Fritinancy

October Linkfest

It’s Portmanteauber! But first, let’s welcome the return of the Name of the Year Tournament, “a celebration of unconventional names and the people who wear them.” After a 30-year run, NOTY’s originators stepped down in 2012; the tournament is now run “by two recent graduates of a university near Chicago” with “boring names” who are carrying on the tradition under a new URL. This year’s brackets include Hurricane Weathers, Fancy English, and Leila Bossy-Nobs. Go forth and vote!

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“One of my biggest language pet peeves is the phrase ‘That’s not a word’,” writes James Callan, a content strategist and linguistics aficionado in Seattle. So he launched the Nixicon “to find and retweet people on Twitter who claimed that something isn’t a word.” In less than a week he’d discovered and circulated more than 200 “not a word” tweets.

A few days after starting this, one thing is clear: people really hate irregardless, ain't, and mines.

— That's Not A Word (@nixicon) October 14, 2013

As for the Nixicon name, James says it’s “a portmanteau of ‘nix’ (meaning ‘no’) and ‘lexicon’.”

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Speaking of non-words and portmanteaus, in May 2012 a group of lexicographers, poets, and authors coined “phubbing”—a portmanteau of “phone” and “snubbing”—to describe “the phenomenon of ignoring people in front of you in favor of paying attention to your phone,” according to an article in Advertising Age. Since then, the ad agency McCann Melbourne has been seeding the word—on Facebook and the StopPhubbing website, among other platforms—as a way to create interest in, and sell more copies of, a new edition of Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary. The Wordability blog (which slightly misrepresents the word’s origin) calls phubbing “the best new word of the year” and says the word’s rise demonstrates “all that is good about modern word formation.”

Watch Macquairie’s video about the birth and spread of “phubbing.”

 

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Why do some invented words—gobbledygook, blurb, and smog, for example—catch on? Ralph Keyes writes in The American Scholar that “need and usefulness” and the ability to “capture a widespread sensibility” are key indicators. So is playfulness: “A remarkable number of terms we use today originated in the speech bubbles and captions of cartoonists,” Keyes observes.

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In a couple of months we’ll be placing our bets on the 2013 word of the year. Allan Metcalf, author of many books on language (including the definitive history of “OK”) and the executive secretary of the American Dialect Society, makes the case for “Obamacare” as this year’s leading candidate. (My own money, as of this moment, is on “shutdown.”)

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My friend Suzanne Mantell, a writer, editor, and rare-book dealer, has written a lovely defense of old-school reading matter: “Real Books and Why We Love Them.”

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Another friend, Mike Madrid, has published a new book: Divas, Dames & Daredevils: Lost Heroines of Golden Age Comics. (Mike also wrote The Supergirls: Fashion, Feminism, Fantasy, and the History of Comic Book Heroines.) An illustrated excerpt from the new book—“10 Most Badass Comic Book Heroines”—is up at Huffington Post. I’m loving the name of these nearly forgotten supergals: Jill Trent, Science Sleuth! Madame Strange! Betty Bates, Lady-at-Law! And how did they get away with “Pussy Katnip”?

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There were plenty of snorts and snickers in my Twitter timeline over Fukuppy, the name of Fukushima Industries Corporation’s new egg-shaped mascot. But as Victor Mair, Language Log’s Asian-language expert, explains: “Fukuppy is actually a very nice name for a mascot in Japanese.”

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Thirty days hath Septaper? In Word Routes, Ben Zimmer looks at “the financial word of the moment,” taper, and how it gave rise to the portmanteaus Septaper (a gradual slowdown of bond-buying in September) and Octaper (ditto, for October). “September through December seem to lend themselves to creative blending,” Ben writes, “perhaps because the names form a prosodic pattern: each is a three-syllable sequence with a stressed middle syllable (i.e., an amphibrach) and ends in -er.” My own “portmonthteau” sightings include Socktober, Sharktober, OAKtober (celebrating the Oakland A’s), and Archtober (pronounced, perplexingly, ark-tober). (And see my 2012 post on X-toberfest.)

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Cronut, shmonut: Earlier this month Starbucks UK introduced a doughnut-muffin hybrid it dubbed the Duffin. Just one little problem with that: a small British bakery chain, Bea’s of Bloombury, has been selling its own “duffin” since at least 2011. (That last link includes a list of several other pastry portmanteaus, including the townie, the crookie, the fauxnut, and the muffle.) Alas, proprietor Bea Vo never troubled with trademark protection. As it happens, Bea’s coinage wasn’t original, either: Barry Popik, a historian of food terms, has found print citations for “duffin” going back to 2007.

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And speaking of food portmanteaus:

Did no one @BurgerKing say #satisfries out loud and know it sounds like "Saddest Fries"?

— Rye Silverman (@ryesilverman) September 27, 2013

Double Oxymoron

I saw this business name on the side of a truck while we were both on the 880 freeway somewhere in Oakland, and it made my day.

 

Logo for Fighting Amish Electric in South Berkeley. Slogan: “Amish Quality, Modern Technology.”

 

Of course, it helps to know about the Fighting Irish. And the electricity-shunning Amish.

Elsewhere in oxymorons: Penn’s Fighting Quakers.

Spartanburg (South Carolina) Herald-Journal, October 18, 1936

How Twinkies Got Its Name

Hostess Brands Inc., the 82-year-old snack-foods company based in Irving, Texas, announced today that it will close its plants and fire all 18,000 of its workers. The company had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January. The corporate website says the company “was forced by a Bakers Union strike” to shut down. The union says the claim is false.

Hostess—founded in Missouri in 1930 as Interstate Bakeries Corporation—had been the largest wholesale baker and distributor of baked goods in the United States. Its many brands included Wonder Bread, Dolly Madison, Ho Hos, Sno Balls, Ding Dongs, and Colombo, but the company’s most famous product name may have been Twinkies, the “golden sponge cake with creamy filling” with a seemingly limitless shelf life.

Why was it called “Twinkies”? Serendipity.

 

Via Chicago Tribune.

According to a Chicago Tribune story, the first Twinkies “bounced out of the ovens at Continental Baking Co.” in River Forest, Illinois, in 1930:

Plant manager James Dewar was looking to create a cheap, two-for-a nickel snack. So he grabbed some shortcake pans and got cookin’. Dewar got the name from a billboard for Twinkle Toe Shoes. He shortened it to Twinkies, and the rest is snack food history.

That history took a grim turn during the 1979 trial of Dan White, the San Francisco supervisor who assassinated Mayor George Moscone and a fellow supervisor, Harvey Milk. White’s defense lawyers argued that their client’s mental capacity had been damaged by his excessive consumption of junk food. No specific food product was ever mentioned in the courtroom, but reporters coined “Twinkie defense” as shorthand for the argument. The term survives “as a derisive term for an improbable legal defense” (Wikipedia).

The sausage-shaped character on the Twinkies package has a name: Twinkie the Kid. A registered trademark since 1971, it was used in commercials and in collectible products, which are probably going to become a little more collectible.

Today’s Chicago Tribune has a slide show of 15 “iconic” Hostess products, including Holsum bread, which at one point used this dandy slogan:

“If you had a million dollars you couldn’t buy better bread.”

According to a Wikipedia entry, “Holsum” was used by many retail bakeries in the early 20th century, when whimsical phonetic brand spellings were all the rage. (See my August 2011 Visual Thesaurus column, “Phood for Thought,” for more examples.) In 1908, the W.E. Long Company of Chicago acquired exclusive rights to the name. Holsum bread is still sold; its mascot, Mr. Slice, was created in 1976.

UPDATE: At Duets Blog, trademark lawyer Dan Kelly considers the post-dissolution fate of Hostess Brand’s many marks.

Hey, Mister!

For your frittering pleasure: a Flickr set of “weird advertising characters” that’s a nostalgiafest, a kitschapalooza, and a bizarrorama. Step right up and see the seppuku-ing pig, the martini-sipping pink poodle, the shockingly un-PC Frito Bandito, the Doggie Diner doggie, the Chicken of the Sea mermaid, and much, much more.

Including, I’m happy to report, a trove of “mister” names and mascots.

 

Mr. Sketch water color markers. Credit: Waffle Whiffer. (Read my Visual Thesaurus column about other “sketch” trademarks!)

 

Mr. Chicken Plank. No idea what he was selling, but he had a companion called Miss Fish Fillet. Credit: Waffle Whiffer.

 

Mister Provolone, an Italian brand. Do you suppose he’s met Mister Baby? Credit: Zellaby.

 

Mr. Blobby marshmallows, a UK brand from the 1990s. They’re blobbilicious! Credit: Jason Liebig.

 

 

You could get blintzes at Mr. Perky’s! Tray liner, c. 1960s. Credit: Poptartsbox

Mr. Melon watermelon candy. Credit: Wafflewhiffer.

 

Mr. Contac, pill-head. Via Pinterest.

 

There’s also a quite charming but non-downloadable Mr. Pickle photo. And in the non-mister category, I’m awfully fond of Pump ’n’ Munch.

Via AdFreak.

Names in the News: Qwikster

Early Monday morning Netflix announced a new service, Qwikster, that will do what the original Netflix did: deliver movies to mailboxes. The entity known as Netflix will limit itself to streaming movies and other content (notably games) to customers’ computers and TV sets.

The bifurcation follows Netflix’s loudly protested repricing of DVD and streaming services, announced in July. In an email and blog post published Sunday night, Netflix co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings issued an apology to customers (or “members,” in Netflix-speak):

I see that given the huge changes we have been recently making, I should have personally given a full justification to our members of why we are separating DVD and streaming, and charging for both. It wouldn’t have changed the price increase, but it would have been the right thing to do.

His explanation of the new name? Terse, to put it generously:

We chose the name Qwikster because it refers to quick delivery. We will keep the name “Netflix” for streaming.

The outcry was immediate and abundant. Mashable speculated whether Qwikster was “the worst product launch since New Coke.” Last time I checked, there were more than 17,000 comments on Hastings’s post. One of the more temperate ones came from Benjamin Hutchins:

The name itself, to me, shows a lack of thought. You say it was to represent the quickness of the service, but to me that was a bad attempt at trying to find an available.com domain when there are so few good ones left. I bet there were lengthy discussions over a good name, probably taking weeks, and yet to me, it truly sounds like a half-witted idea cocked up from someone in front of an investor and needed to keep things rolling.

Here’s my own disclaimer: I have never been a Netflix customer/member. I rarely watch movies at home. So I’m an impartial observer here—except where the name and branding strategy are concerned.

My take on the name: so bad it’s laughable. The branding strategy: mystifying.

Crazy, right? Like a fox.

Hang on for my explanation. First, though, a little background.

 

I Feel Your Pain

It’s a worthy cause, I’m sure.

But a jogging, sunglasses-wearing, pain-arrow-emanating brain for a mascot? Ouch.

 

Those colors! I'm seeing an aura ...

Besides, the whole concept of sponsoring a running race to raise money for headache research strikes me as inappropriate. Wouldn’t pounding through Golden Gate Park with hundreds of sweaty fellow-joggers be an automatic migraine trigger? For next year’s event, I propose an alternative to Miles for Migraine—say, Several Hours Lying Absolutely Still in a Quiet, Darkened Room (with Plenty of Strong Drugs) for Migraine.

Scat!

There are bad names and gross-out names. And then there are names that are just grossly bad.

 

Elf droppings? Seriously, Hayneedle?

 

Pee&Poo sells children’s wear and stuffed Pee and Poo mascot toys.*

 

Hat tips to Twitter pals Mighty Red Pen (Elf Droppings) and Nancy Davis Kho (Pee&Poo).

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* The company is Swedish, but that’s no excuse.

Brand Roundup

News and diversions related to brand stories, brand logos, and brand slogans:

In his most recent "On Language" column for the New York Times Magazine, Ben Zimmer investigates the corporate "etymythologies" behind slacks, sneakers, crackerjack, kisses (as in Hershey's), and—my favorite—dongle. He expands on "etymythology" in Visual Thesaurus:

Fanciful word lore gets passed around and sometimes gets accepted as the gospel truth. Companies like Keds, Haggar, and Hershey simply take that impulse to come up with lexical just-so stories and provide an institutional backing that encourages the myths to persist as a point of corporate pride.

Devon at Pollywog Blog notes that one famous etymythology is missing from the "On Language" column: Jamba Juice.

At one time, Jamba Juice asserted that its name was derived from an African word meaning “to celebrate.” The company published this specious claim on its Web site, raising the eyebrows of linguists who wanted to know which of the 1800 languages spoken in Africa was the original source. In Umbundu, “jamba” translates to “elephant.” In Swahili, it means “to fart.”

So—how well do you know your brands? Corporate communications agency Cramer Sweeney challenges you to identify 20 famous brands from their logos, taglines, mascots, and audio trademarks. (Via Wonder Branding.)

By the way, there are two errors in the Cramer Sweeney quiz answers. One is a spelling error; the other misrepresents a brand name. Can you spot them? UPDATE: Answers after the jump.

The Friedman Museum of Vintage Products

My parents bought their house in 1968; since my father's death two months ago, my brothers and I have been sorting through the contents--an emotional task made especially daunting by the fact that both parents were champion Keepers. We've found receipts dating back to the early 1950s, multiple photocopies of trivia quizzes from Elderhostel trips taken almost 20 years ago, and unopened packages of twin-size cotton-polyester sheets in perky floral patterns from the late 1960s.

And last weekend, on an expedition into the deep recesses of the walk-in pantry, my brother Michael discovered more artifacts.

I don't remember ever seeing this can or hearing of this brand. Right under the "Gumption" product name you can just barely see the line "Made in England." But someone evidently Americanized the copy on the reverse side, which includes the words stove and aluminum. In Britain they'd have been cooker and aluminium. That aside, what a great name and what a fabulous use of type! I counted seven fonts, but I may have missed one. Though it's difficult to discern, at the very top there's a cartoon mascot whose head is shaped like a scrub brush. That's "Little Gumption" himself.

Gumption was apparently acquired by Clorox, which continues to sell it in the United Kingdom.

I wasn't familiar with this product, either:

From the looks of the spokesmodel drawing, it dates from the early 1960s. At the time, Zud was manufactured by Boyle-Midway in New York; the company was later acquired by American Home Products, which sold it in 1990 to British household-products giant Reckitt Benckiser. And whaddya know: you can still buy Zud, albeit with a snappy new logo. The product must be really good to have survived such a leaden name.

I definitely remember Peter Pan peanut butter, although not necessarily this 28-ounce can:

According to a Wikipedia entry, Peter Pan peanut butter was introduced in 1920 by the Derby Foods division of Swift & Company under the name "E.K. Pond." That may have sounded uncomfortably close to Pond's cold cream (introduced in 1914); for whatever reason, the peanut butter got its current name in 1928. You opened the can with the key that you detached from the base. (In a kitchen drawer, Michael and I found a small collection of peanut-butter-can keys.) The Wikipedia entry says that cans were discontinued during World War II because of metal shortages, but this design appears to date from the late 1940s or early 1950s. Wikipedia jogged my memory about a Peter Pan slogan: "Picky people pick Peter Pan peanut butter, it's the peanut butter picky people pick."

The Peter Pan brand is now owned by ConAgra. It was the subject of a 2007 recall because of a salmonella outbreak.

Finally, this bit of paper packaging, saved for who knows what reason:

The futuristic logo (and the pricetag from Fedco, a consumers' cooperative where our family frequently shopped) would seem to date this package from the early 1960s. Again: amazing use of typography. The Goodell Company of Antrim, New Hampshire, was established in 1875; besides the Hampshire Spreader, it also made the Perfect Pencil Pointer, a pencil sharpener. The Antrim website mentions the company in passing and includes this poignant paragraph about the town:

Today most farms and factories are gone. Some of the mill buildings still stand, but they are no longer used for manufacturing, The schools and Frameworks are the largest employers. Most townspeople work in bigger surrounding towns like Peterborough and Hillsboro.

And most of the utensils used in American kitchens are manufactured in China.

My parents didn't hang onto these products because of their nostalgic design. I'm sure they believed there was some useful life left in them. The Gumption and Zud were still part full; the Peter Pan can served as a container for paper clips and such. The cardboard spreader package? Possibly saved as a reminder of the bargain price.

But I started wondering: Is there any current consumer packaging that I treasure enough to save? How about you?