¡Feliz cumpleaños a mí! OK, not a mí, exactly, but a mi blog, which was born 15 years ago, on June 8, 2006. Which means I’ve outlasted The Former Guy by many, many Scaramuccis.
“Trump ends blog after 29 days, infuriated by measly readership”: Washington Post, June 3, 2021
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Each year at its annual meeting, held in early January, the American Name Society announces the most notable names of the previous year. I’ve already picked my brands of the year, but names of the year are selected by different criteria. So here’s my ANS-qualified list, which uses ANS categories and criteria: linguistic innovation, potential to influence language use, and ability to capture national attention. “Popularity or notoriety is not deemed important,” says the ANS.
Before I present my own list, I want to recommend the Namerology blog’s recent post, “The 2019 Name of the Year Is Karen.” In case you hadn’t heard, Karen is being used as a mocking slur against a certain type of Generation X white woman—insensitive, self-absorbed, even racist and/or homophobic. “The use of a given name as a slur for a demographic group is simultaneously more general and more personal,” writes Namerology author Laura Wattenberg. “It invalidates people wholly and indiscriminately.” Curiously, Karen peaked in popularity not during Gen X but years earlier, during the peak Baby Boom years. As Wattenberg notes, “Gen X can’t seem to step free of the baby boom’s shadow, even to be insulted.”
Here’s my own NotY list:
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In these three American cities, at least 32 children and adults were killed by three shooters in a single week, 23 of them within just 13 hours over the weekend of August 3 and 4. While attending a garlic festival. While shopping at Walmart. While socializing in a popular entertainment district.
The Onion has run this headline and story at least nine times.
I’m exhausted and angry—furious, actually—and can’t think of anything original to say about my compatriots’ sick obsession with firearms. So I’ll refer you to a couple of posts from the Fritinancy archives.
Continue reading "Words of the week: Gundamentalist, ammosexual" »
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Today is this blog’s sixth birthday! Help yourself to a cupcake.
And please remain seated while we review the last 12 months in bloggage.
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June 2011: Why do so many startups’ names end in -IO?
July 2011: Campus Crusade for Christ changed its name to the peppy, preppy Cru.
August 2011: What’s in cheez?
September 2011: Netflix tried to introduce a new service called Qwikster. Then it changed its mind.
October 2011: “Siri, tell me what your name means.”
November 2011: Why do so many startups’ names end in -LY?
December 2011: The security contractor formerly known as Xe, and before that as Blackwater, changed its name to Academi.
January 2012: Why do so many companies’ names include gratuitous umlauts?
February 2012: Why are so many companies’ names spelled wth no vwls and in ALL CAPS?
March 2012: How to build a better tagline: Part 1 and Part 2.
April 2012: What does “tribal” mean in fashionspeak?
May 2012: How pleasant it would be if people in power cared about using language correctly. Alas, they don’t.
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And for scholars of paleo-blogging, here’s my first post, about naming a new nanoparticle.
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Cupcake photo from Crazy for Crust.
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It was exactly five years ago today that I published this blog’s first post. (The blog was originally called Away With Words; I changed the name to Fritinancy in February 2008.) And you know what five years of blogging means: It means, my friends, that this is my Wood Bloggiversary.
For history buffs, here’s my very first “real” post (after some throat-clearing)—a challenge to name a 16-atom cluster of gold atoms.
And here’s a brief profile of Fritinancy readers, based on visitor statistics:
You want to know how the Volkswagen Tiguan got its name. You want to know how the Kindle got its name. You want to know how Superdry got its name. You want to know what Main Street means. You want to know what “urban” means. You want to know what “monumentous” means. You want to know what Givacolor means. You want to know what “bershon” means. You want to know how to name a golf course. You want examples of gross-out names. After the British royal wedding in April, the fashion-curious among you wanted to know what “gazar” and “fascinator” mean. Another group of the fashion-curious wants to know about Teenflo, the oddly named Canadian brand.
And year after year, people who read Fritinancy crave more information about desire paths.
You’ll find lots more links in my previous chapters in this series:
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Have I really been writing this blog for four years? Why, that’s an entire presidential term. In blog-years, it’s more like a geologic period, punctuated by occasional earthquakes in the form of TypePad upgrades. (I now compose posts in Windows LiveWriter and export the content to TypePad. More better. Thanks for the tip, AgateGal!) I’m somewhat stunned to report that the post you are reading is my 1,416th and that I’ve published 3,622 of your comments. (OK, so a few of the comments were my replies to your comments.)
A bit of history for those of you who have crashed the party just for the cake*:
In the beginning, the blog was called Away With Words. Here, from 2008, is my explanation of the name change.
Here’s the first blog post I wrote after the obligatory “is-this-thing-on” post. It’s about a nanoparticle that needed a name.**
I’ve written three Simpsons Brand-o-Rama posts—essentially lists of fictitious brands used on The Simpsons. It’s unlikely I’ll produce a fourth, so I recommend you take advantage of the close-out sale on existing inventory. Here’s the first Brand-o-Rama; links to the other two are at the bottom.
Most popular post of the last 12 months? That would likely be the November 2009 post about Droid’s “bare-knuckled bucket of does.” I followed up with two additional Droid posts, here and here.
Three posts account for the most traffic over all four years: How the Tiguan Got Its Name, The IKEA Naming System, and Put on a Suit and You’ll Look Cute, the last being my consideration of “bikini,” “skirtini,” and all the other aquatic -inis. (Most of the searchers who land on that last post aren’t interested in linguistics or women’s fashion; they’re looking for pictures of pubikinis. Sorry to disappoint, fellas.) For some reason, How to Name a Golf Course remains popular as well. Are that many golf courses actually being developed?
At the end of last year, I wrote about Words of the Year, Words of the Decade, Brands of the Year, and Brands of the Decade. And yes, the deadline for registering complaints has passed.
My favorite Word of the Week of the last year? So hard to choose, but I’m going to propose telepalmter. Just because.
For nostalgia buffs:
Bloggiversary 1 (2007).
Bloggiversary 2 (2008).
Bloggiversary 3 (2009).
Thanks to everyone who has read, linked, suggested, and commented. You are the wind beneath my wings. No, seriously.
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* Cake illustration from here.
** The nanoparticle ended up being named Au16-. Booooring.
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Yep, it was three years ago today—June 8, 2006—that I published the first post on this blog, which was then called Away With Words.
Later that day I published the first real post (the first one was just an introduction). It was titled "Name That Cage," and you can read it here. (It looks like that cage ended up being named Au16-. Meh.)
The post in which I announced the name change to Fritinancy.
And in case you were wondering: Yes, there will be a third annual Simpsons Brand-o-Rama within a couple of weeks. The list of fictional Simpsons brands just keeps embiggening.
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I wrote my first post for this blog on June 8, 2006, which means I'm approaching my cotton anniversary (although I'll accept cashmere as a substitute). Here are some highlights of the last year, organized by category for your browsing convenience.
Names and Brands
This December post on the IKEA naming system is my most-visited post ever. Someone Dugg it, someone else posted it on Reddit, and one day in February, to my amazement, I had more than 59,000 page views. (That's laughably small if you're Gawker or Jezebel, but extraordinary for Fritinancy. For comparison's sake, on an average day I have about 400 page views.) It's a little embarrassing, because I was just passing along a link I'd discovered in David Byrne's blog.
In February I changed the name of this blog. If you're just joining us, here's the whole story. (If you're not just joining us, you can read it anyway.)
I had a lot of fun analyzing some of the company names in the news at last year's TechCrunch40: Xobni, Cake Financial, 8020 Publishing, and more.
A lot of people have discovered this blog through "If Any Letter Defines Modern American Name Style, K Is It," my follow-up to New York Times op-ed columnist David Brooks's riff on contemporary baby-naming trends.
Simpsons Brand-o-Rama, my attempt at a list of all the fictitious brand names in "The Simpsons," drew a record number of comments. Simpsons Brand-o-Rama 2 is in the works; look for it later this month!
I worked really hard on Every Woman a Queen, my exploration of brands with "diva" in their names, so give it a read, dammit.
People are still finding Airport Name Game through Google searches. I dunno, should I switch to a quiz-a-day format? Answers to that particular quiz, by the way, are in the following day's post.
Another post that took a long time to research and write, but was very satisfying: backward-spelled brands, also known as ananyms.
Also fun to write: a pair of Halloween-themed posts, Brands to Die For and an appeciation of Vampire wine.
And now that I've written Naming Trends of 2007, I suppose you'll expect me to do it again this year. Oh, all right.
Writing
It seemed like an innocent question: How Did You Learn Grammar? The conversation got very interesting.
I'm not sure why, but this post on the Bad Sex in Fiction Award, which I titled The Hound, the Caspian Pizda, and the Pulpy Furred Wetness, brings in a lot of readers from Eastern Europe. Must be the pizda (a Russian vulgarism equivalent to "pussy").
And then there's this post from late August on the quirky prose style of Jane magazine (R.I.P.).
Slang, Idioms, and Oddities of Speech
This was big-ass fun: The Bottom Line, on all those ass-combination words in the vernacular: cheapass, badass, kickass, and so on. Not to mention the ass-tacular "ass casserole."
This post on Iraq war slang continues to get Google hits every week.
My favorite Word of the Week of the year: Bershon.
I loved my self-indulgent little foray into fashion--the week's worth of posts I wrote during the week of April 28--and especially this essay on the bikini, the monokini, the skirtini, and their kin(i). It got picked up for the Fabulous! Festival for May, which was kind of a kick.
Miscellany
My remembrance of my father, Daniel Friedman, who died in February and who hugely influenced my interest in words and names.
And what would a Fritinancy retrospective be without a post on corporate passion?
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I started this blog one year ago, and 399 posts later, to my ongoing amazement, I'm still at it.
It seems appropriate to celebrate by (a) taking a semi-holiday and (b) publishing a list of favorite posts--yours, mine, and Google's. And I hope you make it all the way to the end, where I write about a movie I urge you to see.
Big Business
Our Passion Is Your Problem, on the rampant abuse of the P-word in corporate lingo.
What's in Your Genes? on "corporate DNA" and its clones.
Capital Punishment, or, Why Corporate Writing Is in Love with Big Letters.
Naming (Adult and Juvenile Divisions)
The Mysteries of Naming, or, everything I know so far, in four parts: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4.
What Not to Name the Baby, a modest proposal for bringing professional discretion to an out-of-control practice.
Naming 2.0, on Flickr, Meebo, and other Web 2.0 nuttiness.
The Naked, the Bimbo, and the Deliboy, or, the wide world of auto naming.
Jargon and Cliché
Value-Added, Outside-the-Box Sea Change--in Just Five Short Weeks! On clichés that deserve to die.
Nine Yards? Possibly my most popular post ever, on the mysterious origins of the expression "the whole nine yards."
Writing
Warren Buffett, Copywriter, or, why Berkshire-Hathaway's annual reports are so much fun to read.
Style vs. Style, on correct usage and personal expression.
Fear of Words (and Other Writer's Blocks), on visual thinkers and verbal thinkers.
What Journalism Taught Me--namely, to spell the names right.
My Favorite Word of the Week (So Far)
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And speaking of D-Day, I want to tell you about an extraordinary documentary now playing in the Bay Area (and perhaps elsewhere): The Rape of Europa. Based on the book of the same name by Lynn Nicholas, it tells the story of the Nazis' systematic plunder and destruction of centuries of art masterpieces and the lengths to which local people--including some very courageous museum curators--went to protect and rescue those masterpieces. I've long been a bit of a WW2 buff, and I certainly was aware of Hitler's campaign against "degenerate" (read: Jewish) art, but 95% of the material in the film was new to me. Among the story's unlikely heroes were a tiny group of young American GIs--no more than 200 or so--dubbed "Monuments Men," who worked doggedly at the end of the war to track down and salvage the art. One of those Monuments Men was Bernard Taper, a former journalism professor of mine at UC Berkeley. Again: a surprise. I'd known Bernard as a gifted teacher and the author of a biography of the choreographer George Balanchine, but not this. How wonderful, and moving, to see him--now 89 years old and retired from teaching--interviewed on film.
Read about the film's production. And here's a link to a story about Bernard Taper that appeared in the S.F. Chronicle last month.
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