Odamaki & Selection of Tradenames

1 January 2012

Languagehat has pointed me to an interesting blog on etymology, Odamaki. I’m adding it to my RSS feed. It looks like it will provide some good stuff, although it doesn’t appear to be updated all that often.

But someone is wrong on the internet, so I have to comment. Back in October Odamaki had a post on Nokia’s trade name Lumi, which in an obscure Spanish dialect means “prostitute.” Odamaki’s etymological commentary is accurate, but he makes the error that most such discussions make: failing to understand that the meanings of trade names simply don’t matter. It’s not a “mistake” to name a product that has a negative connotation. No one has ever shown that such a name has ever impacted sales of a product. I used to name products for a living, and I can tell you it doesn’t matter. (There are branding consultants that will tell you otherwise, but they are trying to peddle their services, so of course they will tell you that you need to hire them to spend many billable hours researching product names.)

Now, it is possible to name a product badly. No one would ever buy “Vomit” perfume, for example. But no marketing exec in their right mind would ever name a perfume “Vomit.” What we’re talking about here is subtle connotations that might slip past the normal brainstorming that occurs in a marketing department prior to a product launch.

Let’s look at some common cited examples of “badly” named products:

  • The infamous urban legend of Chevy Novas not selling well in Mexico

  • Coca-Cola allegedly meaning “bite the wax tadpole” in Chinese.

  • Reebok’s line of Incubus sneakers, which had a successful sales run, but after production was halted when Reebok streamlined its product line, a local news outlet twigged to the demonic implications that no one had commented on before.

  • The hugely successful Bimbo bakery. The giggling the name causes in its English-speaking markets doesn’t seem to have affected its sales.

  • And my favorite, because I used to work there, is the graphic-chip maker NVIDIA, whose “envious” and “spiteful” name did not prevent them from growing to a $5 billion company in just ten years.

People are really good at processing polysemy. They recognize that word in one context does not necessarily mean the same in another. So if a name has subtle negative connotations in one context, those connotations are not going to carry over to the trade name. People may recognize the negative connotation, but if they do, they quickly discard it in the new context. This is a sub-case of the etymological fallacy. The origin of the word does not determine its meaning; its use does. What matters in a trade name is the brand reputation you build, not where the name comes from.

[This post was edited for clarity on 5 January 2012.]

Wordnik Gets Some Press

1 January 2012

The New York Times has an article on Wordnik, the online dictionary. But some the reporting, and even some of the commentary, provides the wrong impression, letting the reader believe that the process is entirely automated, done “without the arbiters.” It may be so on Wordnik’s part, but the databases on which it relies upon for its definitions have been populated by human lexicographers. Wordnik does not “pre-select and pre-prune,” as Erin McKean, one of Wordnik’s founders puts it, but the databases it relies on have been pre-selected and pre-pruned by others. Wordnik is a great resource, but not one I would recommend without some trepidation.

Now don’t get me wrong. I really like Wordnik. It has become my go-to dictionary when I need to quickly look up a word and don’t need the detailed info that the OED provides. It’s fast and provides a wealth of information, but it does require some sophistication to use it well. While I like it for my own use, I would be hesitant to recommend the site to my undergraduates.

First, it’s important to differentiate between the two main parts of a Wordnik entry, the definitions and the usage citations. For the definitions, Wordnik’s algorithms search and cull from various public domain or licensed dictionaries. These definitions are not “without arbiters,” rather the arbiters are one step removed. The definitions have all been created by human lexicographers, just not by ones employed by Wordnik. And because the sources are largely public domain, the definitions are mostly outdated. The American Heritage Dictionary, fourth edition, is more current that Webster’s 1913 or the Century Dictionary, both excellent dictionaries in their day but woefully outdated now, but even the AHD 4th isn’t the latest edition of that dictionary. Wordnik also often supplies definitions from Wiktionary or other web sources, which while current are of wildly varying accuracy. Having the old definitions is really useful, but the user must know that they can’t be relied upon for current usage.

The usage citations are better, and here the selection is truly done without human arbiters. But unlike traditional dictionaries, Wordnik does not usually provide a date for the citation. Many of the citations of “davenport,” to use the example quoted by Geoffrey Nunberg in the NY Times article, are from nineteenth-century novels found on Gutenberg.org. They are good citations, but you need to know the source in order to interpret them correctly. The site does not tell you, for instance, that Madeline Payne, The Detective’s Daughter, which it uses for three citations, was penned in 1883 and is not likely to represent current usage. Wordnik provides a link, so it’s easy to look the source up, but the user must be sophisticated enough to know that it’s important to click the link.

Wordnik does represent at least one way that dictionaries will go in the future, and as such it does represent the cutting edge of lexicography. But it is not truly “without arbiters” and it does need some work to make it friendly for the casual user, the person who just wants the answer and doesn’t know enough or want to ponder how the entry was constructed and how it should be interpreted.

The NY Times article also contains this amusing correction, at least for now. Once the editors discover it, I’m sure it will be corrected. But will they issue a correction to the correction?:

Correction: December 31, 2011

An earlier version of this article misspelled the given name of Wordnik’s cheif executive. He is Joe Hyrkin, not Joel.

Disclaimer: Erin McKean was editor of my book, Word Myths.

In Our Time: The Written Word

31 December 2011

Starting on 2 January 2012, Melvin Bragg’s radio show In Our Time will start a five-part series on the history of writing on BBC 4. The shows will also be available as podcasts.

Part 1: Technology and evolution of writing
Part 2: Invention of the codex (the book)
Part 3: Writing and religion
Part 4: Writing and literature
Part 5: Writing and science

The series is being produced in association with the British Library. You can read more about the manuscripts and books to be discussed on the show here.

In Our Time is one of the better radio shows/podcasts out there. I regularly listen to it. The show covers a wide range of topics relating to how our world came to be what it is, from Plato to quantum mechanics. As a result, it can be somewhat general and cursory, and experts in a particular subject will find fault with the shows, but few programs devote an hour to these topics and In Our Time does a rather good job all things considered. And Bragg is a good host, although he does tend to subscribe to the “great men” school of history and sometimes displays insufferably unreflective British nationalism. (Guests, for instance, should never suggest the industrial revolution was caused by anything other than the cleverness and ingenuity of the British people or Bragg will bring a wrath down upon them.)

Another Language Hater

27 December 2011

Ron Rosenbaum of Slate has joined the crowd of those who take badly aimed pot shots at linguistic ingenuity. He has a list of bad “catchphrases” of 2011. Most of them aren’t catchphrases. (He really should learn what a catchphrase is before writing about them.) Most are much older than 2011. And most aren’t bad. (Evidently the only qualification for “bad” is that Ron Rosenbaum doesn’t like it.)

What bothers me isn’t that people have peeves about language. Everyone does (me included). What bothers me is that the editors of Slate would think one man’s uninformed opinion is of interest to anyone else.

Oh, and repurposing isn’t a Briticism (plus it’s been around since the mid-1980s). If you’re going to print a rant based on one man’s idiosyncratic opinions, at least fact check it.