Fritinancy

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.”

World Capitals

For reasons best left undisclosed*, I recently found myself looking up facts about California cities. I wasn’t searching for nicknames or mottoes, but somehow I ended up on Wikipedia’s List of City Nicknames in California, and … well, there went the afternoon.

The list doesn’t include one city nickname I’ve always liked: Manteca, in Central California, is known as Fat City. (Manteca is Spanish for “cooking fat.”) But it does contain plenty of nuggets, many of them new to me (a California native). I learned, for example, that Chatsworth, in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley, is sometimes called San Pornando, and that San Francisco has more nicknames (ten) than any other California city.

Then there are all the “X of the world” cities and towns. A lot of them.

I’d known, of course, that Castroville is the Artichoke Center of the World and that Gilroy is the Garlic Capital of the World; indeed, I’ve attended the Artichoke Festival and the Garlic Festival. But some of the other world capitals surprised me:

Auburn: Endurance Capital of the World. (The Sierra foothills city, about 50 miles east of Sacramento on I-80, is “home to some of the most challenging and historic endurance events on the planet.”)

Bishop: Mule Packer Capital of the World.

Chico: Almond Capital of the World.

Fallbrook: Avocado Capital of the World and Raisin Capital of the World. (But also see Selma, below.)

Forestville: Poison Oak Capital of the World. (Hey, I’ve been to Forestville. It ain’t that bad!)

Holtville: Carrot Capital of the World. (I had to look up Holtville on a map. It’s a town of about 6,000 in Imperial County, about 10 miles east of El Centro.)

Indio: Date Capital of the World. (I have fond memories of spring vacations in Indio. It’s in the hot, dry Coachella Valley, near Palm Springs on the map but worlds away in style. We’d always stop at Shields Date Gardens to order date shakes and watch a grainy black-and-white documentary called The Romance and Sex Life of the Date.)

Shields Date Gardens, via Canuck Rennsau’s Flickr stream.

 

Lodi: Tokay Grape Capital of the World and Zinfandel Capital of the World.

McCloud: Blackberry Capital of the World. (Really? Well, it’s a nice little town up near the Oregon border in the spectacular Siskiyou Mountains. Worth a detour.)

Oakdale: Cowboy Capital of the World. (Don’t tell Bandera, Texas.)

Oxnard: Lima Bean Capital of the World and Strawberry Capital of the World. (Watch out, Watsonville!)

Pearsonville: Hubcap Capital of the World. (Pearsonville, pop. 17, is home to at least one very enthusiastic resident.)

Salinas: Lettuce Capital of the World.

Selma: Raisin Capital of the World. (Yes, there’s a Selma in California.)

Tulelake: Horseradish Capital of the World. (Sadly, the horseradish industry is shrinking.)

Watsonville: Strawberry Capital of the World. (Don’t tell Oxnard.)

Willow Creek: Bigfoot Capital of the world. (Had to look this one up, too. It’s in Humboldt County, near the Trinity River. Population about 1,000.)

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I understand the inclination toward superlatives, but where city mottoes are concerned, I prefer the poetic: Modesto’s sublime “Water Wealth Contentment Health,” Del Mar’s much-imitated “Where the Turf Meets the Surf,” Redwood City’s briskly reassuring “Climate Best by Government Test.”

I’m drawn to dark mottoes, too, like San Francisco’s “The City That Waits to Die.” But no California city beats Colma, just south of San Francisco, which Wikipedia reminds us was “founded as a necropolis in 1924.” One of Colma’s mottoes is “It’s Good to Be Alive in Colma”; it’s also known as “The City of the Silent” and as “The City That Waits for ‘The City That Waits to Die’ to Die.”

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* Because they’re boring.

March Linkfest

When did the Central Intelligence Agency start being called “the Company”? If you have evidence of a published example from before 1966, the OED wants to hear from you. Don’t worry, you won’t lose your security clearance.

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The iPhone could have been called the TriPod, the Mobi, or the TelePod, none of which would have been bad. The ePad Femme, on the other hand – “the world’s first tablet just for women” – suffers from more than a bad name. (Hat tip for both: Catchword.)

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Related: an honest iPad commercial.

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OK, just one more iThing link: the CTA Digital Pedestal Stand for iPad 2/3/4 with Roll Holder. (Via Virginia Postrel.)

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Three common mistakes in company naming, as told by three sadder-but-wiser business owners. (Related: my own post, Seven Ways to Go Wrong with Naming. )

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Another sadder-but-wiser tale: How not to name your restaurant. Author David Lizerbram, a trademark lawyer, leads off the story by observing: “It’s always astonishing to me that businesses will invest countless dollars in every aspect of their operations while relying on a name that will only bring legal issues.” Hear, hear!

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Speaking of trademark strength, this 1950 infographic is a thing of beauty.

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If you’re launching a fashion brand, should you follow the traditional route and name it after yourself (which worked fine for Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, and Betsey Johnson)? Or should you follow the lead of some younger designers and choose a quirky name like Creatures of the Wind? Mark Prus, guest-blogging for Duets Blog, weighs the costs and benefits of “strange” as a naming strategy.

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Glad to see I’m not the only one who’s wondering about the proliferation of gratuitous umlauts in brand names. (Via @TimberlakeLaw.)

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Viewy, yellow-ammer, cooshy, and other words from Parade’s End – not the recent BBC/HBO series but the Ford Madox Ford tetralogy on which Tom Stoppard based his script.

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The Atlas of True Names “reveals the etymological roots, or original meanings, of the familiar terms on today's maps of the World, Europe, the British Isles and the United States. For instance, where you would normally expect to see the Sahara indicated, the Atlas gives you ‘The Tawny One’, derived from Arab. es-sahra “the fawn coloured, desert’.”

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From a glossary of American mountain-man lingo: “Arkansas toothpick” (a large, pointed dagger), “possibles” (a mountain man’s personal property), “terrapin” (dog meat).

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Blinkies, peelies, catalinas, and other words from the world of extreme couponing.

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Another one of those wonderful Wikipedia entries: a list of English-language idioms derived from baseball. (Via The Editor’s Desk.)

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Two takes on the evolution of “LOL” from “laughing out loud” to “just kidding”: from Anne Curzan at Lingua Franca and from Stan Carey at Sentence First. Stan includes a video clip of linguist John McWhorter (“Texting is not the death of writing. Texting is fingered speech”). 

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Finally: what if Seinfeld were still on the air?

 

Squirrel!

It’s funny how you can go for months without seeing “squirrel” in print, and then, bam, two sightings within three days.

The first squirrel is a red herring. It appears in Joseph Epstein’s Wall Street Journal review of Yip Harburg: Legendary Lyricist and Human Rights Activist, a biography by Harriet Hyman Alonso of the man who wrote the lyrics to “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” “April in Paris,” and “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” Harburg was born Isidore Hochberg in New York City in 1896; he changed his name to Edgar Y. Harburg in 1934 but was generally known as E.Y. Harburg or Yip Harburg.

Why “Yip”? In his review, Epstein says the nickname “came from the Yiddish word for squirrel, yipsl, which his parents called him when he was a child.” But the Yiddish word for squirrel is actually the Slavic-derived veverke; no Yiddish dictionary contains yipsl. According to Alonso, who devotes the first chapter of her book to the origin of “Yip,” Harburg related the yipsl-squirrel story to the oral historian Studs Terkel. Alonso passes it along without further comment, as does Epstein.

It’s entirely possible, though, that Harburg was pulling Terkel’s leg – or being squirrelly (“cunningly unforthcoming or reticent”). Because while yipsl has no meaning in Yiddish, the acronym YPSL is both meaningful and relevant: it stands for Young People’s Socialist League, which was founded in 1907 as the student arm of the American Socialist Party and whose members were known as – yep – “Yipsels.” In a 2004 column for The Jewish Daily Forward, the pseudonymous language columnist Philologos wrote that “Harburg was a political radical who was blacklisted in Hollywood in the 1940s, and it is possible that he was nicknamed ‘Yipsel,’ subsequently shortened to ‘Yip,’ because of his YPSL-like views even if he never was a YPSL member.” Other distinguished Yipsels or sympathizers included the political scientist Daniel Bell, the literary and social critic Irving Howe, the writer Saul Bellow, and the journalist (and eventual neoconservative) Irving Kristol.

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The second squirrel is a semi-secret one.

Secret Squirrel Cold Brew Coffee is a bottled coffee concentrate; one 16-ounce bottle makes six to seven eight-ounce drinks. The company is based in Studio City (Los Angeles County), but according to the clumsily written FAQ the name has a different geographic origin:

Growing up in Washington DC area a secret squirrel was something like knowing a shortcut around traffic, or knowing the hideaway parking spot, or knowing the unknown electrical outlet in the coffee shop. It only seemed fitting for this centuries old method for brewing coffee that few people know about.

(That awkward dangler at the beginning of the paragraph is one good argument for editors. Another is knowing how to hyphenate compound adjectives. Elsewhere on the website, a proofreader would have caught “anyway” for “any way,” sentences that end without periods, and introductory clauses without commas. But I digress.)

I have no idea whether the D.C. story is true – anyone care to confirm? I do know, however, that “Secret Squirrel” was the title character of a Hanna-Barbera cartoon that aired for a few seasons in the mid-1960s and was briefly revived in the 1990s. The character was a spy; whether it got its name from the Washington shortcut or vice versa, I cannot say.

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Finally, a few squirrel tidbits:

• The Latin word for squirrel, sciurus, translates to “shadow tail.”
• In many Germanic languages the word for “squirrel” translates to “oak kitten.” (It’s Eichhörnchen in German.)
• The Spanish word for “squirrel,” ardilla, translates to “like a flame.” (From arder, to burn.)
• See “squirrel” translated into almost 300 languages, including Klingon, here.

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And here’s my favorite cinematic squirrel sighting, or near-sighting:

Dug the Dog, from Up (2009)

October Linkfest

Forget everything you know about Banana Republic as it is today, and try to imagine the company in its crazily unconventional youth, when the stores had animal-call soundtracks and Jeeps in their windows and the mail-order catalogs—this was pre-Web, kiddies—featured sly, literate copy, interviews with famous-ish and once-famous people (James Fallows; the American-born former crown princess of Sikkim), and illustrations instead of photographs. I don’t have to imagine any of this, because I worked for Banana Republic back then*, after it was sold to the Gap but before Gap-ization eliminated every last whiff of creativity from the endeavor. Now, though, we can all return to that khaki-hued era, because BR’s founders, Mel and Patricia Ziegler (who, by the way, hired me), have written a history of their time with the company. In alternating first-person voices, Wild Company: The Untold Story of Banana Republic tells how an unemployed newspaper reporter (Mel) and artist (Patricia) used their powers of storytelling to spin heaps of military surplus from the far corners of the earth (but mostly the British Commonwealth) into gold. For a preview, listen to an interview with the Zieglers on the public-radio show Marketplace. (“I wish they’d changed the name,” Mel says of BR’s current incarnation.) And to get a sense of the hold the original Banana Republic still has on loyalists—including a few who are too young to have shopped in the 1980s—see Scott C. Adams’s blog, Abandoned Republic, which lovingly reproduces and annotates every one of the old catalogs.

And before we move on, please allow me to correct a common misconception: Banana Republic, founded in 1978, came first; J. Peterman, which appropriated the copy and illustration style and was parodied during several seasons of “Seinfeld,” was founded in 1987.

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If the comic site xkcd baffles you, help is on the way: Explain xkcd is the “For Dummies” of xkcd-dom, providing an earnest exegesis of every panel of almost every strip.  

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Speaking of humor and not getting it, let’s see how stories from The Onion (satirical!) would look on Facebook (credulous!). Ladies and gentlemen, it’s Literally Unbelievable. (Via Karen.)

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The book-recommendation site Goodreads polled its users about their presidential-candidate preferences and then analyzed reading habits across party lines. The result is the fascinating infographic “You Are What You Read.” There’s some crossover between the two camps, but I bet it doesn’t surprise you that Romney supporters think much more highly of Atlas Shrugged than Obama supporters do.

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Did you miss the recent kerfuffle over Britishisms (a k a Briticisms) in American speech? Catch up right here! The first salvo was fired by the fabulously named Cordelia Hebblethwaite of BBC News (“Bit by bit British English is invading America”), which prompted two responses from Geoff Nunberg on the linguistics blog Language Log and one from Mark Liberman. Then came “Americans Are Barmy Over Britishisms” in the New York Times (the print edition had a better hed: “And Bob’s Your Uncle”), and a Times blog post that rounded up tweets with Americans’ favorite Britishisms. The Atlantic Wire and The Economist’s Johnson blog eagerly piled on, while Lynne Murphy at Separated by a Common Language attempted to bring some academic rigor to the discussion.

Meanwhile, Ben Yagoda continues to add entries to his Not One-Off Britishisms blog. Lately, “toff,” “twee,” and “snarky” have been hotly debated in the comments section.

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Calling all peevologists: Ragan.com has published a list of “9 completely pointless corporate words” that will rally your blood pressure. (Decisioning! Solutionize! Planful! And, as suggested by multiple commenters, the ever-unpopular reach out!) For lots more—in dictionary form, no less—see Learnings.org, “where corporate speak goes to die.” (Via Deborah Schneider.)

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Mazel tov to Lena (“Girls”) Dunham on selling her essay collection for $3.5 million. For that kind of dough, Ms. Dunham can afford a less generic title than Not That Kind of Girl, which is not that distinctive. (Via Jessica Testa.)

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Why are men’s nicknames on the decline? Possibly because there’s more diversity in first names nowadays—and thus less need to distinguish one Jim or Joe from another.

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Today is National Dictionary Day in the US. Let’s celebrate with a “30 Rock” dictionary that goes from Avian Bone Syndrome to zing. And who could forget EGOT, fun cooker, and KDate?

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The titanic taxonomy of wrestler names. Suitable for framing! (Via @Catchword.)

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Got 15 minutes? Check out Milking “Got Milk?”: “A photo essay of the ad campaign that won’t go away.”

 

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“I hate beverages with names that tell me how to drink them.” – Impulsive Buy.

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Finally: Thou shalt not commit logical fallacies.

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* In fact, I interviewed Mr. Fallows—I woke him up in his Kuala Lumpur home, to my chagrin—and Ms. Hope Cooke, the former crown princess who had divorced the prince and was leading walking tours of Manhattan.

May Linkfest

Ever wonder how serial killers get their nicknames? Christopher Beam writes in Slate that most nicknames originate in the tabloid media. But there are exceptions, like the Unabomber (from an FBI code name) and the Zodiac killer (self-named). Related: Jag Bhalla pointed me to this Seinfeld script from 1998 in which Kramer invents some names for a serial killer. Denogginizer?

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Speaking of nicknames, derby girls—that’s how roller-derby competitors prefer to be known—have some colorful ones: Ovary Reaction, Hell O’Kittie, Val Catraz. But although some derby names are trademarked, “the vast majority of the thousands of U.S.-based derby girls have not” pursued legal protection for their names, write Kal Raustiala and Chris Sprigman in the Freakonomics blog. Instead, they’ve developed a surprisingly effective system of private regulation backed by the threat of social disapproval. And if dirty looks don’t do the trick, “there’s always violence.” (I wrote about the derby girls’ Master List of names here.)

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Mafia guys have colorful nicknames, too; one defendant in the Family Secrets trial, Joseph Lombardo, had three: “the Clown,” “Lumbo,” and “Lumpy.” But, writes Andy Grimm in the Chicago Tribune, “modern mobsters are so paranoid about wiretaps and FBI surveillance that they seldom even risk using a nickname.” (Hat tip: MJF.)

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Putrescine, moronic acid, dickite, and other unusual names of molecules.

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What are the Boylston, the Cambridge, the Ainsley, and the Hamilton? They’re all names of collar styles, as defined in an essential guide for the well-dressed gentleman, “Comprehending Copious Collars.” Please note: button-down describes a collar, not any old shirt with buttons down the front. (A longtime peeve of mine.)

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Here’s a gleeful discussion of pejorative nicknames for US locales, with –tucky blends (Springtucky, Pennsyltucky, etc.) leading the list. Most creative, and new to me: San Diego is “The Dirty Waffle” (Sandy Eggo). A few I didn’t see on the list: Lost Wages, Nevada; Slo Town (San Luis Obispo); Contraceptive (Contra Costa) County, California; and San Remote (Ramon), California. (Via @Wayword.)

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For decades, ad agencies were named for their founders. Now they’re named for … other things. Read the stories behind Zaaz, Odopod, Sra. Rushmore, and a dozen other agencies in the US and elsewhere.

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In March, Indianapolis copy editor Andy Hollandbeck (@4ndyman on Twitter) began compiling a sure-to-be-massive A to Z of Editorial Peeves, beginning with “alright.” He published the “I” list this week (i.e. vs. e.g., impact, incentivize), but you’ll certainly want to read all the entries.

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Speaking of copy editors and peeves, John McIntyre of the Baltimore Sun makes the case for maintaining distinctions that matter: imply/infer, pallet/palate/pallet, discrete/discreet, reign/rein. He admits, however, that his confidence “has been shaken” on the compose/comprise issue.

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Modernist Cuisine is the six-volume, lavishly illustrated, 2,438-page set—list price $625—“that is destined to reinvent cooking,” according to its own publicity. Apparently all that lavish illustration left no room in the budget for proofreading, as this epic list of corrections and clarifications reveals. (Via Erin Brenner.)

Word of the Week: Chesty

Chesty: Boastful, proud, self-assertive; having one’s chest thrust out as a sign of self-importance. The Oxford English Dictionary identifies this usage U.S. slang; the Random House Dictionary of American Slang cites 1899 as the year the word first appeared in print, in George Ade’s Fables in Slang and A.H. Lewis’s Sandburrs.

I confess that this definition of chesty was unknown to me until quite recently. (Is it a regionalism, perhaps? Neither of my lexicographical sources says so.) Previously, I’d associated chesty with this lady and others of her ilk:

Where Have You Gone, Yogi and Catfish?

They just don't nickname 'em like they used to.

So laments sports columnist Dave Anderson in today's New York Times. Back in the day, every sports hero--from The Babe to Doctor J to Broadway Joe--had a memorable moniker. The boys of summer had boyish handles to match: Pee Wee Reese (so named not for his stature but for his favorite marble), Yogi Berra (whose pals thought he looked guru-esque when he sat cross-legged), Duke Snider, Catfish Hunter. Boxing rings were filled with the likes of Sugar Ray Robinson, the Manassa Mauler, and the Brown Bomber. And football was a nicknamer's field of dreams, peopled by guys a/k/a Crazylegs, Too Tall, and the Minister of Defense.

Today? Well, there's Tiger Woods, whose birth certificate reads "Eldrick." "But few of today's best sports names have a nickname," writes Anderson. "Maybe the big money has drained the fun out of nicknames."

Anderson doesn't look outside North America, but I'd venture that the trend is international. Quick: Think of a soccer player since Pele who was known by his nickname. Ronaldinho, Robinho, and their ilk don't count--they're diminutives, not true nicknames.

("Nickname," by the way, came into English around 1440 as a misdivision of "an ekename," in which "eke" means "increase" or "add to.")

For more sports-nickname nostalgia, check out this article from AskMen.com and ESPN's 2001 roundup of all kinds of sports nicknames--people, phenomena, and memorable moments.