Fritinancy

May Linkfest

Newt Gingrich—remember when he ran for president and talked about building bases on the moon?—now appears to be campaigning for Andy Rooney’s old slot on “60 Minutes.” “We’re really puzzled,” he tells his YouTube audience, a look of grave concern furrowing his brow, a familiar-looking device in his hand. “We spent weeks [!] trying to figure out whaddya call this.” This is what you and I call a cell phone or a mobile phone or a smartphone, but that doesn’t satisfy Gingrich. He’s soliciting new, more precise names for the gizmo he used to call “a handheld computer.” Commenters have been gleefully obliging; my favorite nominations are Talkie-Viewie (maybe “TV” for short?), roundcorner-camera-communicati­ons-email-apps-thingy, iMoon, and horseless telephone. (Via TechCrunch.)

Meanwhile, linguist Geoffrey Pullum, posting at Language Log, has “an inkling of what moved Gingrich to embark on his piece of burbling.” It’s all about the naïve lexical global Whorfianism, obviously.

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I caught this a few days too late for Underwear Week but can’t resist sharing it anyway. Triumph, the Swiss bra company, last week introduced its concept bra of the year at a Tokyo press conference. The theme: “branomics,” “a playful take on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ‘three-arrow’ economic revival plan,” according to Reuters. “We hope that as the Japanese economy grows, we can also help bust sizes to get bigger,” said a Triumph spokeswoman. (Via The 3% Conference.)

Image via AdFreak. Note arrows.

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Merriam-Webster, the dictionary company, is having a photography contest for word lovers that looks like a lot of fun. Deadline for submissions: May 26. (Via Emily Brewster.)

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Speaking of photography, here’s a pop song dedicated to stock photo clichés: “groom on phone with angry wife,” “bearded man is looking grave,” “black and white handshake,” and many more. (Via Igor blog.)

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And speaking of photography and contests, GeoGuessr combines street-view photos with a test of your geographical knowledge. Challenging and addictive. (Via PopeHat.)

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Maps! I love ’em. And I especially love maps that combine geography, history, biography, and name lore, like this interactive map of San Francisco place names, developed by Noah Veltman.

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This advice from Baby Name Wizard about overcoming naming remorse works for company and product naming, too.

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Andris Pone of Coin Branding, in Toronto, applauds Frogbox, a “green” moving company in more than one sense. It’s a great brand story, Andris writes: “The Frogbox positioning statement, From one pad to another, exemplifies the message of ease by creating a promise (completely delivered on) that one can move from their old home to their new one with all the difficulty of a hop.”

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Here’s a nifty infographic on how corporate logos evolve.

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Corporate buzzword-wise, “delight” is shaping up to be the new “passion.” (Via MJF.)

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You’ll need to subscribe to Visual Thesaurus to read Mike Pope’s excellent column, “What’s in a -Nym?”, which goes beyond antonyms and synonyms to more obscure and fascinating terms like contranym, retronym, and backronym. But of course you’re already a subscriber.

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From Idibon, a language-data company: how to name a racehorse.

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Finally, in honor of the return of the cicadas to the eastern U.S., here’s a reprise of my plug for Cicada-licious: Cooking and Enjoying Periodical Cicadas, the cicada cookbook produced by the University of Maryland cicadamaniacs (their term). Yes, I have a well-documented fondness for -licious names.

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I also can’t resist an opportunity to combine entomology, etymology, and a plug for Fritinancy. As language maven Ben Zimmer—my editor at Visual Thesaurus—observed in an email to me:

I noticed that the first OED cite for “fritin(i)ancy” is from Sir Thomas Browne’s Pseudodoxia Epidemica, talking about cicadas. (In this edition, it’s actually “fritinnitus.”) Johnson defined “fritinancy” as “the scream of an insect, as the cricket or cicada” (citing Browne) and subsequent dictionaries used similar definitions. (Johnson didn’t define “cicada,” oddly enough.)

My original post about Fritinancy cited Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913), which mentioned crickets but not cicadas. The post was written before I had access to the OED online, a weak defense but the one I’m sticking with.

In other cicada news, linguist Arnold Zwicky has written about “swarmageddon” and “cicadapocalypse,” and science writer Carl Zimmer, brother of Ben, examined the remarkable life cycle of this long-lived insect. Carl Z’s editors at the Times consulted with Ben Z to come up with a pronunciation guide: “cicadas (usually pronounced sih-KAY-duhz).”

But, Ben told me, “there are plenty of people who pronounce it KAH, and many dictionaries give it as an acceptable alternate. I don’t have a good sense of the regional distribution of the two pronunciations, though.”

Perhaps Fritinancy’s readers can help.

Vowel Obstruction

It’s been two years since I first reported on the all-consonant naming trend. Since then we’ve seen a persistent consonantal drift in the names of fashion brands, restaurants, and retailers, often shouted out in ALL CAPS. Here are four additions to the list.

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BNJMN is “a paintbrush-wielding bot created by two students at the Basel Academy of Art and Design,” according to a story in Co.Design. The name is pronounced “Benjamin,” and I was surprised to learn it had no relation to the paint company Benjamin Moore (which does sell a product called ben—all lower case). I emailed the creators of BNJMN and asked them about the name; here’s Travis Purrington’s reply in full (the ellipses are his):

BNJMN’s name evolved with his construction and development...

During the beginning of the naming process we originally were brainstorming far and wide for clever acronyms (like everyone) or heavy tech names (THX 1138, etc).

But in the end BNJMN was a warm/inviting sounding name that seemed a nice contrast to his sleek hard-edged body

(plus it looked good on paper and was easy to pronounce without vowels)

It seemed like a good match to the personality of his programming once we got him up and running...so it stuck.

Simple, non-threatening, easy going, expressive...that's BNJMN.

Purrington did not say how many Benjamins BNJMN will set you back.

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Perfume is a distillation of essences, so I suppose it’s logical for a perfume name to eliminate a few letters. And HYLNDS (“Aromatic Epics”) does have a vocalized Y, so it isn’t a complete consonant brick.

Refinery29, a design/lifestyle site, reports that HYLNDS was inspired by “the rolling hills and dramatic history of ancient medieval cultures.” And yet the aromas of peat, goat, and sweat are strangely absent from the three HYLNDS fragrances, which go for $180 per 50ml bottle: they’re called Bitter Rose, Broken Spear (which smells of “smelted iron, bitter rose,” and “melancholy thistle”); Isle Ryder (“resinous Norway spruce and fir cones with narcotic jasmine, island wildflowers, honeyed mead and bulrush straw”); and Pale Grey Mountain, Small Black Lake, (“a chilling air of wood, water, stone, and shrubs”). Each fragrance has HYLNDS, MDLNDS, and LWLNDS notes. Do I need to tell you that the company behind HYLNDS is “an indie Brooklyn perfumer” and that the product can be found at “stockists,” that Britishism beloved of pretentious Yank hipsters? No, probably not.

Melancholy thistle, indeed.

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How to pronounce frrry? “Fry” with a lavishly trilled r? “Furry”?

No and no, according to the New York-based accessories e-tailer Roztayger:

The Frrry collection (pronounced ferry) is all about construction. Designed and made in The Netherlands using vegetable tanned Italian leather, creator Ferry Cornelis Gerardus Meewisse founded the line in 2002 after passing exams for 3D design at the Arnhem Academy of Arts.

Yes, that dangling phrase made me wince a little—Mr. Meewisse isn’t made of vegetable-tanned leather, as far as we know—but my bigger point is: ferry? Why not just spell it that way? “Ferry” would be an excellent name for handbags that ferry your stuff around. (In gorgeous style, I must add: this style is fabulous, and not too exorbitant, either.)

It only stands to reason that you can find frrry products at UNDSCVRD.

Via Girls of a Certain Age.

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Finally: PYMNTS. It’s “what’s next in payments,” especially if you are Eliza Doolittle.

Dead to the World

It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid-May, with the fog bearing down hard on the bay and a look of weary desperation on every shopper’s face. They were all looking for something, but I had a sneaking suspicion what they were looking for wasn’t hardboiled euphemism. Not on Floor 2, in Bedding. Not with a spa velour cover.

 

La-Z-Boy Big Sleep memory foam contour pillow at Bed Bath & Beyond. Discontinued, defunct, passed away, crossed the bar, picked up the harp, took its last rest.

 

“You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that, oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was.” – Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

 

The Big Sleep (Warner Bros., 1946).

Underwear Week: Commando

How can a brand name convey a specific benefit—in this case, underwear so smooth and sleek it’s almost like wearing no underwear at all—without resorting to descriptive terms (Vanishing Edge, Invisibles)? For one U.S. company, the solution came from Vietnam-era slang.

Commando is a brand of elastic-free women’s underwear and hosiery designed with smooth edges that don’t show under clothing. Founded in 2003 by husband-and-wife team Kerry O’Brien and Ed Biggins, the company is based in South Burlington, Vermont, far from major garment-industry capitals; products are made in the U.S. and sold at department stores and online.

 

“Commando” is an excellent example of a suggestive name—and by suggestive I mean not only the dictionary sense of “implying something slightly improper” (completely appropriate in this context) but also the trademark sense: “indirectly alluding to a quality of a product.” That’s because of commando’s metaphorical secondary meaning.

Commando first entered English in the late 18th century, a borrowing from Portuguese that originally referred to “an armed and mounted party of men” or the expedition undertaken by such a party. It wasn’t until World War II that the word referred to a single person—specifically, according to the OED, “a member of a body of picked men trained originally (in 1940) as shock troops for the repelling of the threatened German invasion of England, later for the carrying out of raids on the Continent and elsewhere.” Until 1942, “commando” was capitalized.

The underwear brand Commando isn’t about shock troops: it’s about “going commando,” a slang phrase first documented (again according to the OED) in 1974, in Current U.N.C. [University of North Carolina] Slang: “to wear no underpants (beneath one’s clothing).” “The origin of this use is obscure,” the dictionary notes; “the allusion appears to be to commandos’ reputation for action, toughness, or resourcefulness rather than to any specific practice.”

In 2005, Slate’s Explainer column attempted to get to the bottom of “go commando”:

When did the term “going commando” enter the civilian lexicon? The phrase dates back to at least the middle of the 20^th century, when Americans used it to mean “toughening up.” (That meaning persists to this day in some contexts.) The phrase’s more common connotation dates back to at least 1974, when it appeared in a source on college slang. The phrase “crotch rot" emerged during the same period: It first appeared in 1967. It's possible that “going commando” first poked its way into the public consciousness during the Vietnam War, when American special forces were spending extended periods in hot, wet jungle environments. The phrase got its big break in 1996, when Joey and Rachel went commando on an episode of Friends.

The pertinent dialogue:

Ross: Okay, now hold on. Joey, why can’t you just wear the underwear you’re wearing now?
Joey: Because, um, I’m not wearing any underwear now.
Ross: Okay, then why do you have to wear underwear tonight?
Joey: It’s a rented tux, Okay. I’m not gonna go commando in another man's fatigues.

As Joey’s line and the military history suggest, “to go commando” is traditionally associated with men; appropriating it for a women’s brand makes it that much more dramatic and memorable.

Commando is a popular trademark for many products other than underwear: I found records in the USPTO database for Commando padlocks, lubricants, auto parts, tires, coffee, beer, and jerky. I also discovered that Commando the underwear company—which to date has been a women-only brand—has filed for protection of “Commando Naked,” a men’s line.

Co-founder O’Brien says on the Commando website that the company’s products are “sometimes saucy” and “put the fun in functional.” Most of the product names, however, are descriptive: thong, high-rise panty, cami, half-slip, control brief. Nope, nary a cheekini in the lineup—although I admit the “Commando” brand name had me seeing the descriptive term tank in a new light. It’s in the “accessories” category that Commando lets its guerrilla flag fly.

The very first Commando product, in fact, was named Takeouts (“The Better Boob Job”). The “full-cup-boosting” silicone inserts—known generically as cutlets—cost $48 and are “grope tested,” it says here.

Other accessories with creative names include Low Beams (single-use nipple covers), Top Hats (reusable nipple covers), Matchsticks (double-stick tape for bra straps), Match Tips (double-stick adhesive dots), and Cleavage Cupcakes (“a perky plump-up for what nature already gave you”). The cheeky names are supported by playful copy that spins each metaphor for everything it’s worth.

By the way, Commando’s URL is WearCommando.com. Commando.com is a communications agency in Chicago. As I’ve said before, you don’t need a “pure” URL when you’ve got a plausible alternative and a strong brand story.

Bonus link: The 10 Commandments of Going Commando (“1. Thou Shalt Not Take a Yoga Class”).

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Previously on Underwear Week:

Cheekini

True & Co. and the MILFs

Underwear startups

Ginch Gonch

Underwear Week: Ginch Gonch

It’s Day Four of Underwear Week! Grab your passport and some loose loonies: we’re headed north of the border for today’s installment.

 

I stumbled upon undie-maker Ginch Gonch about six months ago. The name was a complete puzzle to me, the tagline (“Live Like a Kid!”) didn’t seem to clarify the odd words, and I got no help at all from the About page:

Ginch Gonch was born from the rebellion against the dull, colorless underwear endured by most people, and has quickly become one of the fastest growing premium lifestyle brands internationally. It was the first of its kind to successfully combine humor and sexuality with funky, fashion-forward designs, and has completely reinvented the underwear industry through the unconventional ways it sets the trend for the rear end.

The styles pictured on the website have loud prints, bright colors, large “Ginch Gonch” logos, and double-entendre-ish names like “Joystick Jockey” and “Lip Reader.”

What the website doesn’t have are clues about where the company’s located, other than a Montreal area code on the Contact page. The company boasts that its products are sold “in premium department stores and exclusive boutiques” in 22 world capitals, but I’m a pretty serious shopper and I can’t recall ever seeing them.

The Interwebs came to the rescue. Ginch and gonch, it turns out, are two ways to spell Canadian slang words meaning “underwear.” Here’s a definition from the CKA (Canada Kicks Ass) website:

gotch, ginch, gonch, gitch (From Ukrainian gatky/gatsi): refers to men’s brief-style underwear, particularly those that are threadbare. Used in British Columbia and Alberta. Gitch and gotch are variants heard mostly in Saskatchwan. It is also acceptable to append ‘ies’ to any of these variants, especially when referring to the underwear of male children. eg: “Make sure you do laundry tonight, I’m going to need some clean gonch in the morning”. The term is becoming more widespread in use as a result of the rise in popularity of Vancouver-based undergarment company GinchGonch. A “gotch-pull” or “gonch-pull” is another name for a wedgie.

So—Vancouver, not Montreal? The Internet is silent on the discrepancy. But I was definitely warming to the name: it’s fun to say, relevant (if you’re from British Columbia or Alberta), and memorable.

Apparently, though, if you’re not from British Columbia or Alberta you may be as clueless as I was about ginch and its relatives. Here’s a question posted on Yahoo Answers in 2008:

Is “ginch / gonch” really Canadian slang for underwear?

“Ginch Gonch” is a Canadian underwear company, and they say their name comes from the canadian slang word(s) for underwear “ginch / gonch”
now, i'm Canadian, but i’ve never heard the term before... how common is the slang?

And the answer, seemingly from another Canadian:

Gitch and Gotch are words that i am familiar with -- both refer to underwear. I can't say anyone in my generation (born in 70s) would use the term, but we do know what it means. My parents (born in the late 40s) use the term quite often. I can't remember them using any other term for undies.

I also consulted the OED, whose entry for ginch makes no mention of Canada, underwear, or the supposed Ukrainian origin:

Etymology: Origin unknown.

slang (orig. and chiefly U.S.).

An attractive woman, esp. (freq. depreciative) one regarded as an object of sexual gratification. Also as a mass noun: such women collectively.

1934 J. D. Carr Eight of Swords ix. 98 He found himself walking away beside this lithe, bright-eyed, altogether luscious ginch in the tennis frock.

1960 Coshocton (Ohio) Tribune 5 Dec. 3/3 Flip little ginch, ain’t yuh?

1971 E. Tidyman & W. Friedkin French Connection (film script) (Electronic text) 6 A close shot of a chorus line, with lots of tits and ass and lean, long legs... Russo takes the seat on the right, eyes immediately on all that ginch.

1992 C. Nova Trombone (1992) iii. 242 Well, I guess that's Dean's last piece of ginch, isn’t it? There isn’t any romance or desperate women where he's going.

2002 J. A. Jackson Badger Games 17 You’re shaggin’ the ginch. I seen her, not a bad little piece of ass.

Well, wow. I’ve seen The French Connection and read a bit of detective fiction, but I can’t remember ever encountering ginch in this sense or any other. Please let me know in the comments if you’ve heard or used the word in any context.

Meanwhile, enjoy Ginch Gonch’s self-description:

Through its cheeky, outside-of-the box marketing campaigns and sassy names for its products, Ginch Gonch has acquired the reputation of being the brat of the industry. Ginch promotes fun, freedom of expression and diversity through its famous catch phrase “Regardless of your inches we cover you in our Ginches!”. Its “Shiny Heiny”, “Wiener Eater” and “Crotch Rocket” underwear have won the hearts and crotches of millions all over the world who embrace the Ginch Gonch Live Like a Kid! philosophy.

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Previously on Underwear Week:

Cheekini

True & Co. and the MILFs

Underwear Startups

Underwear Week: Startups

It’s Day Three of Underwear Week! Time for some news of the new.

TechCrunch, to which I turn for the latest info about gadgets, gizmos, and Google, surprised me a couple of weeks ago with a guest column by research analyst Ross Rubin about, of all things, four new underwear companies. The tech angle? All four startups had sought crowdfunding to build their businesses; two succeeded, two didn’t. My angle? The companies’ names, naturally.

Thinx (pronounced “thinks”) was started by three women in New York City who saw a need for leakproof, stainproof underwear that women can wear confidently during their periods (referred to in the Kickstarter video with inexplicably coy euphemisms like “that time”).

“QUAD-DRY BreatheTECH” provides “a leak and stain resistant support matrix that’s got you covered.”

 

The project met its funding goal, but the name falls short. Yes, it’s non-descriptive (remember, that’s a good thing), but the spelling makes it look like a knockoff—or a spinoff—of the successful Spanx brand, and the “think” concept strikes me as off-target. The customer doesn’t care how much thinking went into your product, and she doesn’t want to have to overthink her purchase. (“Think” is also overused in branding to the point of meaninglessness.) The dull, redundant tagline, “Rethinking Women’s Underwear,” doesn’t convey a benefit or convince me to buy.

The bottom line, so to speak: an interesting product that could better realize its potential with a more effective, less derivative name/tagline combination. Something sassy and unexpected is what’s called for here.

By the way, a tip of the hat to columnist Rubin for working “panty ante” into his copy.

Snowballs (“Cooling underwear for conceiving men”) also addresses a serious problem—male infertility—and it does so with candor (in the pitch) and humor (in the name). “Testicular cooling has been shown to increase sperm count,” the website informs us, “particularly in cases of varicoceles, and we’ve created an comfortable, organic product that will help you succeed naturally before investing thousands of dollars in other risky, more invasive solutions.” I love the product name (and also the Procreativity.net domain name), but backers balked, possibly put off by the product’s high market price ($65 to $80).

Don’t give up, Snowballs! I’d love to see you pitch on “Shark Tank.”

JockGods is a decent name, but slightly misleading if what you’re selling is “high-quality underwear designed for men and women”: both “jock” and “god” suggest that these undies are for guys only. There’s also nothing particularly distinctive about the product. I’m not surprised that the project failed to meet its funding goal.

Helux Gear has a clear, straightforward pitch: there’s a need for “ergonomic” (supportive) men’s briefs with a practical, accessible fly. The name has a nice resonance, suggesting both “luxury for men” and “helix” (suggestive of the unusual design of the pouch). “Helix” also sounds powerful, elemental, and science-y, and the logo makes it stick. Backers apparently agreed: they funded the project with room to spare.

 

Previously on Underwear Week:

Cheekini.

True & Co. and the MILFs.

Name in the Wild: Flexicado

Spotted at a local Ace Hardware while I was (of course) looking for something else:

The “firm yet flexible” Flexicado avocado slicer.

 

An avocado slicer? Really? Your mileage may vary, but I’ve found that a butter knife usually does the job pretty well. But one cheer for American invention and Chinese factories, right? And three cheers for the Flexicado name, which I couldn’t stop murmuring as I wandered the aisles. Could a desperado buy a Flexicado in Calexico? “Play it again, Sam – this time, più flexicado.”

And the Chef’n Flexicado, no less! Is that “Chef’n” as in “chef and __”? Or as in “Let’s go chef’n today!”? Or as in “That effin’ chef!”?

Here’s the Flexicado demo video, which failed to convince me that I needed this $6.99 monotasking device in my kitchen. Still, full marks for the name – and for the others in the Chef’n line-up, including Pepperball, Stem Gem, and Yolkster (“Get an Egg Up!”).

Weekend Link Pack

Longtime readers may recall my 2008 post about the British energy-drink brand Pussy (“Bad Brand Names: The New Champion!”). Now the UK’s advertising regulator has ruled on complaints about Pussy ads. The deadpan ruling is worth your time for passages like this one:

We noted that the slogan in ad (a) stated “The drink’s pure, it's your mind that's the problem” and considered that strongly suggested that the term “pussy” had a secondary meaning which was not “pure” and was a “problem”, and considered that slogan reinforced the colloquial meaning of “pussy” to those older children or implied that that secondary, colloquial meaning was in some way impolite or even offensive or sexually explicit.

Hat tip: S. Quinn on the American Name Society listserv.

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On DuetsBlog (where I am an occasional contributor), Mark Prus of NameFlash considers the names of minor-league baseball teams. I learned a thing or three: for example, the Las Vegas 51s are not so called because they’re one card short of a deck.

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You’d think a new debit card with “Visa Paywave” would involve some sort of waving activity, right? Gotcha! “Sometimes a product name can sound really good, but it can send the wrong signals,” sighs Australian linguablogger Superlinguo.

Name, Shmame

Remember Shpock (“Your mobile yard sale for beautiful things”) and Shpoonkle (“Justice you can afford!”)? This farshtinkener naming trend is still trending. I recently learned about Schmap, which calls its product “the world’s first Twitter-powered city guides.” (The official spelling includes two shoe-print exclamation marks, but I refuse to play that game.)

 

 

Schmap isn’t new: the company was founded in 2004 in Carrboro, North Carolina, and published its first guides in 2006. A TechCrunch article about Schmap’s new Demographics Pro service, which provides detailed reports on Twitter followers, brought it to my attention.

Here’s the thing about these Sh- and Sch- names: they aren’t neutral. For starters, Sh- and especially Shm- suggest “Yiddish.” Those phonemes show up at the beginning of dozens of Yiddish words; my copy of Leo Rosten’s The Joys of Yiddish has 42 pages of sh- words, from shabbes to shvitzer. (The sch- spelling, Rosten noted elsewhere, is German rather than Yiddish.)

I’m sure Carrboro, North Carolina – “the Paris of the Piedmont” – is a lovely place, but I somehow doubt that you’ll hear a lot of Yiddish along its leafy boulevards.

It gets worse, because sh- and shm- carry a stigma: They’re “prefatory sounds, of mockery or dismissal, that ‘pooh-pooh’ the word they prefix,” writes Rosten:

A great many words of mockery and aspersion, words that jeer, sneer and scorn…begin with sh-: shlemiel, shlimazl, shloomp, shmegegge, shmo, shmuck, shnorrer.

Shm- words show up so frequently in snarky, Yiddish-inflected rhymes that linguists have a name for the category: shm- reduplication, “a form of reduplication in which the original word or its first syllable (the base) is repeated with the copy (the reduplicant) beginning with shm- (sometimes schm-), pronounced /ʃm/.” As the old punchline has it, “Oedipus-Shmoedipus – as long as he loves his mother!” (See also Libros Schmibros and Burglar Schmurglar. )

So nu? What’s with this fad-shmad? Here’s my guess: A generation of entrepreneurs has been influenced by schwag and schwing, two made-up words that caught on about 20 years ago. I wrote about this effect in a 2011 post, “Swag and Schwag”:

Sometime in the early 1990s swag became schwag, “perhaps after words of Yiddish origin” such as shmuck, says the OED—although Yinglish schlock (something of inferior quality) seems an equally likely influence. (Of course, one must never underestimate the influence of Wayne’s World [1988-1994] and schwing.) Besides being a synonym for bad marijuana, schwag can also be a modifier meaning simply “inferior.”

I appreciated a well-crafted playful name as much as the next wordslinger. But if you want your brand to be taken seriously, be careful with those fancy-shmancy coinages.

Nicely Domained: Whisper.sh

Here’s a good example of thinking beyond .com.

Whisper, according to an effusive TechCrunch post, is “the latest social app to capture the attention of a huge — and growing — audience of users, as well as the attention of a group of investors.” Like PostSecret (founded in 2005), the Whisper app encourages users to share secrets anonymously; Whisper’s twist is that users can communicate with each other in public or private. There’s also a do-good angle: Whisper is connected with Your Voice, “a non-profit organization … dedicated to raising awareness of mental health issues on college campuses.”

 

I like the Whisper name, with its suggestion of secrecy and its long etymological history going back to Old English. (I’m less enthusiastic about the tagline, “Your Secret Public.” My public is a secret? Publicize my secret? I’m confused.) Whisper.com was, of course, unavailable – it redirects to the job-search site Monster.com – and so were modified domains like WhisperIt, WhisperNow, and GetWhisper. But that didn’t stop the company’s founders. They skipped over the .com choices and picked .sh, the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) of Saint Helena.

It’s perfect. After all, how better to reinforce “Whisper” and “secrecy” than with a whispered “sh”?

In case you’re wondering, Saint Helena is a speck of land in the South Atlantic Ocean. One of the most isolated islands in the world, it’s part of the British overseas territory of Saint Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha. You may remember it as the island to which Napoleon I was exiled in 1815.

Well played, Whisper.sh. Let this be a reminder to other entrepreneurs that – as I wrote back in 2010 – “there’s a world of alternatives out there” if you’re open to jettisoning dot-com in favor of a creative substitute.