Let the record show that I consume neither whisky (as it’s spelled in Scotland and Canada) nor whiskey (Ireland and the U.S.) and that, as fond as I am of my Irish and Irish-American friends, I am not a fan of St. Patrick’s Day, which in San Francisco, at least, might as well be called St. Inebriate’s Day.
Still, for some reason I’ve been targeted on New Twitter by a promotion for Bushmills USA, the Jersey City arm of Old Bushmills Distillery of County Antrim, Northern Ireland. And the ad has been breaking my head.
Here it is:
Four folks named Jim, Jameson, Johnnie, and Jack walk into a bar. What do they order? Probably one of the names above. We want to buy you a round of The Original instead. Enter for your chance.
— Bushmills USA (@BushmillsUSA) March 13, 2023
The company has bought ForsakeYourNamesake.com, which rolls over to the Bushmills USA home page.
“This St. Paddy’s Day forsake your namesake”
The ad is a variation on the old “walks into a bar” joke. (See Barry Popik’s Big Apple blog for some history and lore.) Here’s a translation: “Jim” refers to Jim Beam Kentucky bourbon whiskey, “Jameson” to Jameson Irish whiskey (County Cork, Republic of Ireland), “Johnnie” to Johnnie Walker Scotch whisky (no “E”!), and “Jack,” I assume, to Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whiskey.
The “four folks” are encouraged to “forsake your namesake” and order Bushmills instead.
Which confuses me, because:
1. Who’s the namesake of whom? The common understanding of namesake, at least in my American dialect, is “someone or something named after another.” (In the Jhumpa Lahiri novel and subsequent movie The Namesake the central character is named Gogol; he is the namesake of the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol, not the other way around.) So “your namesake” would be the named whisk{e}y, which would be chronologically impossible. The liquor brand is, strictly speaking, “your eponym” (a person, place, or thing after whom or which something else is named.”
2. Maybe the ad wants us to accept an alternate, looser interpretation of namesake: “a person who, or thing which, has the same name as another.” A doppelnamer, to use a felicitous madeupical word. But why? Who’s the audience for this ad: just “folks” named Jim, Jameson, Johnnie, and Jack? Suppose your name is Bush—the name of the river in County Antrim that supplies the water for Bushmills? I recall a few prominent “folks” called Bush here in the U.S. Should they forsake their namesake beverage?
I’ll concede that “Forsake Your Namesake” is catchier than “Don’t Order Your Doppelnamer” or “Spurn Your Eponym.” Catchier—but more perplexing. Also more linguistically complex.
Namesake, a compound of name and sake, first appeared in print around 1635. The OED says the word “may have arisen from earlier phrases such as ‘for one’s name(’s) sake.’” Wikipedia says the phrase was “probably” a translation of something similar in the Hebrew Bible that meant “to protect one’s reputation.” (Wikipedia gives Psalm 23:3 as an example: “he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”)
Forsake is much older: It’s been around since the 9th century C.E. (forsacan) with various senses related to refusal or denial. (Past tense: forsook.) Since around 1300 it’s had the current sense of “to abandon,” which is how it’s used in the theme from High Noon (1952).
The sake in forsake has an Old English root, sacan: to contend, dispute, or deny. The sake in namesake is also Old English, but it meant “thing” or “affair.” There’s some overlap between the two sakes, though: Sometimes the “thing” was a thing of contention, such as a lawsuit.
Speaking of contention, and of whisk{e}y, it wouldn’t be Irish if there weren’t a political subtext. Remember when James “Jimmy” McNulty walked into a bar—OK, a party—in The Wire?
“That’s Protestant whiskey”
Do I remember somebody on Saturday Night Live years ago saying something to the effect of:
"There must be more to St Patrick's Day than red-haired guys throwing up green beer on the sidewalk in front of the Black Rose."
Posted by: william | March 17, 2023 at 06:11 AM