Fritinancy

March linkfest

Masha Gessen writes in the New Yorker about how “Z”—a letter that doesn’t exist in Cyrillic alphabets—became the symbol of the new Russian politics of aggression: “Graphically, the ‘Z’ is clearly closer to the swastika than to any prominent Soviet symbol, such as the five-pointed star, the hammer and sickle, or the red flag. Its use seems to require a double inversion: first, the people of Ukraine—a nation that suffered some of the greatest losses at the hands of Nazi Germany and one that is currently led by a Jewish President—are rendered as Nazis; then, the Russians, who claim to be fighting for peace and ‘de-Nazification,’ adopt a visual symbol that appears to reference the swastika.” In late March two German states outlawed public displays of the letter “Z.” (Read about earlier, merely annoying meanings of “Z.”)

Russian truck in Ukraine marked “Z.” Via Wikipedia.

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Ukrainians who loathe their aggressor neighbor refer to it as “Rashka.” Benjamin Moser writes that the word is “derived from the English pronunciation of Russia, complete with the diminutive suffix to convey extra venom.”

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A positive spin

I’m researching a longer piece on “plus” in branding, from plus size to Nic+Zoe to all those +-suffixed streaming services. Along the way I stumbled on a couple of new plussed-up brands with unusual naming stories.

April Linkfest

Apple introduced its looped-square “control” icon ⌘ in 1983, but the symbol’s origins go back to sixth-century Scandinavia. Tom Chatfield traces the history of the symbol also known as “St. John’s Arms.”

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It’s not uncommon for computer malware to be named, but the new Heartbleed bug—“as bad as it is possible for a security flaw to be,” according to a security expert quoted in Newsweek—is the first to have its own logo and website.

The dripping-heart symbol was created “in a few hours” by a Finnish graphic designer, Leena Snidate, for the security firm Codenomicon. “Heartbleed” was originally Codenomicon’s internal code name; the bug’s official name is CVE-2014-0160. CVE stands for “common vulnerabilities and exposures.” Read more about Heartbleed in TechCrunch and in Fast Company Design.

 

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Speaking of malware names, Microsoft explains the Computer Antivirus Research Organization (CARO) Malware naming scheme. Here’s a list of named computer worms, from Batrab to Zotob. And a list of named computer viruses (including Jerusalem, PingPong, and ILOVEYOU).

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A Pinterest board of bird trademarks compiled by trademark lawyer Ed Timberlake.

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And here’s naming news from another corner of the animal kingdom: The Scientific American blog Running Ponies reports on six new species of “child-eating Dracula ants” with “cool ninja names”: Shadow, Labyrinth, and Mirror. The scientific name for this ant subfamily is Amblyoponinae; the genus name, Mystrium, was chosen to evoke “the uncertainty surrounding their general biology, ecology and behaviour.” (Via Our Bold Hero.)

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Rap Stats by Rap Genius is to lyrics in rap songs as Ngram Viewer is to words in books. Search for any term and see a chart of the term’s frequency over time. (Via Ben Zimmer.)

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“In the globalized, consumption-fired 21st century, branding is the air we breathe,” writes Frank Viviano in the Spring 2014 issue of California, the Cal Alumni Association magazine. “The Plato and Newton of that volatile universe is David Aaker, a congenial professor emeritus of UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, born and raised in the placid calm of Fargo, North Dakota.” Aaker is vice chairman of the global brand consultancy Prophet, the author of the influential business book Brand Relevance, and the creator of the Aaker Model, which, writes Viviano, “asserts that a brand is a vital form of corporate equity, a measurable asset whose value is as important to a business as its capital infrastructure and staff.”

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The headline says “On the Internet, All the Good Company Names Are Taken,” but the story (in the Globe and Mail) is really about a different problem. “For all its focus on innovation and disruption, the tech startup world can be downright risk-averse when it comes to naming conventions,” notes tech reporter Omar El Akkad.

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Nicholas Lund, who writes about birding for Slate and for his blog, The Birdist, has some suggestions for making Major League Baseball’s avian logos more accurate.

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Health-plan names are “unhelpful, confusing, and misleading,” writes Steve Rivkin. “Some insurance officials admit that many plan names mean more internally to the company than they do to consumers. (How does that help?)”

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Remember that terrifying Hitchcock movie Wimpy? Or Billy Wilder’s comic classic Not Tonight Josephine? Pajiba presents the working titles of 25 well-known movies. (Via Operative Words.)

 

Radio Shack’s Obscenicon

A Radio Shack ad in last Sunday’s newspaper straddles the line between taboo and avoidance.

“#!+* Happens Protection Plan”

 

That string of symbols is known as an obscenicon; the word was coined by Ben Zimmer* in 2006 as an improvement on “cursing characters.” A few years later, linguist Arnold Zwicky argued for “obscenicon” over “grawlix,” one of the terms invented by cartoonist Mort Walker for the same concept:

[Obscenicon] was invented as a technical term in linguistics — well, that tiny part of linguistics that concerns itself with devices for taboo avoidance in print. … In the case of the obscenicons vs. the grawlixes, I don’t see any overlapping territory worth disputing about. Both words are relatively recent coinages of technical terms, in specialized fields that have little to do with one another. And in fact even the older (by about 40 years) grawlix isn’t of sufficiently general use in sufficient numbers to have made it into any of the general dictionaries of English — though after this web discussion, it might get there, and maybe eventually obscenicon too.

In the headline, Radio Shack uses #!+* to mean “shit,” as in “shit happens”: the fact that the formal name of the protection plan is the demure “It Happens” makes this pretty clear. But the later reference to “when your beloved device goes #!+*” makes it confusing. (Your beloved device goes shit? Goes apeshit? Goes ass-over-teakettle? I could go on, but won’t.) Notably, Radio Shack did not choose the more obvious character substitution of $#!+, a string that actually resembles S-H-I-T.

Winking near-profanity has been enjoying a moment in advertising. See my previous posts on “Kiss My Sass,” “Do You Give a Cup?”, “F’n Easy,” and “Look at the Booking View!” You’ll find links to other examples within those posts.

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Update: In a tweet, Ben corrected me on the definition of “obscenicon," saying it referred to each character in the string:  

@Fritinancy As coiner, I'd say #!+* = 4 obscenicons, not 1. ("Grawlix" seems to get used for a single character or a string of them, tho.)

— Ben Zimmer (@bgzimmer) November 12, 2013

Guest Post at Duets Blog: Who Owns “White Elephant”?

My guest post about confusing iconography, “A Tale of Two Elephants,” was published this morning at Duets Blog (“Collaborations in Creativity and the Law”). The elephants in question are idiomatic ones used as brands: one belongs to the Oakland Museum of California’s annual White Elephant Sale; the other was used by Goodwill in its holiday promotion, “I’m Dreaming of a White Elephant.” Which institution owns the elephant? And just what is a “white elephant,” anyway. Your elephantine questions answered here.

P.S. I wrote about an elephant of another color in a 2009 post, “The Pink Elephant in the Living Room.”

Word of the Week: Sharrow

Sharrow: A road marking indicating that the road is to be shared by cars and bicycles. A portmanteau of share and arrow.

The original sharrows were sometimes called “bike in a house” because of their design:

They were included in the 1993 Denver Bicycle Master Plan but not widely implemented in that city until 2010. In 2004, the city of San Francisco, where incidents of “dooring” were increasingly common, commissioned a study of the effectiveness of sharrows. According to One Less Car: Denver:

The goal of the study was to determine which markings were most effective, and how they should be used.  The really neat part of this study is how it was conducted.  The group used before-and-after video footage to determine the effectiveness of the sharrow.  They tested two versions of the sharrow; the 'Chevron style' … and the 'Bike-In-House'  version … They looked for cyclist positions relative to the curb or a parked car, as well as passing motorist traffic positions relative to the cyclist.  In short, what they determined is that ANY sharrow improves cyclist and motorist positioning.  Sharrows created a buffer between cyclists and parked cars, as well as between the passing cars and cyclists.  They did a good job of evaluating variables, and in the end concluded that sharrows can be an effective solution to improve cyclist safety and both cyclist and motorist behavior.

David Darlington writes about sharrows and other features of urban bicycling in “Critical Mass,” in the November issue of San Francisco magazine:

Polk [Street] is an officially designated bike route, but the part we were riding has no formal bike lanes. We were following “sharrows”—stenciled images of bikes with arrows, indicating where cyclists should ride, especially to avoid car doors. To make room for these, 11 years ago two southbound lanes on Polk were reduced to one, following the example of Valencia Street, ground zero for the bike explosion now engulfing the city.

Darlington reports that San Francisco has 2,800 sharrows.

At least 27 other US cities have introduced sharrows to their roadways, according to a Wikipedia entry.

Photo credit: Bikehugger.

Not-So-Crazy Eights

In Chinese culture, the number eight has associations of good fortune: the word for eight, bā in Pinyin, sounds similar to words meaning “wealth” and “prosper” in Cantonese and other Chinese languages.

That’s why you’ll see an unusual number of symbolic eights in the Bay Area, which is home to large Asian and Asian-American populations.

 

Eight Orchids condominiums (Oakland), 88% sold.

This mixed-use development on the site of a former Howard Johnson’s motel in Oakland calls itself “Chinatown’s happiest community.” The “88% sold” sign has been displayed for many months, and may or may not be strictly accurate. Shortly after the project’s completion, in early 2008 (surely no coincidence), an article in the San Francisco Chronicle explained the Eight Orchids name:

The numeral 8 … was not chosen randomly. To the Chinese, eight is a lucky number that stands for prosperity and good fortune. When you take the numeral and turn it on its side, it becomes the symbol for infinity - forever. Triple it and you’ve got 888 - three times the luck and the last three digits of the price tags on the condos.

Speaking of 888:

888 Brannan (at 8th Street), San Francisco.

This South of Market building houses the Giftcenter and Jewelrymart (yes, that’s how they spell those words). It’s open only to the trade.

Double eight has its own symbolic meaning in Chinese culture. According to Wikipedia, the two digits resemble 囍, “the ‘shuāng xĭ’ (‘double joy’), a popular decorative design.”

 

88 Kearny St., San Francisco.

88 Kearny is an office building in San Francisco’s Financial District, a short walk from Chinatown. The double eights create a striking logo.

The Kearny and Brannan buildings may not have begun their lives as 88 and 888, respectively. Street addresses are assigned by city or county agencies, but developers and owners sometimes petition to have the numbers changed. You may recall that that’s what Ronald and Nancy Reagan did when they moved to Bel-Air, California, in 1989. Their house number was originally 666 St. Cloud Road, but Nancy Reagan had it changed to 668 because in the New Testament Book of Revelation, 666 is “the number of the Beast.” Of course, 888 would have been even better, but that would have required buying a different house on a different block.

Ticker Shock

A couple of scholarly studies have drawn attention to the importance of a tiny scrap of nomenclature: a publicly traded company's ticker symbol. The studies prove once again, if proof were needed, that your commitment to your brand is reflected in every element of your corporate identity.

In the more recent study, a couple of Princeton researchers looked at the relationship between the "fluency" of a stock's name or ticker symbol and its performance after an initial public offering (IPO). Their findings: the more fluent (easily pronounced) the name or symbol, the better the stock performed--especially right after the IPO, and regardless of the company's size.

Why would this be so? Simple memorability--a well-known criterion for naming (along with pronounceability, credibility, and legal availability). People are naturally drawn to easily remembered names and symbols--preferring, for example, Callaway Golf Co.'s ELY to Medicis Pharmaceutical Group's MRX. "People are also more inclined to believe aphorisms that rhyme (e.g., woes unite foes) than similar aphorisms that do not rhyme (e.g., woes unite enemies)," the paper said. Human brains are hardwired to remember rhyme, alliteration, assonance, and other mnemonic devices.

The second study, presented at the Financial Management Association's 2004 meeting by two University of Texas (San Antonio) finance professors, looked at what happens when companies change ticker symbols but not their names. Bad news here: both trading volume and stock price declined immediately and stayed down.

This study provides support for the decision of, say, Philip Morris to retain the ticker symbol MO (which has "clear meanings of financial strength, momentum, and performance excellence," according to the company's announcement) when it changed its corporate name to Altria. What the company didn't say, but which seems pretty obvious, is that familiarity helps, too: it suggests stability and continuity.

What does this research portend for your own IPO-bound company? First, don't leave naming--even ticker symbol naming--to chance. And second, it's never too early to start thinking about it. Check out how some Segway enthusiasts are using the new research to guide their thinking about a hypothetical Segway IPO.