Fritinancy

Word of the Week: Mansplain

Mansplain: To explain something to a woman in a patronizing manner that “takes it as a given that she doesn’t already know whatever it is he is going to tell her.” (From a February 2010 Fannie’s Room post on “the art of mansplaining.”) Coined from man plus explain.

The earliest citation I found for mansplain is an April 25, 2009, entry in Urban Dictionary. This definition maintains that either sex can be guilty of mansplaining; however, most of the writing about mansplaining assumes that the ’splainer is indeed a man. As, for example, in this May 2009 essay on mansplaining by Karen Healey:

Mansplaining is when a dude tells you, a woman, how to do something you already know how to do, or how you are wrong about something you are actually right about, or miscellaneous and inaccurate “facts” about something you know a hell of a lot more about than he does.

Bonus points if he is explaining how you are wrong about something being sexist!

And in January 2010 Kate Harding wrote:

Here’s a thing about mansplaining and why I care a lot about it: it is annoying, and frustrating, and insulting, and deeply rooted in institutionalized sexism, and often profoundly harmful to women. We talk about all of that. What we don’t always talk about is how easily it shades into gaslighting: your reality is false, my reality is true. The biggest mansplainer I’ve known made me doubt my sanity for years; I am still recovering. This isn’t just a supremely sexist and problematic internet habit. It can be a psychologically violent act.

(Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse in which the tormenter makes the victim doubt his or —usually—her sanity. The term comes from the 1938 play Gas Light and from the film adaptations that followed, in particular the 1944 version directed by George Cukor and starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer.)

Rebecca Solnit, a writer of formidable intellect (Wanderlust, River of Shadows, A Paradise Built in Hell), is frequently credited with spelling out the theoretical underpinnings for mansplain in an April 13, 2008, op-ed column for the Los Angeles Times, “Men Who Explain Things.” She wrote:

Men explain things to me, and to other women, whether or not they know what they're talking about. Some men. Every woman knows what I mean. It's the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men's unsupported overconfidence.

From there, Solnit expanded her argument into the areas of date rape, marital rape, workplace sexual harassment, and the global rights of women. She did not, however, use the word mansplain.

Read “You May Be a Mansplainer If…” on Thus Spake Zuska, a science blog.

Hat tip to Fake Erin McKean, whose September 3 tweet introduced me to the word mansplain (but not the concept, which I've known and experienced for many years).

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Mansplaining icon from Big Bad Wolf. “Oh, gosh, thank you so much for mansplaining this to us!” has assumed the status of a meme.

Names That Made Me Say “Huh?”

Yes, naming can be hard. But the results shouldn’t make our heads throb. Three examples:

Cr8tiveYe: Bob Cumbow, a trademark lawyer in Seattle who reads this blog, sent me a link to Cr8tiveYe Enterprises along with this note: “I’m sure they intend that to be pronounced CREATIVE EYE [...] but as spelled, it looks like CRATIVE YE.”¹ Hey—I’ll bet it was easy to register the URL! Here’s the kicker: Cr8tiveYe (it hurts to type it) calls itself a naming and branding agency. From the home page: “We offer many strategic methods that helps [sic] put businesses on the map and leave a lasting impression on the people they touch.” There’s much more (and worse) on the site, but I’ll let Bob Cumbow have the last word: “I wouldn’t hire them.”²

Enterase: When this, um, entity began following me on Twitter, I wondered why a gastric enzyme would be interested in what I had to say. Turns out Enterase is “a buyer’s guide for men” that describes itself as “the premier online destination for the most influential 20-something male consumers … driven by style, sports, music, games and gear.” Why is it called “Enterase”? Oh, let me guess: the URL was available! Perhaps it will eventually have a sister site called Esterase.

Groubal: This new consumer-advocacy site has a lot going for it: a clear statement of purpose (“We champion consumer complaints and demand action from those responsible”), an engaging and navigable site design, and an integrated social-media strategy. The name, however, looks like a fuzzy imitation of Groupon, the online business that offers local bargains if enough people sign up for them. (“Groupon” is a blend of “group” and “coupon.”) The Groubal site doesn’t reveal a backstory, and neither does this interview with founder Robert Doner.³ So I’ll guess that “Grou-” derives from “group.” But what about “-bal”? Cymbal? Global? Tribal? Hannibal? Cabal? Hmm—how about a wackily spelled “grumble”? The company certainly wants us to use “Groubal” in every possible way: as the corporate name, as the name of an individual petition (“Add your groubal now”), as a verb (tagline: “Don’t gripe, groubal!”), and as a compound form (people who lodge complaints are “groubalers”). The trademark experts among you will no doubt have something to say about all that; me, I object on aesthetic and semantic grounds.

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¹ You might say Bob has a ye for names like this one. Some months back, he sent me a link to fileye (that’s right: all lower case), a web-based intellectual-property-software “solution.”  Is that name supposed to be Olde Englyshe? (“File ye, file ye!”) No, it’s apparently pronounced “file eye.” Ye gods!

² In related creative-names news, see Kre8tive Law Group. In Canada, no less!

³ The interview does contain the very odd expression gr.oo.bul, which I initially thought was a country-code URL but instead seems to be a pronunciation key. What the periods are doing there is a mystery. And the little-green-men logo? Creepy.

Forget About Love

Forget “passion.”

Forget “chemistry.”

Forget “perfect harmony.”

Yes, forget about love.

Because when it comes to corporate and product names, the last thing you want is heavy breathing and galloping hormones.

What do you want?

An arranged marriage.

Oh, I can hear your disappointed sighs. But trust me: this is good news.

As with flesh-and-blood attraction, name-love is elusive and idiosyncratic. You, for example, may fall hard for a name that to your colleague suggests only that miserable summer she spent hitchhiking through Uzbekistan. She, on the other hand, may have such a long checklist for “the perfect name” that no candidate stands a chance of succeeding.

What both of you need is a marriage broker who will gently yet firmly guide you to a satisfying and promising union.

Here are some of the advantages of an arranged-marriage name:

It comes from a good family. The arranged-marriage name has a strong linguistic pedigree and appropriate meaning. It brings a network of friendly relations—a k a  semantic associations—into the marriage.

It has excellent prospects. The arranged-marriage name is smart, capable, and likely to succeed. It will help your business grow and prosper.

It won’t embarrass you. That cute name with the flashy syllables is fun for a fling. But the morning after—and the morning after that—you’ll want a name you’re proud to pronounce on the phone, present on your business card, and repeat to your investors.

It comes highly recommended. You’re very skilled at many things, but face it: at naming, you’re an amateur. Why not let an expert (then: the village matchmaker; now: your naming consultant) steer you to a rosy future?

Here’s the best thing about the arranged-marriage name: One day, you’ll wake up and realize you’re in love. It may take a month; it may take a year. It may take seeing the name on your products, in your videos, on coffee mugs and T-shirts, in the Wall Street Journal. It may take your customers telling you repeatedly how much they love your name. Eventually, though, just like Tevye and Golde in Fiddler on the Roof, you’ll find yourself smiling and saying: “If that’s not love, what is?”

Forget about love. With naming, an arranged marriage is your surest and sweetest route to happily ever after.

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Disclaimer: My advice about arranged marriages applies to names only. With l’amour, you’re on your own.

Saving the World, One Slogan at a Time

Some years ago I did some consulting for a regional office of the American Cancer Society, which raises money for cancer research and education. The society’s logo, then as now, was a stylized caduceus—a short winged rod entwined by two serpents—that in modern times has been appropriated as a symbol of the medical profession. The caduceus was originally associated with Hermes, the Greek god of messengers, thieves, travelers, and border crossings—but not of medicine. The traditional medical symbol in ancient times was the rod of Asclepius: a staff entwined by a single serpent. Asclepius, a son of Apollo, was associated with medicine and healing.

Someone at the American Cancer Society evidently looked at the caduceus and saw not a rod or a staff but a weapon—a sword, to be specific. And from that mistaken observation, based on a mistaken conflation of two Greek symbols, came the national organization’s slogan: “There’s Nothing Mightier Than the Sword.” 

My consulting work for the society had nothing to do with slogan development, but I couldn’t help myself. That slogan really, really bothered me.

I remember a conversation—perplexed on my end, earnest on the client’s end—about the logic of this phrase. The pen! I had to restrain myself from shouting. The pen is mightier than the sword!* “No, no,” the client said soothingly. “The sword really is the mightiest!”

Really? Besides the pen, I can think of several things that are mightier than the sword: the flamethrower, the catapult, the poison gas, the rocket grenade, and the thermonuclear device. Just for starters.

And, come to think, cancer itself often proves to be mightier than the sword, if by “sword” you mean “scalpel” and if by “cancer” you mean “war.”

Well, that was then. My consulting work went smoothly enough. Years passed. And now I see that the ACS has a different slogan: “The Official Sponsor of Birthdays.” A little confusing out of context, and probably disappointing to your local six-year-old, but definitely a step up from that mighty sword.

For my part, I’m working now with a different medical organization on naming and slogan development, so I’ve been thinking once again about the challenges of nonprofit branding. In a stroke of timely good fortune, last weekend I discovered Nancy E. Schwartz’s nonprofit-marketing blog, Getting Attention, which conducts an annual Nonprofit Tagline Awards contest. (Hat tip to my Twitter pal The Slogan Shop.) You can read about the 2009 winners here and download the free 121-page report about them here. And go here to vote for the most effective slogans of 2010.

The slogans on this year’s ballot have been winnowed down from more than 2,700 entrants. About the original field, Nancy Schwartz writes: 

I have to tell you that although some of the taglines entered work well (roughly 30%), most do not. The reasons why are varied, from “they make no sense” to “they make sense, but don’t make an impact.” Whatever the reason, the end result is a highly used message that’s not doing its job for your organization.

Only a 30 percent success rate? Surely we can do better. In her 2009 report, Schwartz offers 10 “have-tos” for creating powerful taglines. They include “Must convey your nonprofit’s or program’s impact or value,” “Must be authentic,” “Must be broadly and easily accessible and memorable, avoiding jargon and acronyms,” and “Must be specific to your organization, not easily used by another nonprofit reaching out to the same audiences.” That last point is especially significant: Too many of this year’s entrants (yes, even the finalists) are interchangeable.

On the bright side, only one tagline finalist includes the word “passion.” An encouraging sign!

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About the title of this post: “Saving the X, One Y at a Time” is a slogan snowclone, or sloganclone. Read more about this slogan formula and others in my 2007 post, “Snowclones with a Twist.”

* “The pen is mightier than the sword” was coined by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the Victorian novelist who is also famous for the opening line “It was a dark and stormy night.” There’s an annual bad-writing contest named in honor of Bulwer-Lytton.

 

Word of the Week: Filk

Filk: Broadly speaking, the music of fandom. Filk encompasses parody songs, with original lyrics set to familiar tunes; and original music with science fiction or fantasy themes. A program of filk music is called a filksing¹.

Xeni Jardin wrote about the genre in a 2005 article for Wired magazine, “Filk Music for Nerd People”:

Accompanied by acoustic guitars, clarinets and the quacking of kazoos, the group sounds much like a traditional folk ensemble. But the lyrics and rituals set the music far apart. With its heavy sci-fi themes, this isn’t folk – it's “filk,” a distinctive genre that took root on folk’s fringes about two decades ago and is now gaining broader attention thanks to internet radio and web downloads.

“You want minors [sic!] on the moon who need a labor union? We got songs about that. You want asteroid truckers with broken-down ships? We got songs about that. If you want cats in space we got that too,” explains Mary Creasey, an organizer, producer, vendor and performer of filk music with her son Richard and her husband, John.

Filk is actually older than Jardin purports. The earliest recorded appearance of the word was in the title of an article written in the mid-1950s by one Lee Jacobs, “The Influence of Science Fiction on Modern American Filk Music,” in which filk was a typo for folk. The article, which Jacobs submitted to Spectator Amateur Press Society, was never published, but, according to Filk.com, Jacobs showed it to his friends and the misprint caught on among science fiction fans in the 1960s.

Attempts to define filk often resort to explaining what the genre isn’t. Here is Filk.com’s explanation of “What Is Not Filk”:

Instrumental pieces do not fall into the category of filk; filk music contains both music and lyrics. Holst’s THE PLANETS, Mozart's JUPITER SYMPHONY, and John Williams’ numerous scores for blockbuster science fiction movies do not, therefore, count as filk music. Drug songs are NOT filk songs. The Moody Blues’ Floating, the Byrds’ Eight Miles High, and Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit are full of space or fantasy references, but these are references for people who need to take drugs to experience space flight or flights of fancy. The rest of us read science fiction.

There is a filk track at this year’s Dragon*Con, which concludes today in Atlanta. The convention, now in its 24th year, bills itself as “the largest multi-media, popular culture convention focusing on science fiction and fantasy, gaming, comics, literature, art, music, and film in the universe.” Here’s how DragonConFilk’s home page describes filk:

Filk is the music of science fiction, fantasy, and horror fandom. That being said, the only thing that is certain about Filk is its inherent uncertainty. There are original filks, parodies, and “found filks” from both independent and mainstream music. There are acapella filkers, acoustic instruments, electronic instruments, gear and gadgets. Filk’s musical styles cross all ages and cultural boundaries. Egalitarian by nature, Filk also includes all musical abilities. Some of us prefer to sit and listen. Some of us are seasoned musicians. Some of us are divas. Some of us are divos (not kidding). Some of us are just learning.

Watch a six-minute video about filk from Georgia Public Broadcasting, via FanStuff.

 

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¹ According to Interfilk.org, “Most filksings take one of two forms: Bardic Circle or Chaos.”

That’s Qckoo!

Who doesn’t love Q? Designers are drawn to that sinuous little tongue. Elitists like to drop qua and qui vive into their discourse. Journalists depend on Qs (and, of course, As) for their livelihood. Q stands for quality and quantity, quiz and quintessence, quarter and quip.

Q is the letter of distinction in many great brand names, too, from Quaker to Quonset to Q-Tip. I myself have bestowed Q-names—one a real word, one coined—on a couple of companies.

But it’s easy to overdo Q—to torture that poor letter into positions it was never meant to assume.

Exhibit A: Qriocity. 

It’s Sony’s on-demand music and video platform, which launched in February of this year—note the misspelling in the Engadget URL—and which by the end of the year will include a cloud-based music service similar to iTunes. Qriocity is pronounced “curiosity,” according to Fast Company, which adds, parenthetically, “Who knew?”

Who indeed? My first hesitant guess had been closer to “kreeocity.” Frankly, any name that looks that difficult doesn’t bode well for the service or product under the hood.

(To further confuse matters, there’s a Qriosity.com, unrelated to Sony, “where people find videos, pictures and news on the hottest topics.” It hasn’t been updated in almost a year, so maybe it’s on its way out.)

Exhibit B: Qiagen.

This company (invariably spelled in ALL CAPS on the website) makes scientific instruments for sampling and testing. Founded in Germany in 1984, it has more than 35 offices around the world. But you have to get more than a minute into a corporate video before you hear “Qiagen” pronounced.

Want to hazard a guess?

Nope, it isn’t KEE-a-gen or (following my hunch about a possible Chinese etymology) CHEE-a-gen. It’s KY-a-gen. The first syllable rhymes with “sky” or “the sweetheart of Sigma Chi.”

I haven’t found a story that explains the origin of this puzzling name.

Here’s the funny part: I learned about Qiagen from a client of mine; his company is in a related field and does business with Qiagen. And yet he stumbled over both the pronunciation and the spelling of the name. (“Uh … Kwee-a-gen?”) He did know that Qiagen has a consistent nomenclature; its products include QIAcube, QIAsymphony, and QIAlab. That’s good branding. But the name itself is more confusing than it needs to be.

Moral: Make sure your Q provides clear cues about pronunciation. Is it an independent phoneme (“cue”)? Then help your audience with typography (e.g., QLogic) or punctuation (Q-layer). Is it substituting for /K/? Then make the association transparent by inserting it into familiar words (e.g., Qlock or Qloud).

But please, please, don’t make native English speakers and readers feel as though we’ve stumbled upon the lost language of the Qckoos.

In related Q-news, see my 2009 post about Qliance.

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Hat tip for the Qriocity story: NextMoon.

Photo from Fast Company.

Renaming Roundup

1. Dress Barn Group, the parent company of discount clothing chain Dress Barn, will seek shareholder approval for a name change to Ascena Retail Group, Inc., or Ascena Retail, Inc. The company was founded in 1962 in Stamford, Connecticut, and now has more than 800 stores through the United States; it also owns Maurices, which caters to style-conscious 20-somethings, and Justice, for girls 7 to 14. (Justice is a direct descendant of Limited Too.) The three retail brands would become subsidiaries of Ascena and would presumably retain their respective names. “The objective was to have a neutral kind of name, so you can have a family of brands underneath and not feel like they're reporting to Dress Barn,” Dress Barn’s chief financial officer and executive vice president, Armand Correia, told Bloomberg News. The retailer met with “outside experts” and chose Ascena “because it’s reminiscent of the word ‘ascend,’ Correia said.” The renamed company’s ticker symbol on Nasdaq would be ASNA, which unfortunately is the Spanish word for “female donkey.” It’s unclear how “Ascena” is meant to be pronounced: ah-SEE-na? ah-SAY-na? ass-SEEN-ah? Perhaps Dress Barn is attempting to cash in on the “ass” trend in women’s retail. (Hat tip: MJF.)

2. The Tea Party Bookshop in Salem, Oregon, is changing its name to Tigress Books. Owner JoAnne Kohler, who opened the shop in August 2008, chose the original name because she liked the association with the “independent, anti-corporate, more forward-thinking aspects of the Boston Tea Party,” reports Salem Live. The store stocked lots of spiritual and personal-growth titles, held monthly poetry readings, and sponsored a pagan meet-up. Then came the Tea Party political movement and considerable confusion for Kohler’s patrons. Long story short: the bookstore will be renamed Tigress Books (slogan: “Wildly Independent!”). Why Tigress? “A Buddhist monk told me in order to move forward you have to be a tiger,” Kohler told Salem Live. “When I was thinking about new names I thought ‘oh, that’s a good name. Be a tiger. Be a tiger!’” (Via The Naming Newsletter.)

3. Starting September 16, the weekly public-radio program “Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett” will be called “Krista Tippett on Being.” In the show’s blog, Tippett confesses that she wasn’t wild about “Being” at the outset. “But I have come to love the title. . . . ‘Being’ is an elemental, essential word. It was a catchword of the existentialism of the 20^th century, and existentialism is making room for spiritual life in the 21^st. It is more hospitable than the word ‘faith’ for our non-Christian and non-religious listeners. It is, at the same time, an evocation of the primary biblical name of God. ‘I am who I am’ can be better translated, I recall my teacher of Hebrew pointing out, as ‘I will be who I will be.’” More than 300 readers posted comments about the name change, and the next day the show’s managing producer, Kate Moos, added her own comments: “One, we’ve incorporated Krista’s name into the title prominently because we wanted it very clear that Krista remains central to the show as host and editorial leader. But I want to assure you that, in most applications, the new name will be heard as Being.” (Via Grant Barrett.)

4. The Nevada Test Site, established in 1951 for the testing of nuclear devices, will henceforth be known as the Nevada National Security Site, or N2S2. The new name reflects “the diversity of activities at the desert expanse north of Las Vegas,” the Associated Press reports. “Sounds like a video gaming console … only way more extreme,” comments On the Button, a naming blog.