Fritinancy

Naming Notes

The ready-to-wear division of 50-year-old fashion house Yves Saint Laurent (YSL) has been renamed Saint Laurent Paris (SLP). Hedi Slimane, who became the company’s creative director in March, said through a spokesperson that “he was drawing inspiration from 1966, when the ready-to-wear line was launched as Saint Laurent Rive Gauche.” (Daily Mail / UK)

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Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch told CNBC that he’s considering renaming the Wall Street Journal “WSJ.” (Poynter.) The Guardian(UK) was less equivocal, reporting that a rebranded WSJ will be at the center of Murdoch’s new publishing company. The Journal has been published continuously since July 8, 1889; it is the largest newspaper in the United States by circulation.

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In almost all cases you want a name to be easy to pronounce. But not if you’re targeting wine snobs, who will pay more for a wine whose name is hard to pronounce. (NPR)

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The all-caps, no-vowels naming trend continues with BNDWGN(pronounced “bandwagon”), a social-media aggregator that also permits private conversations. BNDWGN was developed by the free texting serviceHeyWire, whose name is a homophone for “haywire,” which means “mentally confused or erratic; crazy; not functioning properly; broken.” (TechCrunch)

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I learned this week that two well-known culinary creations were named for popular stage plays. Green Goddess salad dressing, invented at San Francisco’s Palace Hotel in the 1920s, takes its name from The Green Goddess, a 1921 play by William Archer that was also made into two films (silent and talkie) and a radio drama directed by Orson Welles. (Via Simply Recipes.) And Lobster Thermidor, invented in Paris in 1894, honorsThermidor, a controversial 1891 play by Victorien Sardou. Thermidor (“summer heat”) was a month in the French Republican calendar, which was used continuously between 1793 and 1805 and for 18 days in 1871. (Via@ennuisansfin.)

 

Names in the Wild: The Little Shop of Hoarders

Yes, I do love a good pun.

The Little Shop of Hoarders, 6397 Telegraph Avenue, Oakland.

 

Window display.

I don’t care that it isn’t a wholly original name* or that the sign is hand-lettered. I love the pun and I love the merchandise. And I am thrilled that the owner spelled “sneak peek” correctly on her blog.

Not to mention that I couldn’t have been happier for the excuse to troll YouTube for clips from Little Shop of Horrors, one of my all-time-favorite movie musicals. Frank Oz directed; Alan Menken wrote the great songs. And that cast! Steve Martin, Rick Moranis, Ellen Greene, Bill Murray, Christopher Guest, John Candy, John Belushi.

Here’s one of my favorite songs, “Skid Row” (“where depression’s jus’ status quo”):

 

And you know you want to hear Steve Martin do the dentist song again, amirite? Knock yourself out.

*UPDATE: Alas, it appears that the Oakland shop is stepping on the toes of another Little Shop of Hoarders (see comment). Defending a trademark is a full-time job.

Nora Ephron, 1941-2012

I didn’t know Nora Ephron, but that isn’t stopping me from taking her death—yesterday, of leukemia—very personally. Just a couple of weeks ago, after all, she’d been in my car, talking about her career at the New York Post, her incipient bald spot (she called it “my Aruba,” and you really have to hear her explain why), and that travesty known as the egg-white omelet. She sounded feisty and funny and thoroughly, you know, alive.

OK, she wasn’t physically in my car. But her voice was there, reading her most recent collection of essays, I Remember Nothing: And Other Reflections, an audiobook I’d checked out from the library. I listened to all three discs, and then I listened to them again. And I remembered, again, how much Nora Ephron has meant to me.

Most of the tributes to Ephron have focused on her hugely successful movies. I’m sorry to say—which is, by the way, a phrase I associate with Ephron, as is “by the way”—that I remain a grumpy skeptic. Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail, and When Harry Met Sally are too slick and schmaltzy for my taste, with heavy-handed soundtrack cues telling you exactly what to think and when to weep.

It was her journalism and essays that made me an Ephron fan, beginning with pieces in Esquire like “A Few Words About Breasts” (whose slam-bam ending was shamelessly swiped by Lionel Shriver in her novel So Much for That) and continuing through her sharp-eyed, hilarious work for The New Yorker and Huffington Post, some of which was collected in I Feel Bad About My Neck (2006) and I Remember Nothing (2011). Here was a woman who could be smart and funny on deadline. I loved her ear for the rhythm of a sentence and her eye for everyday nuttiness and sadness. I wanted to learn from her. I wanted to imitate her. I wanted to be her.

Except, probably, for the miserable marriage to that two-timing bum Carl Bernstein. Which, of course, she turned into a best-selling novel and hit movie, both called Heartburn. Take that, Watergate Boy.

You can listen here to an excerpt from the title essay of I Remember Nothing. (Thank you, Amazon.) And here—because you know how much I love umlauts—is an excerpt from one of my favorite recent Ephron essays for The New Yorker, a Stieg Larsson parody called “The Girl Who Fixed the Umlaut”:

Salander opened the door a crack and spent several paragraphs trying to decide whether to let Blomkvist in. Many italic thoughts flew through her mind. Go away. Perhaps. So what.Etc.

“Please,” he said. “I must see you. The umlaut on my computer isn’t working.”

He was cradling an iBook in his arms. She looked at him. He looked at her. She looked at him. He looked at her. And then she did what she usually did when she had run out of italic thoughts: she shook her head.

“I can’t really go on without an umlaut,” he said. “We’re in Sweden.”

But it wasn’t all wit on wry for Ephron. Read or listen to “Pentimento,” her essay about Lillian Hellman, in I Remember Nothing, to see how Ephron could illuminate the contradictions of a legendary personality and eulogize the painful end of a long friendship.

The New Yorker’s Ariel Levy, who interviewed Ephron for a 2009 profile in the magazine, has written a graceful remembrance. The New York Timesobituary, by Charles McGrath, is comprehensive and revealing. (I’d forgotten all about Ephron’s directing debut, This Is My Life, which flopped.)

Then there’s NPR’s tribute, which combines a report by Neda Ulaby (whose name would no doubt have tickled Nora Ephron no end) with an intro and outro by “Morning Edition” anchor Renee Montagne. In the outro, at about 3:23, Montagne flubs the title of Ephron’s final essay collection, calling it I Can’t Remember Anything.

I wish Nora Ephron were here. She’d have the perfect comeback.

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More on Ephron: Noreen Malone at New York magazine and Emily Yoffe atSlate (both via Nancy Nall).

 

If You Give a Dog an Umlaut

I spotted this Yöghund display in the window of Holistic Veterinary Care here in Oakland.

 

 

Let’s zoom in on the logo:

The Yöghund website puts it slightly differently: “Yöghund is the first frozen yoghurt treat made for dogs.” A long-overdue breakthrough in gelato-lacto-canine nutrition, I’m sure you’ll agree.

But wait—is it yogurt or yoghurt? And what’s up with the dotted O—the Spot spots, you might call them?

As it happens, I’d just read Lynne Murphy’s recent post at Separated by a Common Language about “yog(h)urt,” so I was already pondering why Americans usually spell it yogurt and Brits spell it yoghurt. Here’s some background from Lynne:

This word comes to English from Turkish yoğurt, but English doesn’t have the letter ğ or the sound that goes with it, so we had to figure out what to do with it. I’m relying on Wikipedia here, but it says that in some dialect(s) ğ is not pronounced as its own sound, but instead lengthens the preceding vowel. That would explain why it turns up as yaourt in French (and has also made appearances with that spelling in English). In another dialect(s?), ğ is pronounced as [ɰ], which is a velar approximant. So, it’s like a [w], but without the lip-rounding. This is all to say that it's not a hard-g sound at all.

Hmm, no umlauts in evidence—just the little Turkish flourish over the G. As for the UK/US spelling distinction, Lynne writes:

I can't help but think that the relative popularity of the yoghurtspelling in the UK has something to do with how its pronunciation is evolving. … This is to say: a frequent, modern British pronunciation of the word has a first syllable that rhymes with dog (in the same dialect, at least. The [ɒ] vowel ofBritish Received Pronunciation (RP) does not really exist in American English.) …

Americans pronounce it more like the older pronunciation--except without that cent(e)ring of the vowel that RP does. And if you're still having a hard time imagining any of these sounds, listen to the first two pronunciations of yogurt at Forvo. The first is the modern British, the second American.  Actually, Forvo also has a Turkish pronunciation, the vowel of which doesn't directly correspond to any of the English ones (it's this one).

Still no umlauts! I think we may safely conclude that what we have with Yöghund is yet another case of gratuitous decorative dotting. The company that makes Yöghund isn’t in an umlaut-using country like Finland or Germany. And it isn’t in a “yoghurt” environment, either: it’s based in Exeter, New Hampshire.

Even without the dot-confusion, Yöghund poses a pronunciation challenge. The -hund suffix obviously signifies “dog,” but to aspirate the H you need something like a glottal stop after the Yög-, and that’s awkward for English speakers. (It starts to sound like “yoga-hund.”) Of course, if you take the umlaut literally you also have to pronounce the O through semi-pursed lips. And that’s a lot of work for lazy American mouths.

I don’t have a dog, so I can’t give you a report about the product itself. But in case you were wondering, here’s good news from the FAQ:

I thought dogs were lactose intolerant? Won’t Yöghund upset my dog’s stomach?

Dogs are lactose intolerant, but rather than upset a dog’s stomach, Yöghund may actually settle it!

Hürräh!

 

Word of the Week: Strass

Strass: A hard, brilliant, lead-containing glass used in making artificial gems. Also called “paste” or “diamante.”

Sources agree that “strass” was named for its inventor, but not on who he was. The OED and Encyclopedia Britannica identify him as Josef Strasser, an 18th-century Viennese goldsmith. Wikipedia doesn’t mention Josef: it claims strass was named for an 18th-century Alsatian jeweler, Georg Friedrich Strass. Maybe both Strass and Strasser solved the problem simultaneously. In any case, the eponym is satisfyingly apt: Strasse means “street” in German, and strass is often used to create a pavé (paved) effect.

“Strass” (or French “stras”) has long been used in Europe to describe artificial gemstones, but its more-recent popularity in the United States appears to be linked to shoe designer Christian Louboutin, whose crystal-paved pumps—which can cost north of $3,000 a pair—have been a red-carpet sensation. Accordingly to the official Louboutin Twitter account, the designer has created a pump that’s strassed all over—even on the famous red sole.

I try to stay up-to-date on such things, but I admit that “strass” was new to me until I read a post by Dustbury about pavé women’s pumps from the shouty shoe brand HERSTAR that celebrate professional sports teams. Here’s the Los Angeles Lakers edition:

Yours for less than 10 percent of the cost of the Loubies!

The copy is as ostentatious as the ornamentation (punctuation sic):

Encrusted, dazzling, and intensely mesmerizing with every step, these elite pumps command a presence of their own. Fully hand strassed in luxurious, hand selected Middle Eastern crystals, then offset by a sky-high 6” heel and 3" internal platform; these glittering heels glisten on the court and off. They are simply magical to behold.

And that is how I learned that “strass” can also be a verb.

Other examples from around the Internet:

“I strassed my own wedding shoes using genuine swarovski crystals and saved a TON of money.” (Wedding Wire)

“Here are final pics and video of Emily’s Lady Peeps painted a custom color then strassed in crystal AB Swarovski rhinestones.” (Urban Bling)

“Sophie and Ava’s strassing service is perfect for the doll who wants a lot of bling for a lot less money than it would cost for the retail price!” (Shatterproof Glass Dolls)

The “strass” category on Etsy depicts some non-footwear options, too.

Early artificial diamonds were rock crystals gathered from the Rhine River. But “rhinestone” to describe those crystals or their imitations postdates “strass” by half a century: the first appearance of “strass” in an English-language publication was in 1820, while “rhinestone” didn’t appear until 1871. (The German Rheinkiessel, or “Rhein pebble,” first appeared around 1780.)

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Urban Dictionary has a different definition for “strass”: “Stress that is so annoying that it’s a huge pain in the ass.” Which, admittedly, might result from wearing a pair of six-inch stilettos.

 

Junk and Pride

A couple of language notes from San Francisco Pride, the annual celebration that culminated yesterday with the Pride Parade from Market and Beale streets to Civic Center.

I spotted “Touch Our Junk!” on the marquee of the Nob Hill Theatre (not on the parade route). The façade was festooned with rainbow bunting.

 

Nob Hill Theatre, 729 Bush Street, San Francisco. (Shot through my windshield.)

“Junk” as a slang synonym for “male genitals” became a “cri de crotch” (as the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus put it) in late 2010, after a software engineer named John Tyner refused the full-body security scan at San Diego International Airport. “If you touch my junk, I’m gonna have you arrested,” Tyner told the screener. The trope quickly evolved into “Don’t touch my junk!” The Nob Hill Theatre marquee playfully inverted (ahem) the quote, turning a threat into an invitation.

As Ben Zimmer wrote in a December 2010 “On Language” column in theNew York Times, “junk” had been introduced into the lexicon of genital euphemisms in 1983, in a gay-themed short story by Ethan Mordden called “The Hustler”:

Since it’s doubtful that the young popularizers of junk were familiar with Mordden’s fictional forerunners, something about the sound and sense of the word must have made it ripe for reinvention. Tom Dalzell, whose latest book is “Damn the Man!: Slang of the Oppressed in America,” sees junk catching on euphemistically: “To diminish the shock, we call the genitals childish names or use vague and sometimes coy euphemisms —down there, unit or thing.” The Stanford linguist Arnold Zwicky concurs, adding stuff as another euphemistic model forjunk. Unlike these other terms, however, junk is a harsh monosyllable evocative of four-letter taboos.

The other language innovation I observed was Bay Area OccuPride, whose name is a nifty blend of occupy (the American Dialect Society’s 2011 Word of the Year) and pride, the one-word tag for “celebration of gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender identity and achievements.”

 

OccuPride’s adaptation of the gay rainbow flag.

OccuPride was formed to protest the commercialization and corporatization of the Pride observances.

As for “gay pride,” the phrase first appeared in print in the Washington Post’s June 29, 1970, coverage of a march that “was the climax of what its organizers called ‘Gay Pride Week’.” (Note the use of quotation marks around Gay Pride Week.) “Pride” was chosen because it’s the antithesis of “shame”; earlier slogans had included “gay is good” and “gay liberation.” The success of “pride” is often credited to Brenda Howard, an activist in New York City who helped organize the first-anniversary commemoration, in 1970, of the Stonewall riots.

“Pride” is also, of course, the collective noun for a group of lions. This association has been made explicit in some usages of “gay pride.”

Gay pride of lions bracelet. Flickr photo by itsalovelycake.

 

According to the OED, “pride” is also an obsolete term for sexual desire (“esp. in a female animal; heat”). It’s also one of the seven deadly sins. Columnist and author Dan Savage wrote in a June 1999 issue of The Stranger:

Webster’s defines pride as “inordinate self-esteem,” or “a reasonable and justifiable self-respect." Whether inordinate or justifiable, pride was an effective antidote: as more gays and lesbians committed the sin of pride, fewer were victimized by shame.

 

To Sleep, Perchance to Zzz

Remember when Z was the official letter of hip-hop and all things outlaw? As in Bratz, Starz, and Boyz II Men? And how that got kind of tired? Now Z has reclaimed its role as the official symbol of sleep, as we see here.

ZzzQuil is a new nighttime “sleep aid” from Vicks, the maker of NyQuil cough medicines. According to the website, “ZzzQuil contains diphenhydramine HCI, which is a big word for a small compound that helps you sleep.” The flavor is called Warming Berry, which is obviously very different from Cool Berry.

There are no pronunciation tips on the site, so it’s going to be tough to ask for it by name, as cats used to do with Meow Mix. Is it zee-zee-zee-quil, zees-quil, or [buzzing sound]-quil? In the UK is it zed-zed-zed-quil?

Multiple Zs have been an onomatopoetic representation of snoring, and by extension of sleep, for many decades. The OED’s first citation is from 1924. “Catching some Zs” to mean “getting some sleep”—a U.S. colloquialism, according to the OED—dates back to the early 1960s.

Here’s another brand that uses multiple Zs to indicate restfulness:

 

 

The E-Zzz Sleep pillowcase is made of cotton flannel and has a flap that drapes over your face. The company says the product “solves a problem, fulfills a need, makes sense, looks and feels good, is new and unique and makes a dramatic difference in your comfort and the quality of sleep.” Probably not recommended for insomniacs with a suffocation phobia.

 

 

There are at least four live trademarks in the U.S. for Z-Tech, but I found only one for ZZZ Tech: ZZZ Tech Sleep Lab, in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. “Catch your ZZZ’s – count your blessings,” reads a caption on the website.

 

Bedzzz, on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland, appears to be dormant. The declining Zs may be a tipoff.

 

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ZzzQuil via The Impulsive Buy.

 

On the Visual Thesaurus: Bikini and Beyond

Hello, summer! And hello to what the ladymags like to call “bikini season.” My new column for the Visual Thesaurus investigates how the bikini got its name (in 1946 France) and why the word has been such a productive contributor to our vocabulary.

Access is restricted to subscribers. Here’s an itsy-bitsy excerpt:

Eventually, “-kini” acquired enough independent meaning that it became detached from the concept of skimpiness. In 1985, swimsuit designer Anne Cole introduced a suit that combined a bikini-style bottom with a relatively demure, hip-length tank top. The company called it the “tankini,” a descriptor that has endured. Or consider the full-coverage Burqini: a portmanteau of “burqa” and “bikini,” it’s the registered trademark for a full-body suit—only the face and hands are revealed—introduced in 2007 by a Lebanese-Australian swimsuit designer to meet the needs of active Muslim women. The Burqini (known generically as the burkini or the veilkini) was popularized by a non-Muslim, the British celebrity chef Nigella Lawson, who told reporters she wore the garment to prevent sunburn. Also innocent (and also a trademark): Babi-kini, a U.S. company that makes wee swimsuits for infants and toddlers.

Read the rest of “Bikini and Beyond.”

Bonus link #1: My 2008 blog post on bikinis and their -kini kin.

Bonus link #2: Why do men’s magazines love flag bikinis?

 

Names in the News: Surface

On Monday, at a shrouded-in-mystery press event in Los Angeles, Microsoft introduced a new tablet device called Surface. The device will run a version of Windows 8, the new Microsoft operating system due out this fall. It’s clearly positioned to compete with (or even prevail over) Apple’s iPad.

Image from Bloomberg Businessweek. Other colors will also be available.

The Surface has a touchscreen, but it also has a thin, detachable cover that flips down and doubles as a keyboard. And there’s a kickstand to allow easy viewing of videos. Those features alone would make me a fan.*

And the name? I like it.

I don’t loooove it, but that’s not important. Remember: a successful name is an arranged marriage, not a love match. Besides, this is Microsoft, not some perky, quirky startup. A touch of gravitas is welcome here, especially when you remember what happened when the company tried to get cute. 

Microsoft Bob, introduced in 1995 as a user-friendly interface for Windows 95 (aka Worst Windows Version Ever). Dumb name, bad product. “Imagine a whole operating system designed around Clippy, and you get the crux of Microsoft Bob,” wrote Time in a 2010 roundup of “50 Worst Inventions.”

 

“Surface” sounds smooth, elegant, and well designed. Its French roots serve it well: It could be the name of an architectural firm or a day spa. (The word literally means “above the form.”) As a noun, “Surface” draws attention to the device’s near-two-dimensionality and its glossy exterior; as a verb it suggests ascent: to surface is to come up for air. “Surface” also subtly reinforces the Windows brand: windows are all surface, all transparency.

“Surface” even incorporates “surf,” although I’m unsure whether anyone still says “surf the Internet.”**

Best of all, the name is distinctive. It doesn’t attempt to ape the Apple nomenclature (which by now is nothing if not predictable), and it sounds like a fresh beginning.

Except that it isn’t … not quite. Microsoft originally registered the Surface trademark in 2007 and used it for an LED “smart table” it developed with Samsung. The table is still around; it’s now called PixelSense.

Now, that is an uninspired name. Give me a ring, Microsoft. We’ll talk.

The Surface announcement raises another interesting question: what will be the generic term for all the new category-spanning hybrid devices in our future? In its rave review of the Surface, Buzzfeed wondered, facetiously, whether the professional version would be called a laptablet, a laptoplet, or a tabltop. (How about a tabloid?) We already have non-facetious usages of “phablet,” from “phone” and “tablet”; ABI Research defines the phablet as “larger than a smartphone but bigger than a tablet.”

Mike Pope considers the issue in a post about Surface at his Evolving English II blog:

We can reflect on the fact that while iPod has some small traction as a generic term for a digital-music player, Apple has not succeeded in making iPad, or even just pad, the generic term for this class of computer.

Related: My June 2009 post on the Microsoft search engine Bing.

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* I know I’m on the wrong side of history, but I detest those smeary touchscreens and the jabbing gestures they require. And I’ve never figured out how to hold an iPad without getting shoulder/neck/arm/wrist cramps.

** As Twitter friend Ian Preston reminded me, it’s not just surf, it’s surf ace, “suggesting browsing excellence.”

 

What makes a bad name bad?

I write about all kinds of names, including the bad ones. I believe every company and product deserves a distinctive, memorable name—and no company deserves a name that’s embarrassing or awkward.

But what makes a bad name bad? Well, unlike Tolstoy’s unhappy families, each bad name is not bad in its own unique way. Here are the badness patterns I see most frequently:

Counterintuitive spelling. A coined name like Nyoombl needs to be pronounced phonetically (if at all), but it isn’t—not by a long shot. Reasonable assumptions about English pronunciation dictate that Virgance be pronounced with a hard G, but it isn’t. We look at Brayola and mentally rhyme it with Crayola, but that’s not what the company wants us to do. Moral: Don’t make us work this hard. It’s a name, not a cryptography test.

Inappropriate connotation. If you know nothing about what Infegy actually does, you might deduce that it had something to do with “infamy,” “effigy,” or “infect.” When I look at Reniquity, all I see is “iniquity”—over and over again. FlubIt suggests failure, GloSmart evokes furniture polish … and those interpretations have nothing to do with the companies in question. (Don’t even get me started on Analtech.) Moral: Consult several dictionaries, not just one. Make one of them a slang dictionary. Then get some advice from someone who understands language.

Awkwardness. These are the names that put the em-PHA-sis on the wrong syl-LA-ble or force incompatible sounds to cohabit. They’re a frequent consequence of machine-generated names, most of which simply fuse word parts into artificial blends without considering logic or ease of pronunciation. But humans can create awkward names, too: consider Herdict, Mathnasium, and AbbVie. (And see The Name Inspector for more examples.) Moral: If the name flunks the telephone test, it’s not going to inspire positive word-of-mouth.

The bandwagon effect. So many names end in -ly. So many names end in -ify. Remember, a name needs to be distinctive and memorable, and you won’t achieve those goals by doing what all the other kids are doing. Moral: Do some research into naming trends. And get a professional opinion.

What about cross-cultural naming gaffes, you may be wondering. Contrary to widespread belief, they are relatively rare. (That story about the Chevy Nova doing poorly in Spanish-speaking countries? It’s a myth.) If you’re taking your company or product global, you should certainly invest in a linguistic screen to rule out a major blunder. But, as we’ve seen, people can accept a brand name that means “cease and desist” in Swahili (Hulu) or one that suggests “oral sex” in Russian (Mondelez). The bad names I see—and I do see a lot of them—are making mischief in English, not Swahili or Thai or Malay.