My guest post for Duets Blog yesterday (helpfully tagged “mixed bag of nuts”) looked at the epidemic of copycat names—in particular, the 193 names ending in -ly that I’d documented on Pinterest.
One day later, there are 196 -ly names on the board. I spotted two of them not in TechCrunch, my near-bottomless resource, but on the shelves of my neighborhood Safeway.
Brightly paper towels promise “virtually lint-free shine.”
Softly toilet paper.
The Guys and Dolls fan in me hoped Safeway also carried Nicely-Nicely paper cups. No dice.
The character was called Nicely-Nicely Jones in the original Damon Runyon stories. For more on Runyon and his creations, here’s a wonderful appreciation by Adam Gopnik, published in the March 2, 2009, issue of the New Yorker.
Comments