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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Word of the week: Zilch

I knew that zilch was a slangy way to say “nothing,” but until last week I knew, well, zilch about where the word came from. Was it computer jargon like kluge or foo? Or maybe a borrowing from Yiddish?

Neither, it turns out. I owe my enlightenment to a couple of posts on the American Dialect Society’s listserv by Peter Reitan, who has done some impressive research into the word and its origins. Reitan, who blogs as Peter Jensen Brown at the Early Sports and Pop Culture Blog, assembled his findings into a long and fascinating post, “Frank Tinney, Ida Mae Chadwick, and Joseph Zilch—Why ‘Zilch’ Means ‘Zero.’”

That’s right: zilch is an eponym—or perhaps more precisely, a kadigan, or placeholder word. Joe (or Joseph) Zilch was the equivalent of other interchangeable Joes: Joe Blow, Joe Doakes, Joe Six-Pack. Nunnally Johnson used the name regularly, beginning in 1923, in his column for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. But, Reitan writes, Johnson didn’t coin the name:

He almost certainly borrowed it from a running gag used by the comedian Frank Tinney. “Joe Zilch” was the name of his “mysterious off-stage friend” who never appears onstage, which made the name perfectly suited for use as a generic everyman, a nobody – a zero.

And Tinney in turn had borrowed the name “from the husband of one of his co-stars, Ida May Chadwick. Joseph Zilch was a graduate of Brown University, an occasional vaudevillian and a longtime car, truck and automotive parts salesman in Philadelphia and Camden, New Jersey.”

August Linkfest

“Gen Z” is a lazy name, says the BridgeWorks consulting firm, which wants to replace it with “GenEdge.”

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You say Zomato, I say Zulily: The Name Inspector has been wondering about the Z-substitution trend in company naming.

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The Australian bird known as the Bell Miner doesn’t mine anything, and it doesn’t feed on bell-shaped substances. Spicks & Specks explores the fascinating false etymology. (Via Language Hat.)

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A track called “Worth It” from the girl group Fifth Harmony has been the summer’s surprise hit. Sonia Saraiya traces the cultural history of the “I’m worth it” affirmation, from L’Oreal advertising onward. (Bonus link: Read my 2013 column for the Visual Thesaurus about “I’m worth it” and “You deserve a break today.”) 

 

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How do you translate a colloquial, nonliteral expression like Trainwreck—the title of the new Amy Schumer feature film—into non-English languages? IMDb has a list of global akas; Mashable has helpfully re-translated some of them. (Not included in the Mashable list: Y de repente tú (“And suddenly you”), probably the most romantically inclined of the bunch. In France, by the way, the official title is Crazy Amy—yes, in English.

 

Translation of the French Canadian title, Cas désespéré.

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Egotarian, Tinderella, ghosting, and other new words Mike Pope has recently encountered. “I apologize in advance that a lot of these terms are unpleasant,” he adds.

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Seriously, Spellcheck? 

 

(Via James Harbeck.)

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Three guys were watching HBO’s “Silicon Valley” when it occurred to them to create a dictionary of jargon used on the show. The result is Silicon Valley Dictionary, where you’ll find definitions for terms like This changes everything (“Nothing has changed. Pure marketing”) and Awesome journey (“used when a startup has failed”).

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The New Devil’s Dictionary is a jaundiced update of Ambrose Bierce’s famous 1906 lexicon. Sample definition: “war on drugs (n.): The noble enterprise of preserving the sanctity of alcoholism.”

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And speaking of alcohol: Bianca Bosker reports for the New Yorker on “the state of modern winespeak” and “the nearly decade-long crusade against overwrought and unreliable flavor descriptions.”

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More on this theme: Did you know that there is a color called Drunk-Tank Pink? From Mental Floss, 19 colors you’ve probably never heard of. (Bonus link: Read my 2011 column for the Visual Thesaurus, “Where Have All the Ordinary Color Names Gone?”

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What can you buy at a Canadian homo store? What was 7-Eleven’s original name? The lore and lingo of convenience stores, presented by Wordnik’s Angela Tung.

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Politico: Donald Trump talks like a third-grader! Language Log: Hold on just a minute there!

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And for you fans of swears and swearing, I have a new post on Strong Language about “shit happens” and its many variants.

How Beamly Got Its Name

A name change begins with questions—what do we need to communicate? how do we want to express it?–and it ends not merely with the new name but with the story that accompanies it. In the best of outcomes—if the renaming process was guided by a clear and comprehensive naming brief—company executives can tell a cogent story about how the new name came to be. Other times, perhaps because they are a little muddled about what just happened and why, they spin their wheels and generate a not-very-convincing or useful word cloud.

This post is about one of those other times. 

Zeebox, a London-based “social networking and social TV platform,” was founded in early 2011. In April of this year, the company announced it was changing its name to Beamly.

That’s right: another Name That Ends in -ly.

Pinkish wordmark + heart-ish logo = girl appeal?

 

The name change, according to an April report in Digital TV Europe, represents the company’s “bid to ‘capture the zeitgeist’ of its core target audience of 16 to 24 year-old millennials and to break away from its ‘geeky male audience’.”

What made Zeebox geeky? What makes Beamly zeitgeist-y? I certainly wanted to know. Instead, here’s how Simon Miller, the company’s chief of product and content development, attempted to explain the name change:

Naming an app is tough. You’re looking for a memorable, distinctive name with an available an [sic] web URL and preferably with a connection with the purpose of your app. zeebox was by no means perfect, but it worked for our original focus. However, as our users asked us for more than just second screen features, we began to evolve beyond second screen experiences into what you might call a social network for TV, and our original name just didn’t match that evolution. We needed a new brand.

The explanation, such as it is, left me wanting more: Why was Zeebox “by no means perfect”? What about this imperfect name made it nevertheless a good fit for the “original focus”? Why was it a poor fit for the new, social-network focus? Why is it only “preferable” that the new name have “a connection with the purpose of your app”?

(And by the way: Don’t tell me that naming is “tough.” Cry me a river.)

Hypothetically, and especially since renaming is so “tough,” one might argue in favor of keeping the Zeebox name (“Zee is for zeitgeist!”) and instead just changing the tagline, the color palette, the font, or large chunks of your content to suggest a more “social” mission. Remember, you don’t have to change your name just because you’ve shifted your business strategy.

Miller continued:

As a social network for TV, we wanted a friendly, all-inclusive name to brand a community of TV lovers whilst retaining our second screen beginnings plus, of course, it needed to be memorable, distinctive and available. We considered hundreds of names, hunted high and low and eventually the name that put a smile on our faces (and everyone’s when you say it) was “Beamly”.

Oh, really? Why does Beamly make you happy? Because “beam” is a synonym for “smile”? Because television “beams” images? Or because “everyone” smirked smiled while recalling that there are more than 200 other company names that end in -ly? 

Of course, there are also quite a few company names that incorporate “box.”

(Wondering about that “whilst” in Miller’s copy? Beamly is still a UK company, and “whilst” is a marker of British English. In American English, “while” is preferred unless the writer is aiming for an antiquated or humorous tone. However, Ben Yagoda observes in his Not One-Off Britishisms blog that “whilst” has been on the rise in the U.S. since about 2008. But I digress.)

Beamly’s corporate communication machine runs a little more smoothly when the controls are turned over to the art director and the creative director, who talk about Pantone colors, fonts, and navigation. Still, I’d rather not hear that “designing a logo is never a short process”—as with the “tough” naming job, who cares? And while (or whilst) there’s some lip service given to form, function, and simplicity, there’s also too much of this sort of thing:

In the end we opted to use Beamly Coral at the top level of the app (My TV, Discover, Guide, Notifications, Me), but when navigating to a TV Room or TV show the colour of those pages would be calculated by analysing the colours within the image representing the show.

Hmm? Oh, sorry—I just switched channels.

As for the Beamly name—well, you already know what I think about -ly names. Still, “beam” is a valid starting point, and even a mediocre name can be strengthened by clear and effective storytelling. It’s disappointing to see this company miss the opportunity to tell a meaningful name story in language its customers can understand and value.

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Previously in How They Got That Name:  Ski-Doo, ASOS, Pitango.

Name Changers, Part 2

More stories from the Recent Name Change file:

In the beginning there was TweetPhoto, founded in 2009 to allow users of Twitter and other social-media platforms to share photos. In August 2010 TweetPhoto became Plixi and added a geolocation focus to the service. And on May 1 Plixi will change its name again—to Lockerz Photos , to show its kinship with Lockerz, the social-commerce network that acquired Plixi in January.

Congratulations to all concerned, but really: “Lockerz”? Enough with the hip-hop Z-plural, which was already looking dated in 1999, when Fox launched the Boyz Channel and the Girlz Channel—and when Lockerz’s target market of 13- to 30-year-olds was barely sentient. Even worse, Lockerz awards its users something called Pointz—it prefers that you call them PTZ—which can be exchanged for discounts or direct purchases. PTZ: it’s just a vowel away from “putz.” (Hat tip: Trochee.)

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Texas-based Seeing Interactive, which launched in January 2010 after three years in development, changed its name last month to OwnLocal. In addition to its original mission—helping newspapers take ad dollars away from the Yellow Pages—the company has added a daily-deals feature. Like Groupon, yes, but for “markets that haven’t even heard of Groupon,” according to CEO Lloyd Armbrust. “Seeing Interactive” was a less-than-optimal name for this combination of services. OwnLocal is an improvement, but not just because it’s shorter: interactive was boring and overly technical, and what does seeing have to do with ad revenue? OwnLocal, by contrast, contains the keyword local, communicates ownership, and incorporates assonance (vowel rhyme) to make the name more memorable and fun to say.

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Here’s a cautionary tale about names, language, and slang.

PinkelStar founder Alexander van Elsas had a great story to tell investors and customers: his company name was a blend of the color pink and Elstar, a Dutch apple variety. The –star suffix could be transformed into a versatile graphic element.

Founded in July 2010, PinkelStar (the S is lower-case in the logo but upper-case everywhere else), which provides tools for developers of mobile apps, got off to an encouraging start, with a $500,000 funding round and coverage by VentureBeat and TechCrunch. I’ll let van Elsas take it from there:

And then it all happened. After a TechCrunch post someone made an smart remark about our company name. Were we aware that ‘pinkeln’ actually means ‘to pee’ in German, and that we effectively managed to call our company ‘Peeing star’? WTF?

Our company is based in Amsterdam, Germany is our neighboring country. But none of us realized what PinkelStar translated to in German. We were hoping that developers would pick up on the benefits of our service. Instead that one comment lead [sic] to an entire new discussion.

The comment got picked up by ‘a few’ German Twitter users, and a ‘peeing’ storm was born.

Long story short: van Elsas and his team went back to the drawing board and emerged with a new name for the consumer service, Zwapp, and a related name for the developer platform, Zwapp Connect.

 

 

I’d have liked van Elsas to explain name choice. Is it as meaningless in Dutch (or German) as it is in English? Is it meant to suggest “zap”? Since the website and blog are in English, are we meant to give the name an English pronunciation, or is the W pronounced like V?

In any case, it’s an interesting choice with some positive non-urinary associations. I wish the company well. And I wish all startups would seek the counsel of professional name developers with strong linguistic skills before they make costly and energy-sapping mistakes. (Hat tip: @CalliopeCo.)

Oh Say, Can You Zee?

What a difference one little letter can make. Consider, for example, Z:

If a company abuses the alphabet today, it's usually doing so to look hip-hop fresh, sometimes to look, dare we say ... outlaw. . . . In 1999, when Rupert Murdoch's Fox Family Channel launched two new cable channels, it fought the power by naming them the Boyz Channel and the Girlz Channel. (Both were soon zapped.) When it was still running, Lizzie McGuire was the most successful show on the Disney Channel lineup called "Zoog Weekendz." The STARZ!, BLACK STARZ!, STARZ! Kids' STARZ! Family digital movie channels add all caps and exclamation marks to convey their over-the-top Zness. . . . A quick trick to convince children that they're cool and that you, if you're a seller of stuff, are rad, is to call them "kidz" and otherwise buzz their brains with Zs; hence, the glitzoid Trollz dolls and cartoons (based on the 1960s cute-ugly Trolls); Bratz dolls (a massive seller); Nitro Battlerz (cars racing in battle domes and such); Kellogg's Gripz crackers and cookies; Hershey's Koolerz chewing gum, SnackBarz, and Twizzlers Sourz. On the health food side of the aisle, Hain's line of children's products is called Kidz, while EnviroKidz says it makes "The World's First 100% Certified Organic Cereals for Kidz."

From Slam Dunks and No-Brainers: Language in Your Life, the Media, Business, Politics, and, Like, Whatever, by Leslie Savan, who has equally enlightening takes on the letters "X" and "B."

And of course we know that everything Apple is spelled with an "i."

Photo: Shopping Diva.