After teasing us for months with talk of a corporate name change and of a “metaverse” that will bring physically distant people closer together, Facebook sent shock waves around the world by …
Just kidding, folks! Facebook founder/CEO Mark Zuckerberg shocked precisely no one who was following the company’s October 28 Connect conference. Instead, his company did what it always does: something predictable, clunky, and imitative. It’s staking a claim in the “metaverse”; ergo, the new corporate name is Meta. (Product names, including the Facebook social-media platform, remain unchanged.) From the new About page: “The metaverse is the next evolution of social connection. Our company’s vision is to help bring the metaverse to life, so we are changing our name to reflect our commitment to this future.”
Continue reading "Facebook's Meta-morphosis" »
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Solstice greetings to all! Here’s a sampling of my recently published writing:
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Names of the year for 2024 (Moo Deng, Shohei Ohtani, Piper, and more)
Words of the year for 2024 (BlueAnon, snoafer, X-odus, and more)
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A few additional words of interest:
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When the artisan is artificial (Medium gift link)
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See you in 2025!
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Hello again! Here’s some recent writing of mine that you may have missed:
Just Add “Just”: The Four-Letter Word That’s All Over Supermarket Shelves and Advertising Copy (Medium gift link)
Skippin’ Like a Dipshit: Minnesota Governor Tim Walz brings a “folksy” profanity into the spotlight (Strong Language blog)
Mavis Beacon: How the Betty Crocker of software got her name (Substack)
Some notable words of the week:
Reviews of the new brand names TRONQUE and PLONTS.
And a review of Gobsmacked!: The British Invasion of American English.
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I’m talking about names today in my Substack newsletter: Kindbody, Gromeo, Uniqlo : C, and millennial baby names. Find me in your browser or on the Substack app—subscriptions are free, and you’ll receive ad-free updates in your inbox.
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Lots of news about Twitter this month; if you don’t care or are already saturated, feel free to scroll down to my Twitterless content.
The bluf: Twitter’s dark overlord, Elon Musk, announced on Saturday, July 23, that “soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.” And lo, by the following day the Twitter logo and name—but not the word “tweet”—had disappeared from the platform, replaced by a grim, spindly “X,” Musk’s favorite letter. (In 2000, he wanted to rebrand PayPal as X. He was ousted as CEO, but bought back X.com and went on to found SpaceX, name the Tesla Model X, and sire a child named, alas, Æ A-Xii.)
It’s not quite the end of Twitter, but it sure ain’t what it used to be. I wrote for Medium about what I’ll miss—and am already missing—about Twitter, which I started using in 2008, a lifetime ago.
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The first time I encountered the Brigid Alliance name, abut a month ago, I was half-listening to an NPR story about abortion resources, and I heard the name as “Bridge It.” Which made sense, I thought: The organization exists to cover the costs of travel, food, lodging, and childcare for women (aka “pregnant people”) seeking abortions in states where the procedure remains legal—to bridge the gap, in other words.
But no: It’s Brigid, one of the spellings of an ancient Irish personal name whose etymology translates to “the High One.” And there’s an interesting story behind that choice.
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Earlier this week the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the non-prescription sale of Opill (norgestrel), a progestin-only daily oral contraceptive. Although norgestrel has been used in prescription contraceptives since 1973, Opill is the first oral contraceptive approved for over-the-counter (OTC) sale in the U.S.
Opill’s manufacturer, Perrigo—an American-Irish company with headquarters in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Dublin—said the contraceptive will be available in the U.S. in early 2024.
Opill package
The announcement represents mostly good news for, as the website puts it, “people capable of becoming pregnant.” (The fly in the ointment: Under the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies aren’t required to cover the cost of over-the-counter birth control. Opill’s retail cost hasn’t yet been disclosed.) But what about the naming news? Good, bad, or meh?
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A quick audiobook recommendation: I thoroughly enjoyed So Many Steves: Afternoons with Steve Martin, a series of conversations between Martin and his longtime friend the New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik. (Gopnik is everywhere, isn’t he? He was also “in conversation with” the fictional Lydia Tár in last year’s Tár.) Martin, who will turn 78 in August, has spent more than 60 years plying his various trades: magician, musician, comedian, actor, novelist, librettist. Gopnik elicits charming stories and surprising revelations, and gently nudges Martin toward a discussion of craft and motivation. The book—audio only, with some delightful banjo music—is available from Pushkin Industries and the usual online merchants. Or, if your public library supports the Libby app, you can borrow it free for three weeks. (By the way, the title is a twist on the E.E. Cummings poem “So Many Selves.” Martin is a big fan of Cummings, it turns out.)
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From Corey G. Johnson’s ProPublica interview with Ryan Busse, a former gun-industry executive who left his job in 2020 to become a gun-safety advocate:
You know, I tell the story that 15, 20 years ago, the industry named guns like the Smith & Wesson 629 or the Remington 870 because you had [industry] attorneys that knew that even the names of guns could be important. They could encourage people to do irresponsible things. And so you’d never wanted to even name things that might encourage bad things to happen. Now we have a gun called the Wilson Urban Super Sniper. I mean, what are you supposed to do with that? We now have a gun called the Ultimate Arms Warmonger. What are you supposed to do with that? We now have an AR-15 company called Rooftop Arms, as in when you don’t get what you want, you vote from the rooftops. And what happened in Highland Park? A kid got up and killed people from a rooftop. You see the old self-imposed responsibility; those old norms of behavior have been just completely trashed.
Highland Park: On July 4, 2022, a gunman fired 83 shots into the crowd at a Highland Park, Illinois, Independence Day parade. Seven people were killed.
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Related:
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I figured I was pretty well acquainted with the -nym family, from acronym and backronym to mononym and toponym. (If you need a refresher, see Mike Pope’s 2013 column for the Visual Thesaurus, “What’s in a -Nym?”) But last Friday I stumbled upon a new (well, new-to-me) -nym that fills a gap I hadn’t known existed.
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Processed-meat maker Oscar Mayer announced last week that its “iconic” Wienermobile—the adjective is apparently compulsory—which has tootled along American streets since 1936, would now be called the Frankmobile, a tribute to the company’s 100% Beef Franks. Say it ain’t so! said a bunch of branding folks of my acquaintance.
But hang on: Is this really a rebrand, or is it just a seasonal stunt? In my latest story for Medium I look at how the (branding) sausage is made. Enjoy, and don’t forget to clap (up to 50 times per story!).
Read You Say Wienermobile, They Say Frankmobile. Let’s Call the Whole Thing ... Publicity?
Blog bonus #1: Wiener literally means “of/from Vienna” (Wien in German), just as frankfurter means “of/from Frankfurt.” If you’re interested in why we call a wiener a hot dog, Barry Popik’s Big Apple blog is the place to go.
Blog bonus #2: The Oscar Mayer wiener song, accompanied by the Wiener Whistle (now called the Frank Whistle ... at least for a while). The jingle was retired in 2016.
Blog bonus #3: The story behind that other Oscar Mayer jingle, “My Bologna Has a First Name,” as told by former Oscar Mayer marketing VP Jerry Ringlien. Watch all the way to the end to see the original ad.
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