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)

*

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.

*

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)

*

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)

*

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.)

 

Comments

[Jill C]

Speaking of YSL, you still have a week to see his incredible collection at the Denver Art Museum, the only North American venue for the show. Simply spectacular. Many pieces from the 60s and beyond I'd be thrilled to wear today.

http://ysldenver.com/

Jill C