Fritinancy

My article on "the Big Lie" is now in "American Speech"

My short article about Big Lie for American Speech, the journal of the American Dialect Society, is now available online. You can read it by clicking the “PDF” button here.

The entry appears in the “Among the New Words” section, edited by Ben Zimmer, Kelly E. Wright, Brianne Hughes, and Charles E. Carson. This quarter’s new words were drawn from the nominations for 2021 Word of the Year, held January 7, 2022, via Zoom. (The overall winner was insurrection.)

The issue is dated May 2022, but the print edition was delivered in June and the online version was posted within the last couple of weeks. (For a while I was checking every day, but then I slacked off and voilà—there it was.)

My thanks to Ben Zimmer for inviting me to contribute—it’s my first-ever publication in an academic journal! I’ll have another entry in the August issue; I’ll let you know when it appears online.

Read the full Among the New Words article, which includes antiwork, no bones day, -core, and other noteworthy additions to the lexicon. (Read my Visual Thesaurus column on -core.)

New work: CIMA

The beauty-education industry serves a diverse, mostly female population of instructors, students, and beauty-school owners. Many students come to beauty-school programs with only a high school degree; instructors may have community-college backgrounds or four-year degrees; owners usually have a bachelor’s degree.

That educational diversity was one of my challenges when I was asked by Milady, a leader in beauty education and certification, to name the company’s new digital learning system. A second challenge: communicating “innovation.” Milady is well established and respected—it’s an industry pioneer—but not as closely associated with technological advances as some of its younger competitors.

Meet CIMA, a name to position Milady for a dynamic future while honoring the company’s heritage.

 

 

Stay home, save links

Lynne Murphy wrote about the original UK slogan coronavirus slogan—“Stay at home/Protect the NHS/Save lives”—and its replacement (“Stay alert”), which was “mocked relentlessly on UK social media within a day of its announcement.” My own thoughts went immediately to an old joke, which I see is still alive and well.

Via Zazzle

 

Because Lynne’s a linguist, she went deep on some interesting points of grammar. I hadn’t realized, for example, that at-less “Stay home” marks you as a speaker of American English.

It appears some of you idiots can’t follow a simple instruction so here’s THE NEW AND MUCH CLEARER Government COVID Slogan generator pic.twitter.com/t6tXmfp75E

— Olaf Falafel (@OFalafel) May 11, 2020

I’m a fan of this balanced two-part slogan from PassItOn.com: “Stay apart. Pull together.” Their other pandemic-related billboards—“First In. Second to None”; “Nursing a Country Back to Health”—are good, too.

 

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My American friend Diana Howard wrote about her experience of COVID-19 “confinement” in Aix-en-Provence, France, where she has lived for several years. Diana and I met when she was a graphic designer; we worked on a number of projects together. She’s now a full-time artist, and the accompanying illustrations are charming. 

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And speaking of France (h/t Jesse Sheidlower):

BREAKING NEWS: The Académie Française, the French language police, have just announced that while Covid19 *could* be a masculine word because of “le virus” that it’s preferable to be feminine because of “la maladie.” https://t.co/rsYWY97VEJ

— Dr. Jen Schradie (@schradie) May 8, 2020

 

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Erin Griffith interviewed me for a New York Times article about all those Zoom-y business names. And then she … zoomed away with it. It’s hilarious, and just the teensiest bit deranged. (Check out the URL.)

I wrote a few weeks ago about ten of those Zoom names.

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And speaking of me, my latest story for Medium is about my adventures in picking up trash during the pandemic. Medium says it’s a four-minute read, but you can stretch it out to six if you pace yourself.

 

Listen to me!

The witty and skillful Helen Zaltzman, host of The Allusionist language podcast, recently invited me on the show to talk about “novelty spellings for foods-that-aren’t-made-out-of-the-things-they-sound-like-they’re-made-out-of”—like chik’n, cheez, and mylk. The episode is now live and free for the listening here. You’ll hear me at the beginning and the end of the show (and in the coda, which Helen calls the Mini-llusionist). In between is a segment with the owner of a vegan restaurant in Ontario, Canada, who got into a bit of a bureaucratic dust-up over a menu item labeled “cheddar cheese.”

Image via The Allusionist

 

If you like what you hear, why not subscribe to The Allusionist and sign up for the newsletter? And check out the schedule of live Allusionist shows, possibly coming to a city near you (Portland, Oregon, September 5; London next week; back in the U.S. beginning mid-October).

More from me about food names here.

Some recent writing

I’m stepping away from my desk until the middle of next week, so I’ll leave you with links to some of my recent (and in the case of the Visual Thesaurus, not-so-recent but finally un-paywalled) writing.

For Strong Language:

• “Sluts,” a deep-ish dive into the history of a wanton word that’s being reclaimed in brand names. This post expands on my 2012 exploration of the same topic.

F*ck Trump liquid lipstick from Lipslut

 

For Medium:

• “Don’t Focus-Group That Name”
• “What Makes a Bad Name Bad?”
• “Writing Lessons from Warren Buffett”
• “The Forbidden Letters”

For the Visual Thesaurus (released from paywall):

• My February column on the changing meanings of influence and influencer.

 

New writing for Medium and the Visual Thesaurus

Looking for naming advice? Read my latest post on Medium, “How journalism can help you create a name.” (Free, but clicking on the clapping-hands icon may someday result in my earning a few pennies.)

Curious about the origins of the “__ Nation” formula—Live Nation, Pantsuit Nation, Side Hustle Nation? I dig deep (and explore the side routes of national and nationalism) in my latest column for the Visual Thesaurus, “A Nation of ‘Nations‘.” Full access is restricted to subscribers; here’s an excerpt:

The political sense of nation—an organized community sharing a defined territory and government—emerged around 1400 and gradually predominated, although the earlier meaning survives in the use, since the 1640s, of nation to describe indigenous American peoples: Choctaw Nation, Cherokee Nation. (The specifically Canadian “First Nations” began to be used in the 1970s; it applies to indigenous peoples south of the Arctic Circle and replaces “Indian,” which is both inaccurate and, according to some people, offensive.) 

Nation didn’t turn into the adjective national until the 1590s (“the nationall assemblie”); the noun sense of national—a citizen or subject of a specified state—emerged in the mid-19th century. (Then there’s the Grand National, which is a horse race if you’re English, Irish, or Scottish, and a rodeo if you’re Californian.) Nationalism, defined as “advocacy or support of the interests of one’s own nation, usually to the detriment or exclusion of any other nation’s interests”) is a little older: The OED’s earliest citation is from 1798. An 1844 citation from Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country declares that “Nationalism is another word for egotism.”

Z Nation is an American action/horror/comedy-drama/post-apocalyptic television series that aired from 2014 to 2018 on the SyFy network. The Z stands for “zombie.”

The unfamiliarity principle

Here’s something do-it-yourselfers often overlook when they’re struggling to name a product or company: the importance of making something familiar seem unfamiliar or making something unfamiliar seem familiar.

I’ve written about branding’s unfamiliarity principle in a new story for Medium. You can bypass the paywall to read it by clicking this link.

I’m experimenting with Medium—an elegantly designed, ad-free platform for writers—as a way to reach a wider audience and (maybe, someday) earn a little money from my writing. The payout depends on subscribing members reading and “applauding” my work (note the little clapping-hands icon), so if you like what you see, please subscribe.

My other Medium stories:

Need an Inspiring Brand Name? Look Outside

Hanging Out with the Godless

Fritinancy X

In June 2006, George W. Bush was president of the United States, crowdsourcing was new to the lexicon, a lot of people still called blogs “weblogs,” YouTube was barely seven months old, and the iPhone was still a twinkle in Steve Jobs’s eye.

Also, I began writing this blog.

Ten years! Happy anniversary, me.

I published my first real post (after a throat-clearing one) on June 8, 2006. It was about a nanoparticle of gold that needed a name. I offered some suggestions. My advice was ignored.

I carried on regardless.

Here are a few of my favorite posts from the archives. As an unctuous waiter would say: Enjoy!

Listen to me!

Turn up your speakers or pop in your earbuds and listen to the latest episode of The Allusionist, a fine podcast about words and language, in which host Helen Zaltzman interviews me about – what else? – names and the naming process. Stay tuned to the end to hear Helen chat with Roman Mars, host of the 99% Invisible podcast, about how The Allusionist got its name.

And use your eyes to check out the links at the bottom of the page, cleverly subtitled “Readify.” (The joke is explained within the show.) One of them goes to “Title TK,” a 2014 podcast about naming from 99% Invisible that does not feature yours truly but does include this example of a truly appalling coinage, discourtesy of H&R Block, the tax-preparation firm.

Helpth! They evidently love that Frankenword, because they’ve refused to let it go.

Introducing Mast Mobile

I’m pleased to introduce Mast Mobile, which was named by my company, Wordworking.

 

Mast is a new kind of mobile-telecommunications platform for businesses and their employees: a carrier, software platform, and device manager all in one. It gives business owners the power to manage productivity, costs, and security, and it allows employees to carry a single device with two numbers, one for personal use and one for business use.

When the co-founders of Mast Mobile—all of whom had extensive experience at large multinational companies—contacted me in January, their company was less than 18 months old and was operating in private beta under the name Grid Mobile. That name had evolved from an early plan to provide mesh networks as overlay on existing mobile networks. Now that the original strategy was no longer central, the founders wanted to replace a name they correctly perceived as having unwelcome connotations of infrastructure and “electrical grid,” and a static rather than dynamic and innovative sound.