Fritinancy

Word of the week: Poplin

Poplin: A strong, lightweight, plain-woven fabric with a smooth finish, historically silk but now more commonly cotton.

Poplin weave structure, via Charles Tyrwhitt.

Word of the Week: Prayer-Shaming

Prayer-shaming: Criticism of public figures who, after a mass shooting or other tragic event, offer “thoughts and prayers” but do little or nothing to change policy.

Prayer-shaming was popularized by Emma Green, the managing editor of The Atlantic, in an article published online on December 3, one day after a shooting attack in San Bernardino, California, that left 14 people dead as well as the husband-and-wife shooters.

Name in the News: Karma Automotive

On September 30, the Fisker Automotive and Technology Group of Costa Mesa, California, announced a new corporate name and logo: Karma Automotive. The name reincarnates – sorry, couldn’t help myself – the name of Fisker’s only product, a plug-in hybrid that sold for more than $100,000 … when it sold at all. The model lasted only two years; just over 2,000 units were sold before production was suspended in November 2012. The company filed for bankruptcy and was eventually sold to a huge Chinese automotive-parts company, Wanxiang Group.

 

New logo. Application for trademark registration filed September 30, 2015.

  

Fisker Automotive had been named for its founder, the Danish car designer Henrik Fisker, who had previously worked for BMW and Ford and who resigned from Fisker Automotive in March 2013 because of “disagreements with management.” At the time of his resignation, the New York Times noted that the Fisker Karma had received “mixed critical reviews” as well as “business setbacks and technical problems, including two recalls. In addition, the Karma’s federal fuel-economy ratings were disappointing and its all-electric range proved limited.”

That was then. This is … Karma.

When the Saints Go Marching In

Fritinancy Fashion Week wraps up on a reverent note, honoring a quartet of brands with “Saint” in their names.

OMG!

God, or those who claim to speak on His/Her/Their behalf, has had a busy week.

In Rowan County, Kentucky, an elected official named Kim Davis, apparently misremembering that she is paid to render unto Caesar, cited “God’s authority” as the reason she has defied the law of the land and refused to grant marriage certificates to same-sex couples. She’s been held in contempt of court and, as of this writing, is in a county detention center.

Meanwhile, “Hand of God,” a new original series from Amazon, is available for streaming today. I’ve seen only the trailer for the nine-part series, which the New York Times’s Mike Hale called “a California neo-noir thriller” and which centers on a judge (played by Ron Perlman, whom you may remember as Hellboy) who believes he can hear the voice of God, but I can’t help imagining the fictional Judge Pernell Harris meeting the real Ms. Kim Davis in court.

And “Hand of God” isn’t the only deity-themed entertainment in the news. Cast thine eyes on this holy-ish trinity:

Name in the News: Slack

Almost overnight, it seems, the world has fallen head over heels for Slack.

“I am basically in love with Slack,” declares About.me founder Tony Conrad in a testimonial on Slack’s home page. “Slack, a messaging tool designed for team collaboration, is the working digital world’s latest paramour,” writes Scott Rosenberg in an admiring article published earlier this month on Medium (“Shut Down Your Office. You Now Work in Slack”). “Slack is the new favourite tool of newsrooms” reads a headline in Digiday, which calls itself “the authority on digital media.” In April, Slack’s co-founders won a Crunchie—one of the technology awards bestowed each year by TechCrunch—for founder of the year. Slack is also the investment world’s BFF: launched less than two years ago, it has only about 750,000 daily users—more than two-thirds of whom pay nothing for the service—but is worth $2.8 billion, according to Business Insider.

 

Chart via Business Insider (May 19, 2015), which is shaky on its spelling of Pinterest.

 

The numbers and accolades are impressive. But how does that name—Slack—stack up?

March Linkfest

Here’s a spirited celebration of St. Patrick’s Day: “Mudebroth, an Ejaculation of St. Patrick.” It’s on Strong Language, so expect naughty words.

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“Clickspittle: an unquestioningly loyal follower who obediently shares every trivial thought of their idol on social media.” Post-modern portmanteaus from The Age of Earthquakes: A Guide to the Extreme Present, excerpted in The Independent.  (Via @Catchword)

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“Most important, it stood for Internet. But it also stood for other valuable i things, like individual, imagination, i as in me, etc. It also did a pretty good job of laying a solid foundation for future product naming.” A knowledgeable Quora answer to the question “What is the history of the i prefix in Apple product names?”(Via @AlanBrew)

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When you’re creating a name, trademark protection is more important than domain name—but the wrong domain name can get you into trademark trouble, writes Brent Lorentz on Duets Blog.

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Eight great fake company names. (Via @HenryAlpert)

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“Around the time of the birth of OK, there was a fad for komical Ks instead of Cs on the pages of newspapers … including from 1839: ‘The gentleman to the left of the speaker, in klaret kolored koat with krimson kollar, is Mr. Klay, member of Kongress from Kentucky’.” Allan Metcalf, author of OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word, marks the 176th anniversary of “OK” with a post about the word’s “konspicuous, kurious, komical” … uh, kwalities. (Read my 2010 post about “OK.”)

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What do we lose when dictionaries delete words like bluebell, catkin, lark, and mistletoe to make room for blog, broadband, MP3 player, and chatroom? British nature writer Robert Macfarlane—most recently the author of Landmarks—writes in The Guardian about “the importance of preserving and plenishing a diverse language for landscape.” His essay includes some beautiful, obscure words like ammil, “a Devon term for the thin film of ice that lacquers all leaves, twigs, and grass blades when a freeze follows a partial thaw, and that in sunlight can cause a whole landscape to glitter.” Plenishing is pretty wonderful, too. (Via @StanCarey)

 

 

Branding with Buddha

The banner on San Francisco’s American Buddhist Cultural Society tells us that Sunday, May 4, is Buddha’s birthday.

Buddha’s birthday is not a fixed date, according to this article.

 

 

In celebration, let’s hear the sound of one hand clapping for these Buddha brand names:

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Big Buddha. “Animal-friendly” handbag company headquartered in Santa Cruz, California; acquired in 2010 by Steve Madden.

 

“love big. live buddha.”

 

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Super Buddha. “An international collective of people like you. You are all the Buddha.” Based in Santa Barbara, California; sells T-shirts and yoga bags.

 

 

 

 

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Buddhify. iOS app that promises “modern mindfulness wherever you are.”

 

From the website:

buddhify is made by 21awake, a small company based in the UK. We work on products that use popular technology to actually make people's inner lives better.

 

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Neon Buddha. Canadian “lifestyle collection” of clothing for travel, yoga, and work.

“Nirvana for your body and soul.”

 

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Phat Buddha. Yogawear brand launched in 2008 by New Yorker Alissa Benishai. The clothing incorporates “luxe extras such as glitter, studs and jewels and other couture-minded details.”

Despite the similarity of the drawings, Phat Buddha and Neon Buddha are not connected.

 

Interviewed by the New York Times in early April, Benishai said she “uses seamless fabric to create one-size-fits-many bras, leggings and tops, so there’s no potentially insulting size to be proffered helpfully over the dressing-room door”:

Ms. Benishai named her label Phat Buddha, after her favorite part of Bikram yoga class: When it’s over, there’s a breathing exercise in which the teacher tells the class to “let your Buddha belly hang out.”

“They close the lights at that point so nobody is looking at my fat belly, and I can let it all go and not judge myself,” she said.

Benishai wears a size 4.

 

UPDATE: Many thanks to commenter Q. Pheevr for the link to Alex Hickey’s “Buy More Buddhas” (video).

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Related: Zen brands.

Death Week: Shroud of Purrin

Death Week continues with an odd, quasi-religious product-name pun: Shroud of Purrin, used by Nau International, Inc., for a line of waterproof outerwear. The name is a play on Shroud of Turin, believed by some people to be Jesus’ burial cloth, which has been on display at the cathedral in Turin, Italy, since 1578.

Nau’s Shroud of Purrin jackets look neither funereal nor otherworldly.

 

Nau Shroud of Purrin Trench for women.

 

Nau Shroud of Purrin Hoody for men.

 

But “shroud” has meant “burial cloth” since the mid-16th century—just about the time the Shroud of Turin was moved to Turin. (In Old English, the noun form of “shroud,” or scrud, referred to any garment.) Calling a piece of adventure outerwear seems to portend a dire, “To Build a Fire” outcome.

I confess I couldn’t decipher “Purrin” at all—or rather, I couldn’t help seeing it as “purulent” (full of pus). A customer-service rep at Nau set me straight: it’s meant to represent purring, as in (quoting the website copy here) “feline-soft interior fuzz.”

Perhaps it’s appropriate for Nau to reclaim a word associated with death: the adventure-clothing company, which is based in Portland, Oregon, was itself brought back from the grave not long ago. When I originally wrote about Nau, in 2008, the company had issued a going-out-of-business manifesto. Two years later, it was back among the living, having been bought by another socially conscious outdoor-gear company, Horny Toad, which trimmed inventory and implemented other cost-cutting measures.

Nau, pronounced “now,” is a Maori word meaning “welcome.”

I couldn’t find a trademark filing for “Shroud of Purrin,” but I did find a few other “Shroud” trademarks, including Poly-Shroud (for railway freight car axle bearings), Crimson Shroud (a video game title), Powershroud (portable electric fans), Refrigerated Shroud (refrigeration equipment), Add-a-Shroud (electrical plugs and receptacles), and Butterfly Pallet Shroud (cardboard floor display units).

Alas, the trademark for Snuggle-Shroud (“cloth used for burial of pets”) is deceased, defunct, expired, and, moreover, abandoned.

Miscellaneous non-trademark fact of interest: in British colloquial parlance, according to the OED, “shroud-waving” means: 

 (a) n. the practice of attempting to gain support for health-care funding by highlighting the life-threatening consequences to patients of underfunding; (in extended use) concentration on the negative effects of a particular policy, etc., in order to influence public opinion; (b) adj. that engages in shroud-waving.

First documented usage: 1967.

Previously on Death Week: Demised.

Word of the Week: Wudu

Wudu: In Islam, the ritual washing of the face, hands, and other body parts in preparation for prayers. Wudu comes from Arabic al-wuḍūʼ; the closest English equivalent is ablution, although the latter word can also be used in non-religious contexts.

Wudu showed up in the news last week in obituaries for the Polish chemist and entrepreneur Wojciech Inglot, who died February 23 in Przemysl, Poland. He was 57.

Inglot had founded Inglot Cosmetics in 1983; in 2009, the company introduced O2M, a nail polish said to promote nail health by allowing oxygen (O2) and moisture (M) to pass through it. The polish – made from “a polymer similar to that in the newest generation of contact lenses,” according to a story in USA Today – sold poorly because of its high retail cost ($14 a bottle).

From the New York Times obituary:

Then last fall, a Muslim cleric and academic in Southern California who was working on a book about purification and prayer learned that some Muslim women were trying to determine whether O2M’s porous properties might make it acceptable for wearing during prayer. Muslim women who wear nail polish often remove it as part of a ritual, called wudu, that involves washing with water before daily prayers.

After the cleric published an article saying O2M was “good news” for devout Muslim women, “a craze” built up around the brand, USA Today reported:

Though the Muslim holy book, the Quran, does not specifically address the issue of nail polish, some Islamic scholars have said that water must touch the surface of the nail for the washing ritual to be done correctly.

Some Muslim women might put nail polish on after finishing the last prayer of the day before going out, and then take it off again before dawn prayers. They can also wear it during their periods, when they are excused from the prayers, but some find it embarrassing to do so because it could signal they are menstruating. Some simply don’t want to take the trouble of getting a manicure that won't last long.

The late success of O2M caught Inglot by surprise, USA Today reported:

“I don't think there is a single Muslim living here,” Inglot said in an interview with The Associated Press nine days before his death at his factory in Przemysl, near the border with Ukraine. “We didn't even think about this.”

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When I read the obituaries, I was struck by the similarity between Inglot’s surname and the French word for nail, ongle. A coincidence, to be sure, but an apt one.