Fritinancy

Word of the Week: Precariat

Precariat: “People whose lives are precarious because they have little or no job security.” (Source: Word Spy.) A portmanteau of precarious and proletariat.

Precariat was first used in Europe in the late 1980s to describe “predominantly nonunionized clerical and service employees, the partially employed, and the unemployed” (Socialist Review: Volume 20). In 2011, the British economist Guy Standing (his actual title: professor of economic security at the University of Bath, England) made it the subject of his book The Precariat: The Dangerous New Class. In the first chapter, Standing describes the growth of the precariat as a result of globalization:

Millions of people, in affluent and emerging market economies, entered the precariat, a new phenomenon even if it had shades of the past. The precariat was not part of the ‘working class’ or the ‘proletariat’. The latter terms suggest a society consisting mostly of workers in long-term, stable, fixed-hour jobs with established routes of advancement, subject to unionisation and collective agreements, with job titles their fathers and mothers would have understood, facing local employers whose names and features they were familiar with.

The term has crossed the Atlantic. New York Times columnist David Brooks used it in a February 11, 2014, op-ed:

Thirty years ago, a vast majority of Americans identified as members of the middle class. But since 1988, the percentage of Americans who call themselves members of the “have-nots” has doubled. Today’s young people are more likely to believe success is a matter of luck, not effort, than earlier generations.

These pessimistic views bring to mind a concept that’s been floating around Europe: the Precariat. According to the British academic Guy Standing, the Precariat is the growing class of people living with short-term and part-time work with precarious living standards and “without a narrative of occupational development.” They live with multiple forms of insecurity and are liable to join protest movements across the political spectrum.

One of precariat’s source words, “precarious,” entered the English lexicon around 1640, when it was a legal term meaning “held or enjoyed by the favor of and at the pleasure of another person.” A French Catholic monk, Léonce Crenier (1888-1963), promoted a theological concept he called “precarity”—a condition of existence without predicability; the term was adopted in the early 1950s by the American Catholic activist Dorothy Day.

Proletariat was back-formed from proletarian—“a member of the lowest class” (the meaning of proletarius in Latin)—which had entered English in the mid-17th century. Proletariat took another 200 years to appear; in 1856, it came to mean “indigent wage earners.” Karl Marx used it to describe wage-earners whose only source of wealth is their labor.

The precariat has a patron saint, San Precario, created in February 2004 by Italian “post-socialists.” The feast day of San Precario is February 29.

Effigy of San Precario, 2006 EuroMayDay parade.

 

Name in the News: Oiselle

Last week Kara Goucher, a top American distance runner and two-time Olympian, announced she was leaving Nike, her sponsor for more than 12 years. Her new sponsor is a small Seattle company—it has just 10 full-time employees—that sells only women’s running apparel: Oiselle.

In the world of elite runners and their fans, this was huge news. I probably speak for the rest of us when I say my response to the story—discovered via a tweet from author/runner Rose George—was “Oi-what?”

 

The logo contains a clue: oiselle, according to the company’s About page, is “a French word for bird.” (It’s not in my French-English dictionary. According to my French-speaking resource Jessica Stone Levy, who has a better dictionary, it translates to “hen-bird,” whatever that means, and “the familiar meaning is damsel.” Adds Jessica: “I would say it’s lucky that not even a French major knows that meaning of the term.” Even a French minor knows the common word for bird, oiseau; one online source suggests that oiselle is the female form of the word, and this source gives the meaning of oisellerie as “bird-catching” or “bird-breeding.” )

As for the pronunciation and backstory, here’s Oiselle founder and CEO Sally Bergeson, herself a serious amateur runner (2:59 marathon):

In hindsight, it would be untrue to say that I haven’t cared deeply about running fast and even winning. But for me, and the small family that makes up Oiselle, the sport has always been about something more. At various times it’s our therapy, escape, religion, and girl time. But perhaps simply enough, it’s been our sense of freedom. And thus the name Oiselle (pronounced wa-zell). A French word for bird, it alludes to that feeling of weightlessness that most runners know and love. That sense of flight – when the legs go fast and the heart goes free.

This is a great story, and it goes a long way toward justifying a name that breaks all the conventional rules: it’s obscure, hard to pronounce, and hard to spell.

Sometimes, though, a “difficult” name is the perfect choice. And this strikes me as one of those times.

As I’ve written in the past, context counts. Here’s what I wrote then about another peculiar-seeming name, Melvyl:

University of California librarians didn’t need to be told the etymology behind Melvyl, the name of UC’s online library system: They recognized the name of Melvil Dewey, father of the Dewey Decimal System. Dewey’s first name is obscure to us laypeople, but that’s OK with librarians. They probably appreciate being spoken to in a sort of code.

“Obscure to outsiders, resonant with insiders” is what’s going on with Oiselle, too.

Oiselle (the company) is bent on cornering a very specific niche market: women for whom running is central to their lives. Their love of running sets them apart; they may refer to one another as “sisters.” They’re a bit obsessive (a 2:59 marathon, if you please!).

For this audience, a brand name gains value by sounding special, distinctive, even rare. The brand name becomes something of a shibboleth: “a word of pronunciation that distinguishes people of one group or class from those of another.” If you stumble over the pronunciation of Oiselle, you’re obviously not a member of the club.

Nevertheless, Oiselle isn’t elitist about its quirky verbal identity. The website is full of playfully avian brand extensions that help outsiders feel like insiders:

• Oiselle employees are “the flock.”
• The company blog is called “Bird Is the Word.”
• The name of founder Sally Bergeson’s blog is “Volée,” which can mean “the flight of birds” or “volley.”
• Customers who share photos of themselves wearing Oiselle apparel use the hashtag #FlyStyle—a nice double entendre.
• A new collection of lighter-weight running apparel is called Flyte.

Then there’s the -elle ending of Oiselle: French for “she,” it’s a clue about who’s being talked to (and who isn’t). Not for nothing, I like that Oiselle suggests “gazelle,” a fast, graceful animal that lives to run.

Birds aren’t rare in commerce. There’s Angry Birds, of course, and its chirp-alikes (although Flappy Bird flaps no more). A popular sprinkler brand is called Rain Bird. And Twitter’s bluebird is familiar even to those who disdain social media.

Oiselle takes a common, even overplayed metaphor and makes it feel fresh, authentic, and slightly exotic. Yes, you may stumble the first time you try to say the word. But runners stumble, too—and if they’re dedicated, they pick themselves up and press on.

(But it’s a good thing Oiselle is in Seattle and not Portland. The “put a bird on it” jokes would be never-ending.)

A “difficult” name like Oiselle requires a deep, even stubborn commitment on the part of management. It can easily become a liability if you don’t cultivate it and continually infuse it with fresh significance.

Most of all, though, it helps to know your audience. Are they risk-takers and experience-seekers? Then you may want to take that risk and create that experience.

Follow-ups

Some stuff I’ve seen recently that reminds me of stuff I’ve written about previously:

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X & Y names: Tyler Doyle of A Hundred Monkeys notes the rise of “the blank-and-blank restaurant” in the Bay Area: Fish & Farm, Flour + Water, Box and Bells, Bourbon and Beef, et al. I wrote in 2010 about “X + Y restaurants,” and I have a Pinterest board of X & Y retail names (59 and counting!). 

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Heroes:  Quidsi, the parent company of a clutch of e-tailers (Diapers.com, Soap.com, Look.com, et al.), thinks very highly of its workforce and “culture.” Its employees aren’t just model citizens. They aren’t merely heroes. They’re superheroes! With … superpowers?

 

Quidsi: Latin for “what if.”

 

I wrote about “hero” worship for the Visual Thesaurus in September 2013; I published follow-ups in October 2013 and earlier this month.

By the way, for an interesting take on “our culture” as a code word to screen out older (i.e., over 30) job applicants, see “The Brutal Ageism of Tech” in the New Republic.

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Not your close relative’s X: Intacct, a “cloud accounting company,” wants you to know it ain’t no dinosaur.

 

“This ain’t your grandpa’s financial system.”

 

Earlier posts about “Not your close relative’s X” here and here.

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Super-comparatives: Harry’s—cute name for a shaving company—isn’t just sharp. Or sharper. It’s sharperer. And less expensiver. Clever branding or risky linguistic overreach?

 

Note the apostrophe on the razor handle.

All the self-consciously hip brands are doing it, of course. Here’s a promo for ABC’s “Revenge”; the tagline is “Later. Sexier. Revengier.” 

 

 

Hat tip to Ben Zimmer for the video link.

See my previous posts on closerer and deliciouser, Maker’s-er, funner-er, gooderest, creamier-er-er, mobiler, and huge-ier (et al.).

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Food portmanteaus: Taco Bell is testing a quesarito (a hybrid quesadilla/burrito), which will come as old news to Chipotle customers. The owners of a couple of Shoprite markets in New Jersey claim to have invented the donnoli (hybrid donut/cannoli).  At the Donut Fest in Chicago back in January, an NPR reporter tasted a doughscuit (“an impossible mix of doughnut-fried sweetness and crumbly biscuitness”) And the Portland, Maine, bakery Little Bigs got slapped down in its attempt to sell a cronut imitation as a crauxnut. Little Bigs asked customers to suggest a new name. The winner: C&D (for “cease and desist”).

And this just in: The New York Times reports on the cragel (croissant + bagel), the mallomac (Mallomar + macaron), the scuffin (scone + muffin), and other hybrid baked goods.

For more food mashups, see my most recent post about the “frissant.”

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Caps and consonants: Yep, still a THNG! DSPTCH sells camera straps, bags, and related accessories in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood. Or is that DGPTCH?

 

Meanwhile, Japanese retail giant Uniqlo has launched SPRZ NY, “a new global project where art and fashion meet, creating something magical.”

 

Spores? Spritz? Something Preternaturally Random and Zany? Nope, nope, nope. Surprise!

More retail vowellessness here, here, here, and here. And here’s my 2012 post about vowelless restaurant names.

Word of the Week: WWOOFing

WWOOFing: Doing voluntary work on an organic farm for a short period. From the organization WWOOF, World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (sometimes called Willing Workers on Organic Farms).

“I have done, like, WWOOFing in the past.” – Actress Shailene Woodley, interviewed by Neda Ulaby for NPR’s “Morning Edition,” March 21, 2014 (audio).

WWOOF was founded in 1971 in the UK as “Working Weekends on Organic Farms.” The founder, a London secretary named Sue Coppard, “recognised the need for people like herself,  who did not have the means or the opportunity, to access the countryside and support the organic movement,” according to the global WWOOF website. When volunteers began staying longer than a weekend, the name was changed to “Willing Workers on Organic Farms.”According to a Wikipedia entry, the word “workers” ran afoul of some countries’ labor and immigration laws. The name was changed again, in 2000, to World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. At least 63 countries on five continents host WWOOF organizations; according to the WWOOF USA website, there are 1,840 host farms in the United States. Participants are called WWOOFers and their activity is WWOOFing.

 

WWOOF “is a new riff on ‘volutourism’”—also spelled voluntourism—writes Steve Holt in a March 18, 2014, article for TakePart, the digital division of the movie production company Participant Media. Holt writes that according in the most recent farm census, U.S. farms reported taking in $566 million in income from agritourism.

WWOOF is a membership organization for farms and volunteers; registration fees range between $5 and $50. No other money changes hands; volunteers receive accommodations and meals during their farm stints.

 

Introducing Sentrant

I’m pleased to announce the launch of the Sentrant Introducer Sheath from Medtronic, Inc. Sentrant was named by my consulting firm, Wordworking.

Not all new product names compete on grocery shelves or in the app store. Some, like Sentrant, are meant to appeal to a niche audience—in this case, endovascular surgeons around the world.

Medtronic, which was founded in Minnesota in 1949, is the world’s largest medical-device company, with offices around the globe. Until Sentrant, the company had not sold an introducer sheath—a device used to introduce any of a number of instruments into the body, usually through a small vessel.

After I met with the Medtronic team in Santa Rosa, California, I developed a naming brief to guide the creative work. Our naming objectives—what Medtronic hoped the name would communicate—included “effortless,” “leakproof,” “navigating difficult terrain,” “kink resistant,” “flexible,” “seriousness,” and “prevents leaks passively.” Competitors’ names used “flow,” “seal,” “flex,” and “check,” so we had to avoid those words and their derivatives. The negative outcome “leak” was also undesirable as a vocabulary source.

With all the obvious directions off the table, I explored other words: security, impermeability, guidance. I looked at words whose letter shapes (a slender I or V) suggested the pinpoint accuracy of the Medtronic device. I considered metaphorical names like Passport and Pilot.

One of the more promising directions turned out to involve the concept of “guarding”: the sheath protects the instrument it conveys, and it also protects the body’s vessels and organs. Sentrant emerged from this exploration. A blend of sentry and entrant, it combines the concepts of protection and entry. As an invented word, it suggests innovation, yet its meaning is apparent. Its classical roots make it appropriate for a worldwide audience that uses many Latin or Latin-derived words as a lingua franca.

Furthermore, Medtronic was already selling products whose names end in -ant, including Valiant, Reliant, and Endurant. Although the client team had not specified that the new name needed to resemble other Medtronic names, the similarity turned out to be an asset. Now surgeons familiar with the other Medtronic names would recognize Sentrant as having the same trustworthy parentage.

You’ll notice that Sentrant does not communicate all of the naming objectives. It doesn’t say “flexibility” or “kink resistance,” for example. Why? Because no single name can, or should, convey four concepts. That would blur the message into incomprehensibility. Instead, Medtronic uses Sentrant as the title of the story, and tells the rest of the tale in the product description.

March Linkfest

“We’ve turned learning vocabulary into an addictive game,” says Vocabulary.com, which this week announced its new app (iPhone and iPad only, for now). Vocabulary.com’s chief technology officer, Mark Tinkler, told Fast Company that some people play “over 10 hours a day. It’s crazy.”

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The name of the 131-year-old Orient-Express—the subject of a Paul Theroux travel memoir and an Agatha Christie murder mystery—will no longer be attached to hotels and restaurants. The new name, Belmond, was developed by AgencySacks and “is derived from Latin for beautiful and world,” according to Belmond’s chief marketing officer, Ralph Abruzza. Read an interview with Abruzza about the name change—which will not affect the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express train—and a backgrounder that includes the brand-launch presentation. News to me: Belmond, né Orient-Express, owns New York’s ‘21’ Club. (Skift)

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Moriarty. Mordred. Voldemort. Mordor. Morlock. What’s the deal with “mor,” asks James Harbeck: “Is there something to the syllable that suits it for melancholy, darkness, and villainy?” (The Week)

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Is Netflix responsible for the rise of “queue” in American English? (New Republic)

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You’ve probably heard about Facebook COO Sheryl “Lean In” Sandberg’s campaign to ban the “bossy” descriptor for girls and women. Perhaps you’ve tangentially wondered, as I did, why cows are frequently called “Bossy,” at least in the U.S. There are two theories, and “no matter which of the two theories you pick, you end up in Latin.” (World Wide Words)

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In China, LinkedIn is “Ling Ying” (literally “lead elite”) and BMW is “Bao Ma” (“precious horse”). How branding consultancies manage the Chinese language gap.  (Advertising Age, via Marjanne Pearson.)

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From Pandemic to Yellow Top: 41 brand names given to drugs in “The Wire.” (Mental Floss, via Wordnik.)

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And speaking of fictional drug names, here’s a great big old Wikipedia list of them. (I wrote about one of those names, Ablixa, last year.)

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Languages that have contributed to English vocabulary: a nifty historical infographic (Lexicon Valley)

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If you must do naming research, here’s how not to do it. (Tip: Never ask “Is this name easy to say?”) (Lexicon blog)

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I attended my first roller derby match a couple of weekends ago, and couldn’t believe my ears when the announcer said that Fatal Dreidel would be skating for the Oakland Outlaws. Not only is that her actual nom de derby, it turns out there’s a whole subgenre of Jewish derby pseudonyms, including Mayhem Bialik, Yom Tripper, and Hebrewno Mars. (Jewniverse, via Diane Fischler.)

For more on derby names, see my May 2011 linkfest and law professor Dave Fagundes’s “Talk Derby to Me” (great title!), on “intellectual property norms governing roller derby pseudonyms,” published in 2012 in the Texas Law Review.

On the Visual Thesaurus: What X-plains All Those X-Names?

My new column for the Visual Thesaurus, “The X Factor,” was inspired by the announcement last month of a new hybrid mobile device, the Nokia X. Why “X”? And why do many brand names depend on the twenty-fourth letter of the English alphabet?

And, by the way, where did “Brand X” come from?

Full access to the column is restricted to subscribers. Here’s an excerpt:

What makes X a branding elixir? Rarity is part of the story: fewer English words begin with X than with any other letter, which means an X brand will often have the cachet of distinctiveness.

X is also flexible. It can be pronounced /ex/ (Xfinity) or /z/ (Xyience Xenergy drink) or even /sh/ or /ch/, as in Chinese or Mexican names. Its meaning is adaptable, too.  “X is pornography, the drug ecstasy, a former spouse, the signature of illiteracy, X out, cross out, the cross, an equation's unknown solution, off the charts, extra, extreme, and (in the exception exposing rule) kisses,” wrote advertising critic Leslie Savan in her 2005 book about pop language, Slam Dunks and No-Brainers. In 1637, the mathematician and philosopher René Descartes was the first to use x, y, and z to represent unknown quantities corresponding to the known quantities a, b, and c. By the 19th century, X had come to mean “unknown” in extra-mathematical contexts as well. In 1950, it acquired risqué overtones when a British regulatory agency recommended an X rating for adult films; the classification was adopted in the U.S. in 1968.

Read the rest of “The X Factor.”

Related: Read my (non-paywalled) column on “XOXO,” the symbol for “hugs and kisses.”

Possibly related, but not included in the column: the popularity of baby names Xander, Xavier, Ximena, and Xiomara has surged in the last decade. (Hat tip: Baby Name Voyager.)

 

Word of the Week: Platisher

Platisher: A new media hybrid that combines elements of an open publishing platform—such as WordPress or TypePad—with characteristics of a traditional publisher such as the New York Times. A portmanteau of platform and publisher.

Platisher is the rare neologism that can be traced to a single creator on a specific date. The word was first used in “Rise of the Platishers,” a February 7, 2014, post for Re/Code by Jonathan Glick, CEO of the “subject-based social-media network” Sulia:

What should we call a publisher — like Gawker — that provides a tech platform on which anybody, not just its staff, can create content? What should we call a tech platform — like Medium* — that has a team of editors and pays some contributors to create content?

It’s something in between a publisher and a platform — something that weaves together the strengths of both.

A platisher.

Don’t laugh. Okay, you can laugh, but we still need a name. There’s something new going on right now. A new generation of media companies is experimenting with opening their content-management systems to outsiders. Tech platforms are realizing the benefits of combining algorithms with editors and experts. This is resulting in a new hybrid.

Hybrid phenomenon apparently requires hybrid name, at least if you’re working on deadline.

The response to Glick’s invention was quick and mostly merciless.

Gawker pointed with alarm to platisher in a “Word Terrorism” post published the same day as Glick’s “Rise of the Platishers”:

What do you call an online publisher that also wants people to create content (for free) using the publisher’s platform? As this situation applies to all websites with comments, you could probably call these publishers “website publishers.” But that's not stupid enough for the Tech Press, so today we were introduced to the make-believe word platisher, which is apparently a special kind of company that has its employees and contractors and freelancers post things to the Internet, and also lets random strangers post comments or whatever. Don’t just be a publisher! Be something that sounds much, much worse ... be a platisher! 

Others piled on.

Matthew Ingram wrote on Gigaom that platisher “borders on the gag-inducing.”

Nieman Journalism Lab called platisher “the worst name in the history of names.”

And Twitter was equally snarky.

Is "platisher" yiddish for a plate of appetizers or small delicacies? h/t @nancyfranklin

— Jason Pontin (@jason_pontin) March 15, 2014

What's your most hated new word of 2014? Leading candidates: Twibel, Platisher, Apocalypsticle http://t.co/c00hLusVKv Hashtag #yuckywords

— Poynter (@Poynter) February 22, 2014

 

The publisher + platform = the ‘platisher’. Possibly the worst invented word in the history of digital journalism http://t.co/ZFpGUGGLSu

— Sarah Marshall (@SarahMarshall) February 19, 2014

Here’s an elegant variation:

In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a stately platisher decree

— Jacob Harris (@harrisj) February 18, 2014

One exception: Dave Winer of Scripting.com called platisher a “nice bit of word-work .” Winer—who developed the first blogging software—is a friend of Jonathan Glick’s.

Before I immersed myself in the story, I came down on the side of Yiddish interpretation: “A Hasidic sect in Williamsburg that follows the teachings of the Platisher Rebbe (originally from Platish, Lithuania).”

Or perhaps simply: Gesundheit!

If platisher sticks, it will beat the odds for neologisms. “Most newly coined words fail,” observes language maven Allan Metcalf in Predicting New Words: The Secrets of Their Success (2002). (One exception is “OK,” which was coined in 1839 and is the subject of Metcalf’s second book.) For a new word to succeed, Metcalf suggests, it has to meet the FUDGE test: Frequency of use, Unobtrusiveness, Diversity of users and sources, Generation of additional forms and meanings, and Endurance of the thing or concept that the word refers to.

“Of the five factors,” Metcalf writes, “Unobtrusiveness seems especially important. If a word seems familiar rather than new, it will insinuate itself into our vocabulary, as a cowbird insinuates its look-alike eggs into the nests of other birds, who then raise the chicks as their own.”

On those criteria, platisher does not appear destined for flight. For the time being, though, it’s fun to talk about.

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* Medium was founded in 2012 by Ev Williams, the co-founder of Twitter and Blogger, as “a personalized blogging site that allows users to post their writings of more than 140 characters with embedded images.” Each Medium story is accompanied by an estimated reading time in minutes. Note that it “pays some contributors” (emphasis added).

Twenty-three

Today, March 14, is Pi Day (3.14), at least in countries that express dates in that order. Somewhere in the trillion digits of pi I’m pretty sure there’s a 23, which is my number of the day. Here are some 23-named brands … and some loosely related factoids.

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TechCrunch calls the photo-sharing app 23snaps “a Facebook for families.”

Founded June 2012 in London, England.

 

Why “23snaps”? Here’s the official story:

Did you know that there are 23 pairs of chromosomes that carry all of the genetic information that makes your child the wonderful, unique person they grow to be? One chromosome, like one photograph, is just not enough to tell the whole story.

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When I originally wrote about 23andMe, in 2007, the company was just over a year old and still doing DNA testing for health risks. It has a new logo now.

Founded April 2006 in Mountain View, California.

 

It also has changed its business model. In December 2013, in response to a Food and Drug Administration warning letter, 23andMe suspended its health testing. It now provides only “ancestry-related genetic reports.”

Why “23andMe”? Because “all of us have 23 pairs of chromosomes.”

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Pier 23 Café is on San Francisco’s Embarcadero at, yes, Pier 23. Good food, good music.

Photo via A Tiger in the Kitchen.

 

The restaurant has been owned and operated since 1984 by my Dolphin Club swimming pal Flicka McGurrin, who is also an excellent artist (with 23 pairs of chromosomes).

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“Don’t Trust the B---- in Apt 23,” broadcast on ABC-TV in 2012 and 2013, originally bore an unbowdlerized title.

I’m guessing the b---- has 23 pairs of chromosomes.

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The origin of “23 skidoo,” a phrase associated with the 1920s but in fact a couple of decades older, is shrouded in mystery. Barry Popik’s Big Apple blog discredits three popular theories; the World Wide Words discussion forum shreds seven. It is a dead certainty that the “23” has no relationship to human chromosomes, because their correct number wasn’t determined until 1956.

There is a vintage-clothing store called 23 Skidoo in Campbell, California (Santa Clara County).

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Learn additional interesting facts about the number 23—the smallest prime number that isn’t a twin prime!—in my July 2007 post about 23andMe.

Nicely Named: KissKissBankBank

Sometimes it pays to stay in your seat after the final scene of a movie. If you stick around after a Pixar feature you’ll see, deep into the closing credits, a list of “production babies” born to employees in the year before the movie’s release. The credit roll for last year’s Frozen, from Disney, lasted 10 minutes and included a nod to the person in charge of “caffeination.”

But even tiny independent films may have gems in their closing credits.

Last weekend, at the San Francisco International Ocean Film Festival, I saw a charming three-minute short, Une Balade à la Mer (“a trip to the sea”), whose credits included the name of the financer, KissKissBankBank.

 

Adorable Pacman-esque logo!

 

The name was unfamiliar to me, but not the allusion.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (1968), collected writings of the late film critic Pauline Kael.

 

I did a little research and learned that KissKissBankBank is a French crowdfunding site, similar to Kickstarter, that launched in 2010. The name isn’t just a clever pun: it’s also a perfect fit for a site that, unlike the more general Kickstarter, specializes in creative projects such as the film I saw.

Here’s some backstory on the name:

In 1962, after the release of Dr. No, the first James Bond movie, an Italian journalist dubbed Bond “Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.” Pauline Kael, who took the phrase for the title of her book, explained it as “perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of movies. This appeal is what attracts us, and ultimately what makes us despair when we begin to understand how seldom movies are more than this.” The original theme song for the 1965 Bond film Thunderball—sung by Shirley Bassey—was “Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.”*

Changing just one letter, KissKissBankBank says “love and money”—the twin pillars of crowdfunding—while retaining the association with movies and stardom. As a nice bonus, the company extends the verbal brand in a section called “The Stakisstics.” (If only they’d hire a native speaker—and writer—to edit the rest of the English-language content!)

The smoochy approach may be particularly useful in France, where crowdfunding is still regarded as slightly suspect. Vincent Ricordeau, KissKissBankBank’s co-founder and CEO, told Rude Baguette, a blog about French startups, that U.S. culture is “much more adapted to the crowdfunding model.” In France, he said, “if you’re a professional, and you admit that you need funding, it’s seen as a weakness.”

With humor and wordplay, KissKissBankBank overcomes the prejudice and charms the skeptics. Applause all around for a winning name!

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* Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is also the title of a 2005 pulp-fiction parody starring Robert Downey Jr., Val Kilmer, and Michelle (“True Detective”) Monaghan. It has an impressive 84 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.