Fritinancy

December Linkfest

On the last linkfest of 2013, the Internet gave to me:

The ugliest Christmas sweater of them all: From REI, so it isn’t just hideous, “it’s packed with technical features and built to withstand decades of holiday wear.” Oh, it’s also fake.

 

Christmas carol grammar. On Mental Floss, Arika Okrent identifies the troll in “troll the ancient Yuletide carol” and the “yon” in “Round yon virgin.” And on Visual Thesaurus (subscription required), Erin Brenner takes on the lie/lay distinction in carols, using examples such as “Long lay the world in sin and error pining.”

Sheep counting. Stan Carey, author of the fine blog Sentence First, explains an old counting system used by shepherds in some parts of the UK. All together now: yan, tan, tethera, pethera, pimp…

A language map of Britain. From the Oxford Dictionaries blog:  “In the summer of 2012, supreme language-lovers David and Hilary Crystal set off on a tour round Britain, visiting 57 sites associated with key developments in the English language.”

New reindeer names. Laura Wattenberg of the Baby Name Wizard blog offers a 21st-century update to Dasher, Dancer, Blitzen, et al: “Now, Skylar! now, Stryker! now Ryker and Jaxon! / Now, Cabot! now, Copland! now Sawyer and Paxton!”

A new stadium name. Berkeleyside reports that the field-naming rights at UC Berkeley’s Memorial Stadium sold for $18 million to Kabam, a mobile-gaming company founded by three Cal grads. It’ll still be Memorial Stadium: the naming rights cover only the field.

Up-to-date military slang. The movies always get it wrong, writes Ben Brody in the Global Post: “Soldiers fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have developed an expansive new military vocabulary, taking elements from popular culture as well as the doublespeak of the military industrial complex.” It’s “bird,” not “chopper,” and an “oxygen thief” is a useless soldier. Hat tip: Ben Zimmer and Kevin Grant. (Bonus link: my 2007 post about Iraq war slang.)

Much doge. Wow. Psychologist and language columnist Jessica Love writes in The American Scholar about “the delicate dance between humor and inscrutability” in two Internet memes, doge and because + noun. If you haven’t yet become acquainted with doge, here’s a best-of-gallery. (Hat tip: Angus Grieve-Smith.) Wondering how to pronounce “doge”? Slate interviewed several experts and then let the Internet decide. “Wow. Such confused” polled a strong third.

Image via Slate.

Fifty shades of blue. Can you discern the difference between LinkedIn blue and Disqus blue? IBM blue and Evomail blue? Test your powers of perception at Name That Blue, then graduate to pinks, reds, purples, greens, and a whole lot of tech companies you’ve never heard of.

Helvetica the perfume. “We have created the ultimate Modernist perfume – a scent distilled down to only the purest and most essential elements to allow you, the content, to convey your message with the utmost clarity.” Translation: for $62, not including tax and shipping, you get distilled water in a clear bottle with a label.

“For those who dare to be the same.” Image via AdFreak.

Hideous holiday music. I note with sadness the passing in 2013 of Jim Nayder, curator of Chicago Public Radio’s Annoying Music show (frequently heard on NPR); and of Regretsy (“Where DIY Meets WTF”), the blog that compiled the very worst of Etsy craft projects. But there’s hope for both camps of mourners: the multitalented April Winchell, who ran Regretsy for four years (posting as Helen Killer), can still be found on her eponymous blog. And in an effort that would do Jim Nayder proud, she’s compiled her own catalog of wretched holiday tunes, from “Homo Christmas” (by Pansy Division) to the Bethlehem Rap, from “I Yust Go Nuts on Christmas” and “Yingle Bells” by that great, great faux-Swedish entertainer Yogi Yorgesson (né Harry Stewart) to the world’s worst version of “O Holy Night.”

And speaking of holiday traditions, watch this space for my annual Festivus Airing of Grievances, coming later this week.

Operation Fortitude

During the lead-up to D-Day—June 6, 1944—the Allied nations undertook an elaborate deception strategy designed to mislead the Germans about the real date and location of the Normandy invasion. The overall plan was called Operation Bodyguard; one of its more bizarre elements—the creation of a decoy army, complete with inflatable tanks and fake artillery—had the code name Operation Fortitude.

Why Fortitude? As Ben Macintyre writes in Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies, his 2012 history of the plan:

The choice of code name for this particular operation—the crux of Bodyguard—was much debated. [British Prime Minister Winston] Churchill had given instructions that no code name should be selected that might seem flippant in retrospect or give a hint of the individual or action involved. But he also disliked code names that meant nothing at all, which is why the original choice, “Mespot,” was rejected. Also vetoed were “Bulldog,” “Swordhilt,” “Axehead,” “Tempest,” and, obscurely, “Lignite.” Finally, a name was selected that seemed to evoke the resolution required to pull it off: Operation Fortitude.

The story of Operation Fortitude is told in a new documentary by Rick Beyer, “The Ghost Army,” that had its premiere Tuesday night on PBS. (Repeat broadcasts are scheduled throughout the week.)

It wasn’t only the operations that were deliberately named. The code names of the double agents who worked for MI5, the British intelligence agency, were also chosen with care and a hefty dash of dry humor. Dusko Popov, for example, a risk-loving Serbian playboy, was dubbed “Agent Tricycle.”

Macintyre explains:

This may have been, in part, a reference to Popov’s insatiable appetites and his reputed but probably apocryphal taste for three-in-a-bed sex. It also recognized that the Tricycle network now consisted of one big wheel—Popov—supported by two smaller ones, Agents Balloon and Gelatine.

The Americans took a different approach to code names. When Popov came to Washington in 1941 on an assignment from MI5, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who regarded foreign spies as “just another species of criminal,” was not amused. “The FBI did not go in for jocular code names,” Macintyre tells us. “Popov was ‘Confidential Informant ND 63,’ an austere title that aptly reflects the bureau’s chilly attitude.”

Underwear Week: Commando

How can a brand name convey a specific benefit—in this case, underwear so smooth and sleek it’s almost like wearing no underwear at all—without resorting to descriptive terms (Vanishing Edge, Invisibles)? For one U.S. company, the solution came from Vietnam-era slang.

Commando is a brand of elastic-free women’s underwear and hosiery designed with smooth edges that don’t show under clothing. Founded in 2003 by husband-and-wife team Kerry O’Brien and Ed Biggins, the company is based in South Burlington, Vermont, far from major garment-industry capitals; products are made in the U.S. and sold at department stores and online.

 

“Commando” is an excellent example of a suggestive name—and by suggestive I mean not only the dictionary sense of “implying something slightly improper” (completely appropriate in this context) but also the trademark sense: “indirectly alluding to a quality of a product.” That’s because of commando’s metaphorical secondary meaning.

Commando first entered English in the late 18th century, a borrowing from Portuguese that originally referred to “an armed and mounted party of men” or the expedition undertaken by such a party. It wasn’t until World War II that the word referred to a single person—specifically, according to the OED, “a member of a body of picked men trained originally (in 1940) as shock troops for the repelling of the threatened German invasion of England, later for the carrying out of raids on the Continent and elsewhere.” Until 1942, “commando” was capitalized.

The underwear brand Commando isn’t about shock troops: it’s about “going commando,” a slang phrase first documented (again according to the OED) in 1974, in Current U.N.C. [University of North Carolina] Slang: “to wear no underpants (beneath one’s clothing).” “The origin of this use is obscure,” the dictionary notes; “the allusion appears to be to commandos’ reputation for action, toughness, or resourcefulness rather than to any specific practice.”

In 2005, Slate’s Explainer column attempted to get to the bottom of “go commando”:

When did the term “going commando” enter the civilian lexicon? The phrase dates back to at least the middle of the 20^th century, when Americans used it to mean “toughening up.” (That meaning persists to this day in some contexts.) The phrase’s more common connotation dates back to at least 1974, when it appeared in a source on college slang. The phrase “crotch rot" emerged during the same period: It first appeared in 1967. It's possible that “going commando” first poked its way into the public consciousness during the Vietnam War, when American special forces were spending extended periods in hot, wet jungle environments. The phrase got its big break in 1996, when Joey and Rachel went commando on an episode of Friends.

The pertinent dialogue:

Ross: Okay, now hold on. Joey, why can’t you just wear the underwear you’re wearing now?
Joey: Because, um, I’m not wearing any underwear now.
Ross: Okay, then why do you have to wear underwear tonight?
Joey: It’s a rented tux, Okay. I’m not gonna go commando in another man's fatigues.

As Joey’s line and the military history suggest, “to go commando” is traditionally associated with men; appropriating it for a women’s brand makes it that much more dramatic and memorable.

Commando is a popular trademark for many products other than underwear: I found records in the USPTO database for Commando padlocks, lubricants, auto parts, tires, coffee, beer, and jerky. I also discovered that Commando the underwear company—which to date has been a women-only brand—has filed for protection of “Commando Naked,” a men’s line.

Co-founder O’Brien says on the Commando website that the company’s products are “sometimes saucy” and “put the fun in functional.” Most of the product names, however, are descriptive: thong, high-rise panty, cami, half-slip, control brief. Nope, nary a cheekini in the lineup—although I admit the “Commando” brand name had me seeing the descriptive term tank in a new light. It’s in the “accessories” category that Commando lets its guerrilla flag fly.

The very first Commando product, in fact, was named Takeouts (“The Better Boob Job”). The “full-cup-boosting” silicone inserts—known generically as cutlets—cost $48 and are “grope tested,” it says here.

Other accessories with creative names include Low Beams (single-use nipple covers), Top Hats (reusable nipple covers), Matchsticks (double-stick tape for bra straps), Match Tips (double-stick adhesive dots), and Cleavage Cupcakes (“a perky plump-up for what nature already gave you”). The cheeky names are supported by playful copy that spins each metaphor for everything it’s worth.

By the way, Commando’s URL is WearCommando.com. Commando.com is a communications agency in Chicago. As I’ve said before, you don’t need a “pure” URL when you’ve got a plausible alternative and a strong brand story.

Bonus link: The 10 Commandments of Going Commando (“1. Thou Shalt Not Take a Yoga Class”).

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Previously on Underwear Week:

Cheekini

True & Co. and the MILFs

Underwear startups

Ginch Gonch

The Whom Front

I’m so used to seeing whom (and whomever) used incorrectly that this correct usage – in a newspaper ad! – actually startled me.

American Technion Society, Page A19, New York Times, Nov. 30, 2012

The woman in the photo may appear to be thanking a sky deity, but the copy provides a different answer to the headline’s question: “Thank the Technion.”

The grammatical correctness of “Whom Do We Thank for Iron Dome?” is unimpeachable: whom is the object of thank. But I can’t help thinking it’s a little too correct — stilted, even – given the context.

Iron Dome, in case you haven’t been following the latest Israeli-Palestinian troubles (and who could blame you for tuning out?), is the defensive anti-missile system developed in large part by graduates of Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, with American backing. According to the American Technion Society’s website, Iron Dome “saved countless lives on both sides” in the recent Israel-Gaza conflict. (The James Bond-ish name “Iron Dome” is a beefed-up translation of the Hebrew kipat barzel, or “iron cap”; kipa can also mean “yarmulke.” The English term carries echoes, intentionally or not, of Dome of the Rock, the Muslim shrine in Jerusalem.)

Iron Dome performed better than expected, according to Israeli defense spokesmen, but it’s expensive: each Iron Dome missile costs $50,000. And the rockets it’s designed to intercept, writes Dan Ephron in The Daily Beast, “are manufactured in Gaza at a fraction of the price—sometimes for just a few hundred dollars.”

And while “countless lives” may have been saved, many other lives were lost. Advanced technology or no, war is still hell.

Which is why, even though I acknowledge the correctness of whom in the ad, I think it’s lipstick on a pig. I’d have recast the headline to avoid fussy points of grammar. And while I was at it, I’d have changed the question to a declarative statement.

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Additional reading: Is whom obsolete?

November Linkfest

The leaves are falling, the turkey’s defrosting: It must be time for the first Word of the Year 2012 announcement! Oxford Dictionaries, the traditional early bird, picked one WOTY for the US, GIF (the verb), and one for the UK, omnishambles. For background on omnishambles—which made a brief appearance in the US this year as well—see my post on “wazzock.” And for background on how Oxford chose GIF, see this hilariously be-GIFed blog post. 

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Turducken: chicken stuffed inside duck stuffed inside turkey. Cherpumple: cherry, pumpkin, and apple pies stuffed inside cake. Now online dictionary Wordnik invites readers to invent a new Thanksgiving-related Franken-word (portmanteau). “It could be a (horrific) new food, a feeling, or a phenomenon. The only rules are that they combine two or more words, and that they have to do with turkey-day.” Tweet your nominations with the hashtag #turkeyword.

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This one goes out to all you graphic designers and creative directors: horrible client feedback turned into hilarious works of art. (Full gallery at SharpSuits.net.)

“I’ll know what I want when I see it.” – Clients everywhere

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Astronomy and space startup Uwingu – that’s oo-WING-oo, the Swahili word for “sky” – is building “a baby book of names” for newly discovered planets. For 99 cents per nomination, you can submit a name to the database; for another 99 cents, you can vote for your favorite name on the list. The money goes to a good cause, of course. According to the Bad Astronomy blog, “The folks in charge are professional astronomers and space scientists at the tops of their fields, people like Alan Stern and Pamela Gay.”

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Cast your vote for the name of the year at Baby Name Wizard. The NOTY “isn't necessarily the most popular baby name,” writes BNW’s Laura Wattenberg. “It’s a name that changed during the course of the year, and points to more changes around us. It’s a one-name time capsule that reminds us of how names are woven into our lives, connecting to and reflecting everything that goes on in our culture.” The 2011 winner was Siri.

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Do we need a new name for the fiscal cliff? The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein proposes “austerity crisis”; his readers have their own suggestions, including Policy Meltdown, Lemmings Moment, Fiscal Spliff, and Mole Hill. (What’s the fiscal cliff, you ask? Here you go.)

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Corporate tagline or university motto? Take the quiz (it’s tougher than you’d think).

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Minor hockey (not to be confused with minor-league hockey) is divided into narrow age ranges, and the names for those ranges vary wildly and whimsically around the world. In Canada the 9-10 age group is called “Atom”; in France the 10-11 group is called Poussins (“young chickens”). More minor hockey lore at (where else?) Wikipedia. Hat tip: Bruce Fulton.

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Remember Cuil, the search engine that was supposed to be a Google-killer? It died in 2011, possibly of pronunciation failure. “You might think that making a pronounceable name is a no brainer,” writes Andrew Hennigan on his blog about communications, “but there are actually several separate issues you need to think about, and Cuil got all three wrong.” (Hat tip: FussFactory.)

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Green-suiter, Yuk, 2% Club and other West Point slang: a lexicon.

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What does the “signature” mean in “signature burrito”? Lexicographer Orin Hargraves, writing for the Macmillan Dictionary blog, says “signature” has been “so diluted by modern usage as to become meaningless.”

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Speaking of meaningless, William Germano has had it with passion. He writes in Lingua Franca: “In its new, overexposed phase, passion has come to mean something else. I’d hazard the definition ‘an outsized, all-consuming enthusiasm that leads to achievement.’ That seems to be where passion is drifting in our outcome-driven society: It’s become a word signifying the precondition of success.” I’ve written about passion overload a number of times myself, starting with a 2006 post, “Our Passion Is Your Problem.”

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The Romney campaign named its (badly botched) get-out-the-vote program Project ORCA, but why? Language Log’s Mark Liberman goes fishing: “It would be a little weird, in my opinion, to name a GOTV program after a boat used to hunt a fictional monster shark. Clearly the shark would be Obama, or perhaps Obama’s appeal — but in that metaphor, where are the Romney voters?”

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After Hurricane Sandy struck, New York City gained a new neighborhood: SoPo, for “South of Power.” As The Atlantic Wire’s Jen Doll tells it, “New York City has a history with this sort of name.” (Hat tip: @nextmoon.)

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From the public-radio show A Way With Words, hosted by Grant Barrett and Martha Barnette, here’s an excellent list of reference resources for writers and word lovers. A good place to start your holiday shopping!

Names in the News: Recce

Recce is a new iOS app that provides a 3D, animated, aerial view of a city (just London for now; San Francisco and New York soon). The name mystified me at first: When I read the TechCrunch headline—“A Rich, Interactive Map That’s Also a Gaming Platform”—I took in “rich,” applied it to Recce, and concluded it was an Italian word, pronounced, like “bocce,” with a /ch/ in the middle. Retchie? Hmm.

Then I read reporter Ingrid Lunden’s lede, which explains for stoopid Yanks like me that recce is “pronounced ‘wreckie’, British slang for ‘reconnaissance’ (only English people would make slang out of a word like that).”

News flash! Americans also make slang out of “a word like that”: our version is “recon,” pronounced REE-con. Both abbreviations were originally military slang, but American “recon” is older by one whole war: It was first documented in 1918; “recce” surfaced (as “reccy”) in 1941.

One other item in the story caught my attention: Lunden writes that Recce was originally called Mapply “until a French company called Mappy called to say ‘Non!’” That’s one less faux-adverbial -ly name, one more sign that the British are coming, the British are coming.

Name in the News: Academi

Blackwater, the controversial security contractor that changed its name to Xe (pronounced “zee”) in February 2009, announced today that it’s changing its name yet again: to Academi. Or, as the company’s press release prefers to shout it, ACADEMI.

From that press release:

“We have had a year of extraordinary changes that have resulted in a new, better company,” President and CEO Ted Wright said in a statement. The ACADEMI name communicates both our legacy and where we are going as a company in the future. This is more than a simple name change,” Wright continued. “Rather it is a reflection of the changes we have made while retaining those elements that made us who we are today – the best in our industry.”

One of those “extraordinary changes,” unmentioned in the release, was the departure in 2010 of Blackwater founder Erik Prince. Prince moved on to Abu Dhabi, where he created a mercenary army for the crown prince. Other changes at Blackwater/Xe/Academi include the composition of the board, whose members now include Bush Administration Attorney General John Ashcroft. Ashcroft is serving as the company’s “ethics adviser.”

I’ll let all of that sink in for a minute.

All right! Onward:

As Academi, CEO Wright told the Wall Street Journal, the company will “try to be more boring” (!). He told the Washington Post that Academi, pronounced “academy,” was chosen in part “to evoke the ideas of a Platonic academy, where the ethos is of excellence, honor, and discipline.”

From a naming perspective, the switchout of y for i also evokes the spelling of auto brand Infiniti. This may well have been the effect Academi was going for: classic with a twist. In Academi’s case, however, there are unfortunate overtones of “demi”—as in half. (Or Demi Moore.) The i suffix also suggests a set of girls’ names—Brandi, Sherri, Terri, Tiffani—whose spelling suggests cuteness, perkiness, even giddiness.

Why did Blackwater/Xe change its name again? Wired.com ventures that the new name is meant to communicate that the company has turned over an ethical leaf:

Academi will issue new codes of conduct to its guards and trainers soon, and Wright promises “accountability and openness” over the company’s actions. Translation: no more stealing guns, coked-up warzone parties, or killing civilians.

Not everything is new, however: the company wants back into Iraq. It will be a tough sell, Wired.com reports:

Iraq stripped Blackwater of its business license after [the 2007 massacre in Baghdad’s] Nisour Square. Iraqis are unlikely to give Academi anything like the benefit of the doubt. But with U.S. troops set to leave Iraq at the end of the month, mercs are filling the security gap. There’s a lot of business to be had — if Wright and company can convince either government they deserve it.

And if they can’t, the rebranding exercise may turn out to be academic—as in “having no practical purpose or use.”

Read my 2009 post about Blackwater’s name change to Xe.

Word of the Week: Infidel

Infidel: An unbeliever with respect to a particular religion, especially Christianity or Islam. (This definition is labeled “offensive” by the American Heritage Dictionary and the OED.) Also, one who has no religious beliefs; or one who doubts or rejects a particular doctrine, system, or principle. Merriam-Webster’s first definition for infidel is “One who is not a Christian or who opposes Christianity.”

Infidel came into English (from Old French infidèle, “disloyal”) during the mid-16th century; it appears twice in the Tyndale Bible (1526), in 2 Corinthians and 1 Timothy. (From the latter: “The same denyeth the fayth, and is worsse then an infydell.”) For the next five centuries it served as a scathing insult.

But in the 20th century the meaning began to drift, writes Thomas Frank in “Semper Infidelis,” his editor’s column in the January 2012 issue of Harper’s.* Beloved Infidel, Sheilah Graham’s 1958 biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald, was one sign that infidel had begun to mean something closer to “spunky rebel” than “contemptible unbeliever.”

Today, writes Frank, infidel has taken a surprising new turn: It has become “very much the buzzword of the political moment,” flaunted at political gatherings by Americans—churchgoers, self-professed patriots—who don’t give a fig about Merriam, Webster, the OED, or anyone’s tender sensibilities:

 

A Bin Laden Lexicon

Some of the words and phrases that caught my attention in coverage of Osama bin Laden’s death:

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Abbottabad:  The city in northern Pakistan where bin Laden was found and killed is named for a British army officer, Major James Abbott (1807-1896), who founded the town in 1853. It’s pronounced with the stress on the second syllable: ah-BAHT-ah-bahd. The –abad suffix, also found in place names such as Islamabad and Hyderabad, comes from a Sanskrit word meaning “dwelling” or “town.” 

New York Times

 

James Abbott dressed as an Indian nobleman, 1847. (Hat tip: @johmcquaid)

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Double tap: “After bursts of fire over 40 minutes, 22 people were killed or captured,” writes Marc Ambinder in “The Secret Team That Killed bin Laden” (National Journal). “One of the dead was Osama bin Laden, done in by a double tap -- boom, boom -- to the left side of his face.” (Via @stevesilberman.) GunTec Dictionary defines “double tap” as a “colloquial term for the firing of two shots one immediately after the other at the same target.” UPDATE: As I note in a comment, below, the double tap technique is credited to two British police chiefs in 1930s Shanghai. They devised the method to overcome the limits of full-metal-jacketed ammunition. 

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SEAL: The bin Laden mission was carried out by “the specially trained and highly mythologized SEAL Team Six, officially called the Naval Special Warfare Development Group” (Ambinder). SEAL is a navy acronym for “sea, air, and land.”

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DevGru: A compression of “development group.” Ambinder writes that SEAL Team Six “was known even to the locals at their home base Dam Neck in Virginia as just DevGru.” DevGru is part of the Joint Special Operations Command, “an extraordinary and unusual collection of classified standing task forces and special-missions units” (Ambinder).

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Kinetic: Military euphemism meaning “lethal.” From the Ambinder article:

Recently, JSOC built a new Targeting and Analysis Center in Rosslyn, Va. Where the National Counterterrorism Center tends to focus on threats to the homeland, TAAC, whose existence was first disclosed by the Associated Press, focuses outward, on active “kinetic” -- or lethal – counterterrorism missions abroad.

Related: Read my April 2008 post on “post-kinetic development.”

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“Killed in training accidents in eastern Afghanistan”: Department of Defense code for “died in a JSOC operation that went bad” (Ambinder).

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Triumphalism: An attitude or feeling of victory or superiority. From the Whatever It Is, I’m Against It blog:

I’m not sorry to see bin Laden dead, but I can’t share in the triumphalism currently flooding the airwaves, nor do I feel any sense of relief, since I don’t expect this to change anything.

Related: Read my April 2011 post on triumphalism’s opposite, declinism.

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Honorific: “A title, phrase, or grammatical form conveying respect, used especially when addressing a social superior.” (American Heritage Dictionary) Media blogger Jim Romenesko reported this morning that the New York Times would no longer use the “Mr.” honorific in front of Osama bin Laden’s name, at the request of News Managing Editor Jill Abramson and Executive Editor Bill Keller. From the associate managing editor’s memo: “Without a ‘Mr.’ in front of his name, it was decided that we should capitalize the ‘B’ in Bin Laden on second references.”

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Halo effect: “How Big Will the Osama Halo Effect Be for Obama?” reads the headline on a post by Stephen J. Dubner on the Freakonomics blog. Dubner writes: “The halo effect is often short-lived — but will it, in this case, live long enough to power Obama through an election cycle?” The halo effect is “an effect whereby the perception of positive qualities in one thing or part gives rise to the perception of similar qualities in related things or in the whole” (American Heritage Dictionary). It was first described in a 1920 paper by the American psychologist Edward L. Thorndike, “A Constant Error in Psychological Ratings.”

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Also see this Visual Thesaurus compilation of notable words from President Obama’s May 1 announcement of bin Laden’s death.

Names in the News

Why is the Libyan military operation called “Odyssey Dawn”? Josh Dzieza explains in The Daily Beast that the names of military operations are governed by regulations that dictate their length (two words), their tone (they can’t “express a degree of hostility inconsistent with traditional American ideals or current foreign policy”), and their legality (no commercial trademarks). Dzieza points out that the war formerly known as Operation Iraqi Freedom has since last year been called Operation New Dawn (I wrote about that name change here), and he interviews linguist Geoffrey Nunberg and two namers from Landor Associates for their perspectives. (Via @wayword.) (Read my other posts about military jargon and naming practices, including the rather popular “Beyond Snafu and Fubar.”)

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More Odyssey Dawn: Wired.com quotes a US Defense Department spokesman who says the name is “just the product of the Pentagon’s semi-random name-generation system.” The US Africa Command, or Africom, was given three sets of words it could begin the name with; the words begin “between the letters JF-JZ, NS-NZ and OA-OF, and those three groups give about 60 some odd words,” the spokesman said. Read more at “What’s in a Name? ‘Odyssey Dawn’ Is Pentagon-Crafted Nonsense.”

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Zeum, the children’s art and technology museum in San Francisco, will change its name later this year to Children’s Creativity Museum. When Zeum opened in 1998, it aimed for tech-y hipness, starting with the name, a truncation of “museum.” But according to a San Francisco Chronicle story, the clever name was an obstacle. “Research showed folks outside the tech circles just didn’t know what it meant,” said the museum’s executive director, Audrey Yamamoto. “My parents still don't know how to pronounce Zeum. They always say Zoom,” said Stanley Lin, a local high school senior who’s an intern at the museum. The new name, logo, and exhibit plan were all developed by local agencies that donated their time; the blandly descriptive name was contributed by business-consulting firm Bain & Company, not generally known for its verbal-branding work.

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The Coen brothers’ film-production company, Mike Zoss Productions, is named after Mike Zoss Drugs in Minneapolis, where the brothers liked to hang out when they were kids. The Farrelly brothers say they don’t know why they named their production company Conundrum Entertainment: “It’s a real head-scratcher.” Those and 32 other explanations of how production companies got their names are in the March issue of Vanity Fair. The story is titled “What’s in a Name?” because, as we have seen, that is the only permissible title for stories about names and naming.

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NZT—the fake productivity-enhancing drug taken by Bradley Cooper’s character in the new thriller Limitless—is shorthand for the equally fake yet very scientific-sounding thallanylzirconio-methyl-tetrahydro-triazatriphenylene. According the TheClearPill.com, an authoritative-looking website that launched last December to generate interest in the movie:

NZT is a nitrogen-based psychotropic that impacts specific brain activity in several ways but most significantly by elevating receptivity and synaptic sharing between the hippocampus, the amygdale [sic] and the striatum.  In controlled doses, taken over the course of a relatively short period of time, NZT significantly improves both short-term and long-term memory, memory capacity, and the analytical purposing of memory.  Because it also impacts the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, NZT can improve higher brain function, hand-eye coordination, muscle memory and even the body’s immune system.  In some people, NZT can even induce lucid dreaming and what is sometimes called ‘fugue state’.

NZT is “not recommended for vegans.”

(Speaking of The Clear Pill, “Clear” is used in Scientology to refer to a desirable state on the road to personal salvation. According to Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, “becoming Clear strengthens a person’s native individuality and creativity.”)