslim living here,” Inglot said in an interview with The Associated Press nine days before his death at his factory in Przemysl, near the border with Ukraine. “We didn't even think about this.”

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When I read the obituaries, I was struck by the similarity between Inglot’s surname and the French word for nail, ongle. A coincidence, to be sure, but an apt one.

The Whom Front

I’m so used to seeing whom (and whomever) used incorrectly that this correct usage – in a newspaper ad! – actually startled me.

American Technion Society, Page A19, New York Times, Nov. 30, 2012

The woman in the photo may appear to be thanking a sky deity, but the copy provides a different answer to the headline’s question: “Thank the Technion.”

The grammatical correctness of “Whom Do We Thank for Iron Dome?” is unimpeachable: whom is the object of thank. But I can’t help thinking it’s a little too correct — stilted, even – given the context.

Iron Dome, in case you haven’t been following the latest Israeli-Palestinian troubles (and who could blame you for tuning out?), is the defensive anti-missile system developed in large part by graduates of Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, with American backing. According to the American Technion Society’s website, Iron Dome “saved countless lives on both sides” in the recent Israel-Gaza conflict. (The James Bond-ish name “Iron Dome” is a beefed-up translation of the Hebrew kipat barzel, or “iron cap”; kipa can also mean “yarmulke.” The English term carries echoes, intentionally or not, of Dome of the Rock, the Muslim shrine in Jerusalem.)

Iron Dome performed better than expected, according to Israeli defense spokesmen, but it’s expensive: each Iron Dome missile costs $50,000. And the rockets it’s designed to intercept, writes Dan Ephron in The Daily Beast, “are manufactured in Gaza at a fraction of the price—sometimes for just a few hundred dollars.”

And while “countless lives” may have been saved, many other lives were lost. Advanced technology or no, war is still hell.

Which is why, even though I acknowledge the correctness of whom in the ad, I think it’s lipstick on a pig. I’d have recast the headline to avoid fussy points of grammar. And while I was at it, I’d have changed the question to a declarative statement.

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Additional reading: Is whom obsolete?

How Twinkies Got Its Name

Hostess Brands Inc., the 82-year-old snack-foods company based in Irving, Texas, announced today that it will close its plants and fire all 18,000 of its workers. The company had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January. The corporate website says the company “was forced by a Bakers Union strike” to shut down. The union says the claim is false.

Hostess—founded in Missouri in 1930 as Interstate Bakeries Corporation—had been the largest wholesale baker and distributor of baked goods in the United States. Its many brands included Wonder Bread, Dolly Madison, Ho Hos, Sno Balls, Ding Dongs, and Colombo, but the company’s most famous product name may have been Twinkies, the “golden sponge cake with creamy filling” with a seemingly limitless shelf life.

Why was it called “Twinkies”? Serendipity.

 

Via Chicago Tribune.

According to a Chicago Tribune story, the first Twinkies “bounced out of the ovens at Continental Baking Co.” in River Forest, Illinois, in 1930:

Plant manager James Dewar was looking to create a cheap, two-for-a nickel snack. So he grabbed some shortcake pans and got cookin’. Dewar got the name from a billboard for Twinkle Toe Shoes. He shortened it to Twinkies, and the rest is snack food history.

That history took a grim turn during the 1979 trial of Dan White, the San Francisco supervisor who assassinated Mayor George Moscone and a fellow supervisor, Harvey Milk. White’s defense lawyers argued that their client’s mental capacity had been damaged by his excessive consumption of junk food. No specific food product was ever mentioned in the courtroom, but reporters coined “Twinkie defense” as shorthand for the argument. The term survives “as a derisive term for an improbable legal defense” (Wikipedia).

The sausage-shaped character on the Twinkies package has a name: Twinkie the Kid. A registered trademark since 1971, it was used in commercials and in collectible products, which are probably going to become a little more collectible.

Today’s Chicago Tribune has a slide show of 15 “iconic” Hostess products, including Holsum bread, which at one point used this dandy slogan:

“If you had a million dollars you couldn’t buy better bread.”

According to a Wikipedia entry, “Holsum” was used by many retail bakeries in the early 20th century, when whimsical phonetic brand spellings were all the rage. (See my August 2011 Visual Thesaurus column, “Phood for Thought,” for more examples.) In 1908, the W.E. Long Company of Chicago acquired exclusive rights to the name. Holsum bread is still sold; its mascot, Mr. Slice, was created in 1976.

UPDATE: At Duets Blog, trademark lawyer Dan Kelly considers the post-dissolution fate of Hostess Brand’s many marks.

Names in the News

Officials in Incheon, the city in South Korea, announced plans this week to transform a small fishing island off the country’s west coast into a gambling and tourism center. According to a report in the Washington Post, the project will be called EIGHTCITY – Bloomberg News reported a different spelling, “8-City” – and will be built in the shape of the number 8, which has connotations of good fortune in several Asian cultures.

Read my previous post about the significance of the number eight.

(Hat tip: Benjamin Lukoff on ANS-L.)

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California’s new health-insurance exchange, formed in compliance with the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), won’t be called Avocado after all. Instead, the five-member exchange picked a safe choice, Covered California, the Los Angeles Times reported this week. (The tentative tagline is equally bland: “Your destination for affordable healthcare.”) The stated rationale for the name is on shaky grammatical ground: “Covered is an action verb, and if we do our job, that’s what we want to happen,” exchange-board member Robert Ross told the Times. Actually, in this construction “covered” is an adjective.

Other rejected names included Eureka (the state motto) and Ursa (a Latin word for bear, in honor of the state animal).

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The cable company Comcast, which already owns faster, has applied for trademark protection for UPWARE. According to the industry publication Fierce Cable, the name would be used to market software as a service (SaaS). I suspect many Comcast customers are already using UPYOURS.

(Hat tip: MJF.)

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Two things I learned from a Daily Candy email this week: that there is a salon in San Francisco called Lonni’s Punani, and that the salon employs “body hair stylists,” a job title that was new to me. Lonni is the first name of the salon’s owner; she’s originally from New Jersey. And “Punani”? “Not Lonni’s last name,” Daily Candy said coyly. Further research revealed that punani is a Hawaiian word meaning “heavenly flower” and a Pacific Islander slang term for “vagina” or “vulva.” 

You gotta admit that “Lonni’s Punani” sounds classier – and rhymier – than “Virginia’s Va-jay-jay.”

Names in the News

Four new names that caught my attention:

Mansion is the unapologetically 1 percent-ish name of the Wall Street Journal’s new weekly section devoted to “high-end property.” In a letter to WSJ subscribers, managing editor Robert Thomson said Mansion would be “the home of both aspiration and real-estate realization.” I look forward to the quarterly spin-off, Car Elevator.

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What the fut was Alaska Telecom thinking when it renamed itself Futaris? This, apparently: “Based on the word future, Futaris represents limitless possibilities and progress.” Funny, because when I look at this sad excuse for a logo, I see “futility.”

(Hat tip: @IgorNaming.)

UPDATE: Reader Dan Freiberg suggests that “this variation helps with pronunciation, and works better with the symbol.”

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Juniper is a new subscription service for women who don’t own calendars. Oh, sorry: it’s “a monthly care package” consisting of tampons (five brands are offered) and a collection of “gourmet sweets and artisan savory treats.” (Yes, it’s that word!) “Never panic shop again,” says the home-page copy. The price, however, may cause cramping: $28 a month. I couldn’t find a story behind the name—which is lovely in its nondescriptive way—but I’m wondering whether founder Lynn Tao, young as she appears to be, is a Donovan fan. Remember “Jennifer Juniper,” who “longs for what she lacks”?

UPDATE: Mystery solved (although I’m still fond of my own theory):

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I’m even more mystified by Tassafaronga Village, a mixed-income residential development in East Oakland that I learned about this week via a New York Times story. There’s no explanation of the name in the story or on the website of the architect, David Baker, so I tried to dig deeper. I learned that Tassafaronga Point, on Guadalcanal (Solomon Islands), was the site of several naval engagements between US and Japanese forces during World War II. But that wasn’t very helpful: the housing project is meant to heal a troubled neighborhood, so why name it after a bloody, 70-year-old series of battles? And why the Melanesian reference in Oakland, where Pacific Islanders make up less than 1 percent of the population?

It’s certainly a distinctive name, fun to say if a little challenging to spell. Here’s hoping someone who knows the whole story reads this post and leaves a comment that clears up the mystery.

UPDATE: It took less than half an hour to get an answer to my question about Tassafaronga. See comments below from Gene, proprietor of the excellent Our Oakland blog.

Good Idea, Bad Name

Stylish, contemporary clothing for women that isn’t bandage tight and cut up to here and down to there? Definitely a welcome concept. So hurrah for Zahra Aljabri and her new Minneapolis-based business.

But no cheers for the name: Mode-sty.

Yes, it’s hyphenated. Yes, that second syllable means an enclosure for pigs.*

It gets worse.

The NWBLK Is the New Black

Meet the meta-snowclone-ish name of the week: The New Black. As in “red is the new black.” Or “tartan is the new black.” Or “dispopulation is the new black.”

According to San Francisco magazine’s September issue, this particular New Black is

a 9,000-square-foot retail space and gallery slated to open in the Mission in September. The design trove will feature furniture, lighting, fashion, and accessories from over 20 firms, as well as collaborative workshop space for Steven Miller Design Studio, Figure Plant, Hazel.Wood Design Group, and Hart/Wright Architects.

(Their emphasis.)

And look!

 

They made the logo out of consonants only!

Because nobody’s ever done that before.

Bonus sighting:

“Pre-owned Is the New ‘New’”: advertisement in the New York Times, Page A5, September 3, 2012.

More on “X is the new Y” at the Snowclones Database.

Names in the News

Sunnyvale-based HP, which bought smartphone company Palm two years ago, is creating a new subsidiary that will incorporate the remnants of Palm, according to a leaked memo reproduced in All Things D and elsewhere. The new unit’s name is Gram, and its logo is … interesting.

The typography does suggest lightness. (Is the G a demi-butterfly?) It’s unclear whether the name is meant to evoke “grandmother,” “telegram,” “grammar,” or “Grammy award,” but I can think of a ready-made tagline, modified only slightly from Aldous Huxley’s original: “Gram is better than a damn.”

My 2009 post about the puzzling persistence of the Palm Pilot name is here.

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Alameda County’s first indoor miniature-golf course opens tomorrow. Its name will cause some double-takes:

It’s ironic, doncha know. From the Subpar FAQ:

We are aware that subpar usually implies something that is not quite up to snuff. This is us not taking ourselves too seriously. Being below par in golf is a positive thing, so the silly name works in our case. And only our case.

Hipster humor: sub-whelming.

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In Chicago, the Morse Avenue “L” station opened a couple of weeks ago after a six-week rehab. Best part of the coverage in Chicago Now is the news that a restaurant be opening near the station entrance. Its name is perfection itself: morseL.

(Photo via Chicago Now. Hat tip: Amy “Crossword Fiend” Reynaldo.)

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UK-based Shutl, which calls itself “the world’s fastest delivery service,” has offered the world’s fastest man, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, 1 percent of the company if he can help set a delivery record. Sweet deal, but isn’t “Shutl” the name of Tevye’s youngest daughter in Fiddler on the Roof? Shutl from the shtetl, they called her. Such a lovely girl.

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Three things you may not have known: 1) The Obama White House is the first in history to brew its own beer. It’s “unbelievably good,” according to White House assistant chef Sam Kass. 2) A petition at Whitehouse.gov calls on the administration to release the recipe “so that it may be enjoyed by all.” 3) My source for the story is the “blog of record about White House food initiatives, from policy to pie.” The blog has a delicious name: Obama Foodorama.