A new online archive is being launched today—on St. Andrew's Day. As reported by The Scotsman, the SCOTS Project of the University of Glasgow is designed to record the Scots tongue in all its forms.
Dr Wendy Anderson, of the university's department of English language, said: "SCOTS is flexible for research into questions of word survival and regional distribution and features of grammar and pronunciation.
"For example, we're interested in the currency of distinctively Scottish words, such as gallus, canny, muckle, sonsie and braw."
Among the treasures recorded by the SCOTS Project is this commentary on language from Alexander Fenton in "Craiters: 'I cannot get enough of it'":
Faar I wis brocht up, e only seabirds we'd see wis e seamaas. In my time we caad em seagulls, bit aaler fowk wid say seamaas, makin't soon like 'simaaze'. Ere's ay change goin on in e dialect, an ye get a mixter o aal an new, bit it's e life o language tae be aye adaptin tae different generations an different times. It's naething tae greet aboot. Naething staans still, bit gin a wye o spikkin's richt hannlet, fa's tae say bit fit it michna leave its mark tee on fit ey caa e standard language? - for ere's nae doot at e standard language sair needs a bit o revitalisation noo an aan. Bit I'm on aboot seagulls, nae hobbyhorses.
According to the Compact Oxford English Dictionary, "mickle" and "muckle" are merely variants of the same dialect word meaning "a large amount." However, the alternative form of the phrase "many a little makes a mickle" that is the title of this post (originally a misquotation) has led to a misunderstanding that mickle means "a small amount."
Posted by
abnu on Tuesday, November 30, 2004 @ 1:24 PM
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The British Council marked its 70th anniversary with a survey to determine the seventy favourite words in the English language. As reported in the Guardian, they are:
Of all these great "names" it seems that the single category that has secured the most is "social networks" or, in street lingo, dating and mating websites: Passion, Love, Cherish, Tickle and Zing. But not Sweetheart, Gorgeous or Sunshine.
A few of these words are well-known brands, like Bumble Bee Tuna and Cosmopolitan Magazine. A couple are founders surnames long established as company names, like Grace and Bliss.
Others are names well-suited to their brands. Freedom is another word for a chain of newspapers, as is their right under the First Amendment. Gorgeous is a women's health and beauty directory. Smile is a dentistry directory. Aqua is a water information center. ShipShape provides organizing services. Giggle is an Internet Joke Site.
Many of these great words appear to be held as general directories until they find good homes on the worldwide web. A few excellent names are being offered for sale. Some will see opportunities.
Fantastic is, apparently, not so fantastic at the present time. Sadly, in the dotcom world there's no Enthusiasm and no Hope. Destiny is "Coming Soon"—that's good—Eternity ceased operations on April 12th, 2002.
Posted by
abnu on Friday, November 26, 2004 @ 11:46 AM
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In news, trust is everything. But who ya gonna trust? In the end, we trust people we know. People who trust us.
Funny, Jon Stewart scores higher than traditional news anchors in a recent Gallup poll that measures trust. To their credit, the folks at CNN are now playing along and laughing at themselves, too. Looking more like the cast of The Office than crusty old news anchors, the most visible personalities of CNN—Lou Dobbs, Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper, Christiane Amanpour, Paula Zahn, and Dr. Sanjay Gupta—poke fun at themselves in a new series of commercials that shows them without their tv faces on. These ads are like a series of sitcom episodes of the behind-the-scenes goings-on at CNN. In a most personal way, by parodying their foibles that regular viewers know so well, the talking heads at CNN become more, well, human. They're so good these commercials are worth watching.
With this major departure from the paternalistic approach of traditional news networks, CNN gains trust by not treating its audience like children who don't know what's going on. The new commmercials use the tagline "The power of CNN under your command" to position their viewers as trustworthy enough to be in control. Are these guys crazy? Yeah, crazy like a fox. "We Report. You Decide." Only more clever.
Posted by
abnu on Tuesday, November 23, 2004 @ 7:21 AM
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Like the Maharaja of Gwalior, neither Rolls-Royce nor Bentley are under the command of the British Empire these days (they’re owned by BMW and VW, respectively). Still, their brand names continue to evoke imagery of kings named George or Edward gesturing toward cheering throngs. Fittingly, European Car picked the English countryside as a proving ground to compare the courtly Rolls with the hooligan-in-a-waistcoat Bentley Continental GT. Apparently the cars are as spectacular as one would assume from their multi-triple-digit price tags and long histories as vehicles of distinction. We love the Anglophonic descriptions of the Rolls trundling along swimmingly and the Continental gurgling devilishly under power. Godspeed to the both.
In the world of auto journalism brands, Jalopnik is our pick for car blog name of the year—easily beating the pedestrian AutoBlog and, believe it or not, The Truth About Cars.
Posted by
abnu on Monday, November 22, 2004 @ 9:15 AM
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Pop Matters has a feature article about how hard it is for musicians to support themselves on income earned from their music.
It's as un-romantic as rock and roll gets, the nickels and dimes of making a living making music. Only a handful of bands actually have the resources to make money on a consistent basis, and in many cases even bands whose music has international exposure aren't making enough to survive solely from their music. While taking a 'real' job puts binds on your time, it can provide the steady income, and usually the health insurance, that full-time musicians rarely have.
Eight musicians were asked, "Do you make your sole living off of making music? If not, what do you do for a living?" Struggling musicians will probably find all their answers interesting but, if you're struggling in naming and branding, you might want to consider the career choices of Amanda Palmer, one half of the Dresden Dolls.
For many years after college, I supported myself as a street performer and with other bizarre forms of income supplement; artist modeling, naming and branding, brief stints as ice cream scooper, dominatrix, etc., etc. Since I was always creating my own schedule and hours, I just gradually stopped working on other jobs as the band became more demanding.
She's also the Amanda Palmer half of Amanda Palmer & Co.—"and Co." refers to a rotating cast of actors, dancers and performers who have been subcontracted over the years to help design and perform Living Statues for different events, according to indie-music e-zine Brainwashed. The Dresden Dolls record on their "8-foot records" label, which is named after one of Amanda's well-known living statues, The Eight Foot Bride.
Posted by
abnu on Thursday, November 18, 2004 @ 7:14 AM
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There are plans to extend the interstate from Indianapolis through southwestern Indiana all the way through Texas into Mexico in the coming years. While most believe this highway will be good for the state’s economy, religious conservatives believe I-69 sounds too risqué and want to change the interstate’s number.
John Hostettler, the Congressman representing the 8th district of Indiana, has been convinced by local religious groups to introduce legislation in the House that would change the name of an Interstate 69 extension to a more moral sounding number. But he's not just bowing to pressure from religious fanatics; he's had a number of personal experiences with teenagers that make him uncomfortable.
"Every time I have been out in the public with an 'I-69' button on my lapel, teenagers point and snicker at it. I have had many ask me if they can have my button. I believe it is time to change the name of the highway. It is the moral thing to do."
Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas is not the first hip hop star to get a Hummer. But it's not every day that each member of the band gets an H2 in the color of choice as part of their compensation for a free gig, exclusively for Hummer owners. "Free music, food, a dash of subtle salesmanship and ego stroking are all indicative of customer loyalty events which are generally held several times a year in several locations." They're called Hummer Happenings.
For the rest of us, there's the Camp Cheap program where DaimlerChrysler invites Jeep owners for weekends of putting their SUVs through their paces on challenging off-road courses, camping out, eating barbecue and bonding around the campfire.
Posted by
abnu on Monday, November 15, 2004 @ 4:14 AM
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Even Senator John McCain, the go-to war hero and former Vietnam POW, was working the phones for ABC on Thursday trying to keep the broadcast on, but to no avail. McCain even appeared in a brief intro to the Veterans Day special.
Really mom, it's not Shaving Ryan's Privates.
Posted by
abnu on Sunday, November 14, 2004 @ 1:26 PM
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From the Igor PR machine: Igor is featured in an article in the December 2004 issue of Business 2.0, The New Science of Naming, by Alex Frankel, author of Wordcraft. "Forget made-up words and quirky nonsense. When choosing an identity for a company or a product, simple and straightforward are back in style." Could a bandwagon be about to form?
Posted by
Jay on Wednesday, November 10, 2004 @ 1:48 PM
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The Persuaders discusses what's going on in the world of marketers and advertisers, and the new and methods they're using to decipher who we are and what we want.
Is there something distinctive in the American character that makes us susceptible to this world of advertising and messages? "The Persuaders" program explores the idea that Americans are seeking and finding a sort of identity in buying/joining a brand. What is this about?
The Persuaders, aired last night on PBS, and there is an online chat with the producer at noon eastern time, today. For those of us who missed it on TV last night, or who want to see it again already, the whole ninety minute program will be available for viewing online beginning on Friday at 5pm et. Looks like something worth watching this weekend.
If you can't wait for Friday, or want to line up a double feature for the weekend, you might tune in online to The Merchants of Cool.
In the ongoing browser wars there's a new battle cry, Get Firefox.
With 8 million users already, the free Firefox Web browser would hardly seem to need an official launch to gain acceptance in the Internet universe, but that is exactly what is happening [today], as the Mozilla Foundation unveils Firefox version 1.
And, there are a few interesting naming and branding aspects to this story--starting with Mozilla.
The name Mozilla had been used internally for the Netscape Navigator web browser from its beginning. It was a contraction of Mosaic-killer, referring to the hope that the project would unseat Mosaic as the web's most popular browser, along with the name of the fictional monster Godzilla.
The project which became Firefox started as an experimental branch of the Mozilla suite called "mozilla/browser". The project founders originally intended to create the best possible browser for Microsoft Windows. When sufficiently developed, binaries for public testing appeared in September 2002 under the name "Phoenix".
The "Phoenix" name was retained until April 14, 2003 when it was changed due to trademark issues with the BIOS manufacturer Phoenix Technologies. The new name—"Firebird"—was met with mixed reaction. In late April the Mozilla Foundation issued a statement which stated that the browser should be referred to as "Mozilla Firebird" in order to avoid confusion with the Firebird database server. However, continuing pressure from the Open Source community forced another change, and on February 9, 2004 Mozilla Firebird was renamed "Mozilla Firefox".
They chose the name "Firefox" for its similarity to "Firebird" but also for its uniqueness in the computing industry. To ensure that no further name changes would be necessary, the Mozilla Foundation began the process of registering Firefox as a trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office in December 2003.
Even with the trademark issues resolved, there was still the issue of the domain name, firefox.com. Beneficently, Kevin Karpenske, the previous owner of the all-important top level domain, transferred firefox.com to the Mozilla Foundation for the web browser. Kevin is a writer of fiction and an accomplished neologist who could easily invent new words like Quailish, the name of the website where he blogs about his novels in progress, The Empire Lost, Little Death, and The Weight of Chains. Thanks to Kevin, the open source community has a convenient internet address for their current weapon of choice in the browser wars.
Although it's the latest craze in personal computing, Firefox' underpinnings come from the dustbin of computing: Its original source code came from Netscape Communications, which put the code in the public domain in 1998, when it was acquired by America Online. Microsoft had already won the browser wars by then.
Or so they thought. Now, the original name for this hot new browser, Phoenix, seems prescient.
Posted by
abnu on Tuesday, November 09, 2004 @ 8:46 PM
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As planned, Asa Bailey is getting a lot of attention in adland. While this cunning stunt has prompted adrants, it really says less about the brand stewardship of Ogilvy, One Agency. Indivisble., than it does of the guerilla marketing capabilities of the upstart viral advertising agency.
Posted by
abnu on Monday, November 08, 2004 @ 11:04 PM
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Going head to head with Altoids in the designer mint market is Oral Fixation. Minting delicious names like "7 Deadly Cinnamon" "Sugar Free Tibet" "Night Light" and "Spare Mint" with intriguing taglines, Oral Fixation presents exceedingly stylish mint tins.
To us, it's less about making mints and more about making everyday objects beautiful, and we have applied this philosophy to the design of our mint tins...Designed with a sense of elegance, wit and humor, our tins promise to elicit glances of envy everywhere you take them.
The website for Oral Fixation, designed by Jonathan Harris's Number27, is a treat.
Posted by
abnu on Sunday, November 07, 2004 @ 11:55 PM
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Regular readers of Wordlab might remember a post about Fabrica, a think tank of the Benetton Research and Development Communication Centre that supports the creative development of young artists and researchers from all over the world.
That post features WordCount, an interactive presentation of the 88,000 most frequently used English words arranged as one very long sentence. Designed and developed by Jonathan Harris in conjunction with the Fabrica studio of Italy, it is described as "an artistic experiment in the way we use language."
A self-styled information artist, Jonathan Harris of Number27 has now created 10x10, "an interactive exploration of the words and pictures that define the time."
If you're an artist or developer interested in information visualization, 10x10 can be a great data resource for you and your work. As an information artist myself, I understand the difficulty of finding interesting and timely data sources on the web. 10x10 hopes to help this problem. Every hour, 10x10 gathers the 100 most important words and pictures in the world, based on what's happening in the news. You are welcome to use the information produced by 10x10 in your own non-commercial projects.
It might even be a new tool for naming and branding, by stimulating the mind with words and images from popular culture.
Posted by
abnu on Saturday, November 06, 2004 @ 3:19 PM
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BIOTA Colorado Pure Spring Water is packaged in a clear bottle made from "the first commercially viable packaging material derived entirely from an annually renewable resource - corn." It looks like a good idea for a distinctive brand.
Their flashy website includes a video clip showing the decomposition of the bottle in time-lapse photography. And it tells a story about their naming process.
Now what do we call this product?
Throughout the process, people in the mountains would blame everything and anything on the altitude. "Blame It On the Altitude" was a theme that was used repeatedly. So much so, that Zutler put a sign on his Telluride office with those very words. It was only fitting that Zutler's journey to making his dream a reality could be "blamed on the altitude." And then it struck him...that phrase could be the name of this new water. And so it was named...BIOTA is bottled at the source and sold in the world's first compostable water bottle.
Don't you think this anecdotal explanation dilutes the name BIOTA?
Posted by
abnu on Friday, November 05, 2004 @ 8:58 AM
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In world news, a Brazilian legislator wants to make it illegal to give pets names that are common among people.
Federal congressman Reinaldo Santos e Silva proposed the law after psychologists suggested that some children may get depressed when they learn they share their first name with someone's pet, said Damarias Alves, a spokeswoman for Silva.
"Names have importance," said Alves. The congressman "wants to challenge people's assumptions that it's acceptable to give animals human names," she said.
In national news, Americans go to the polls to vote in an election that will determine whether the most powerful dog in the world will be Barney or Cym. In an unabashed effort to sway undecided voters on election day, we're linking to Mo Rocca's book, All the Presidents' Pets.
And in local news (for San Franciscans) Derek Powazek, whose Chihuahuas are named Chieka and Bug, has gone dog crazy.
Posted by
abnu on Tuesday, November 02, 2004 @ 9:04 AM
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