Stokefire, a branding agency in Alexandria, Virginia, installed a new office server and had to give it a name. You’d think that would be an easy task for professional namers. Think again.
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In English, we say we’re “green with envy,” but in German the expression is “yellow with envy” (gelb vor neid). A Swedish-speaker calls a less-than-desirable situation “beigt” (beige). A “kara gün dostu” (black-day friend) is Turkish for a true friend, and in French, a quack is a “médecin marron” (a brown doctor). Discover these and many other color idioms in Alan Kennedy’s multilingual color idiom chart; learn more from Kennedy’s linguistic facts about color. (Via Language Hat.)
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Here’s a Straight Dope discussion board dedicated to unusual names of sports teams. A few I didn’t see in the discussion, all from California: the UC Irvine Anteaters, the Pomona College Sagehens, and the Scripps College Athenas. (Scripps is a women’s college.) During the two years I attended Pitzer College the intramural teams were called the Armpitzies, but that tradition appears to have lapsed, alas.
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Ladies, are you tired of hearing that your body’s shaped like an apple or a pear? In Australia, the underwear brand Triumph wants a new nomenclature based on Renaissance artists’ preferred body types. And not just “Rubenesque,” either. (Via The Hairpin.)
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I love this word-puzzle wrapping paper, created by a designer with offices in Italy and the UK. The paper will be sold “soon”—in the US, too, I hope. (Via Swiss Miss.)
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Gene Weingarten is not the first American to advocate jettisoning the famously unsingable “Star-Spangled Banner” as the national anthem. But his proposed replacement—the Bill of Rights, set to “The William Tell Overture”—is the most brilliant remedy (and most potent earworm) I’ve ever heard. (Via Dustbury.)
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What does “up to X or more” mean in adspeak? Language Log’s Mark Liberman attempts an analysis.
Cartoon by xkcd.
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Over at Literal-Minded, Neal Whitman reviews You Are What You Speak, by Robert Lane Greene:
For someone who hasn’t discovered linguistics yet, Greene’s introduction will be fascinating and entertaining; for those who have, it will be like watching a rerun of a show that you liked enough to watch again. And when you get to the stuff that’s not old hat, the book really takes off.
Greene is the author of Johnson, the language blog of The Economist—well worth a few minutes of your reading time each week.
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Before Facebook was Facebook, it was The Facebook. Now Jeff Lapatine, who’s in charge of naming and brand architecture at Siegel+Gale, wonders: Does adding “the” to a name increase its prestige?
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And speaking of “the”…
Link. (Hat tip: MJF).
Regarding unusual sports team names, I would suggest the UConn Huskies. There isn't much unusual about the "Huskies" moniker, except in its origin: the name appears to derive from the fact that huskies are native to the Yukon, which sounds like "UConn." It's the only sports team I can think of with name almost based in rhyming slang!
Posted by: Ben Trawick-Smith | March 16, 2011 at 08:09 AM
Sadly, I believe I have a Mondrian body shape. Small wonder they don't include that one in the list!
Posted by: Jessica | March 16, 2011 at 09:12 AM
That Alan Kennedy thing is fascinating -- it amazes me how much overlap there is, and yet, how much seems completely off the wall. I'm still amused that a red film in Wales and in Spain is the same thing!
Also am well amused by the new list of women's body types. I really do think I'm going to stick with being a Picasso - that way only I truly know what I'm like beneath my clothes...
Posted by: tanita | March 16, 2011 at 09:45 AM
San Francisco's had some great team names - the Seals baseball team, of course, and the 49ers, but also the Spiders hockey team, with their cool 50's sci-fi movie font, and the XFL Demons, with their pointy-tailed cheerleaders, Maori monster mask logo, and "Hell Yeah!" cheer.
http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/logos/ihl/sfspid95.gif
http://www.xflboard.com/teams/index.htm
Naming a sports team is on my Naming "Bucket List".
Posted by: Mark Gunnion | March 16, 2011 at 01:47 PM
@Mark: My favorite Erstwhile Sports Team Name is the Sacramento Solons of the Pacific Coast League. I liked to imagine them taking the field in togas. Solons now means "legislators," of course; newspaper editors used to favor it in headlines that had to fit narrow columns.
Posted by: Nancy Friedman | March 16, 2011 at 01:53 PM