Fritinancy Is the New Away With Words

Announcing the new name of this blog:

Fritinancy.

I'll take questions from the audience now.

Q. Did you make that word up?

A. No, I did not. From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 edition:

Noun: A chirping or creaking, as of a cricket. (Obsolete.) Origin: Latin fritinnire, to twitter.

Q. How do you pronounce it?

A. Phonetically, more or less: FRIT-ih-nan-see.

Q. Why did you change the blog's name?

A. I'd originally chosen Away With Words to play off my business name, Wordworking. I'd wanted the blog to be an opportunity to run away with words--to take them a little less seriously than I do in the world of commerce. But it turned out there was already another blog called Away With Words, as well as an English-Japanese-Cantonese-language movie (a k a San Tiao Ren) and a book (by Australian writer Ruth Wajnrjb) by the same name. And then there's A Way with Words, the public radio show about language hosted by Grant Barrett and Martha Barnette. (It isn't carried on any of my local public radio stations, and I confess that when I started blogging in June 2006 I hadn't yet heard of it. Mea maxima culpa.) If I'd analyzed my own competitive namescape as critically as I do for my clients, I'd have told myself to go back to the drawing board.

Q. Why Fritinancy?

A. I explored other creative directions involving "words," "names," "language," and other obvious concepts. None seemed distinctive, memorable, or appealing enough.

I considered some aliases I've used around the internets: Bon Mot, Wordworker, etc. Meh.

Then I began looking at my own name. My naming colleague Mark Gunnion had enjoyed my post about the term Friedman Unit and suggested I appropriate that term as a blog title. I was tempted--FriedmanUnit.com, .net, and .org are still available as of this writing--but FU is permanently attached to New York Times columnist Tom Friedman (no relation), and I'm not eager to have my opinions confused with his.

So I turned my attention to my first name and began pushing it around. Several words, I realized, end with -nancy, and some seemed appropriate as titles for a blog about language. Consonancy (taken, alas). Dissonancy (taken). Resonancy (taken). Assonancy. (Okay, not Assonancy.) Finally, a wild-card search turned up Fritinancy. I'd never encountered the word, which tickled me: there was my own all-too-familiar name peeping out from under those Edwardian-era skirts. And I was pleased to discover no one else had claimed it--not as a business name, not as a blog name, not as anything I could find except old dictionary definitions.

And I liked those definitions. "Chirping" and "creaking"--not to mention "frittering"--seem like perfectly apt descriptions of what I do here. (And yes, I have a Twitter account, although I haven't tweeted yet.)

More positive associations: I like the way "Friti-" suggests my surname. (In high school and college, where I was one among many Nancys, I was known as Friedy.) "Fritinancy" is obscure, but not impossibly so. It's a fun word to say. In rescuing it from obsolescence, I felt I was doing a linguistic good deed. In that, I am greatly encouraged by the examples of Wishydig, A Roguish Chrestomathy, and several of the other linguistics blogs I read regularly.

I can imagine Fritinancy on a menu: pommes fritinancy, perhaps.

Finally, just look at the Scrabble words you can pull out of Fritinancy: infantry, tyrannic, nifty, crafty, frantic, inanity, infancy, ratify ... well, you get the idea.

Q. Enough about you. If I've bookmarked or subscribed to or linked to your blog, do I have to change anything?

A. If you've been kind enough to include me in your blogroll, I'd appreciate it very much if you changed the name of the link to Fritinancy. Otherwise, no need to take action--not for now, anyway. The blog's URL will remain nancyfriedman.typepad.com until I get energized to change it. (I've registered fritinancy.com, .net, and .org, just in case I suddenly, or even gradually, start getting 25,000 readers a day and decide to make a technology investment.) If your bookmark or link includes Away_With_Words in the URL, you might want to delete that appendage, but you probably don't have to.

Q. Do bloggers do this often? Change their blog names, I mean.

A. Often enough. The most prominent example is probably Guy Kawasaki, wildly famous venture capitalist and author, whose blog has had three names during its lifetime: "Bona Tempora Volvantur" (Let the Good Times Roll), "Signum Sine Tinnitu" (Signal Without Noise), and--currently--"How to Change the World."

I like to think I'm in good company and that I've made my own small step toward betterment. You, however, may disagree, in which case I invite you to leave me a politely worded comment.

Or you can start writing your own blog and call it any damn thing you like.

Photo ("Cricket passant la tête") by Guillaume T. at Flickr.

Comments

[Jessica]

Mazal tov! Love the name, love its etymology, and have updated the blogroll accordingly.

[mike]

>"Okay, not Assonancy."

Ha! I lol'd, as the kids say.

Congrats on the new name, and may there be much chirping and creaking for us to enjoy in future.

[mike]

Sorry about the triplicate. I swear, it was Typepad, which kept asking and asking for CAPTCHA letters.

[Betsy Burroughs]

Love it! Love the name and love your post about it. Cracked me up. And very educational too. (And you so have to put your blog into book form (actually, a series of books because you have so much great stuff here) but you know I'm going to always be saying that.)

I think you are depriving people of the wonderful benefit of your mind and thinking by limiting your insights to only the blog format.

Also...I need to do a search of your blog to see if you've already written about this but...I'd love a post on "meh".

[Michael Covarrubias]

I like it. It's different and memorable. It's a name people can talk about.

Nicely chosen.

[Nancy]

Mike P: Oh, rats. And here I was thinking he likes me! he likes me! he likes me! (I've deleted the two redundant comments.)

Betsy B: Thanks! As for "meh," I couldn't possibly put it any better than the Ben Two: Zimmer in Language Log http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003238.html
and Yagoda in Slate: http://www.slate.com/id/2159929/

Michael and Jessica: Thanks! I'm honored.

[Bobbie]

I like it! And love the way you've explained it.

[...tom...]

...
I have not been reading you long enough to have grown attached to the old so . . .works for me.

Are you going to change the page design to include the 'pronunciation' under the title..??

I also love the tenuous relation to 'frittering' ...like we all need another reason to continue to fritter away the days of our lives online. Why not spend it reading 'Fritinancy'..??

Very nicely done.
.

[Nancy]

Thanks, Tom and Bobbie. Tom: I've included a definition and pronunciation guide in my author profile. (And I've corrected the pronunciation: emphasis is on FRIT.) I'd wanted to display both on the main blog page, but can't figure out how to do it in Typepad. Sorry!

[The Ideophone]

Nice choice (updated the blogroll). I like it most of all for its expressive quality.

[Sallie Goetsch]

I'm a sucker for obscure words, myself--my current favorite being the Renaissance Italian "sprezzatura," which means effortless grace and brilliance.

You should send a link to this post to Ted Demopoulos, who has written several posts about blog naming. See for instance You Are Your Brand: http://www.bloggingforbusinessbook.com/blogging_for_business/2008/01/blog-names---yo.html

[Nancy]

Sallie: I agree, "sprezzatura" is a wonderful word. It became a lot less obscure in 2006 when New Republic literary critic Lee Siegel used it as a sock-puppet alias. Siegel has just published a book attacking the culture of the Internet; see this New York Magazine Q&A: http://nymag.com/arts/books/features/42758/

Thanks for the tip about Ted Demopoulos!

[Tay]

Thanks so much for sharing your process of coming up with and changing the name. As I am in the process of changing my business name after 5 years, this insider's look was really helpful. If only I could afford to hire you, I would in a heartbeat.

[Shawna S]

I really loved the old name, but your explanation has won me over. Fritinancy it is.