Christopher Johnson's Blog, page 2
February 3, 2024
Fab is!
Originally published Jun 8, 2012
It’s been a while since The Name Inspector did a regular old post on a great name. So you know what’s a great name? Fab, that’s what. As in Fab.com, the daily-deal site that features art prints, t-shirts, jewelry, furniture, and other designy things.
At a mere three letters, this name is the ultimate in brevity, but gets a lot of bang for its buck. Fab stands in for two words, both right for the site. One, of course, is the word fabulous, which expresses a superlatively positive opinion, and is frequently uttered, in The Name Inspector’s imagination at least, by effusively fashionable people. This word gives rise to a secondary association with Fab Four, a Mod-era moniker for those Merseybeat moptops otherwise known as the Beatles. (The Name Inspector is feeling especially alliterary today.) And maybe, for some people, there’s even a tertiary association with Ab Fab(Absolutely Fabulous), the name of a funny mostly-1990s British sitcom starring Jennifer Saunders.
The second word that Fab suggests is the word fabricate. This is a site that features the work of designers and makers. It’s nice to shine a light on the creative act itself. (Some people might argue that fabricate implies putting something together out of ready-made pieces, but let’s not quibble.)
The name Fab even packs a bit of poetry into its tiny form. You have to involve your lower lip when saying both consonants, so there’s a nice continuity to the pronunciation and a nice symmetry to the sound.
Now, The Name Inspector hates to be crass, but he can’t help wondering…how much did they have to pay for that domain name?
A goy’s guide to the Passover Seder
Originally published Apr 6, 2012
The Name Inspector is about more than just names–he considers himself a sort of cultural ambassador. So he’s setting aside his name inspecting cap for a moment to perform a timely public service.
If you Gentiles out there have played your cards right, you may have received an invitation to attend your first Passover Seder this year. Don’t panic! With a little preparation, you can make it through this important ritual without starving or making a complete fool of yourself. Since The Name Inspector’s wife and kids are Jewish, he has a sort of standing invitation to Passover, and he’s learned a thing or two. He’s here to help you.
Incidentally, The Name Inspector has Scandinavian ancestry, and he and his wife have discovered interesting parallels between their peoples. For example, there’s a shared love of cured and smoked fish. Also, a tendency to make things out of potatoes and put sweet stuff on top. For this reason The Name Inspector is mystified by his wife’s refusal to appreciate lefse.
There are differences as well, of course. For example, judging from the wife’s family, it doesn’t seem like Jews are into boats as much as Scandinavians are. Also, Jews have a tradition of telling jokes that are funny.
Anyway, the first thing you need to know about Seder is that there’s going to be dinner, it’s going to take a really long time, and the host is going to tell you when you’re allowed to eat each thing. It will make you feel like a kid again, but not necessarily in a good way. There will be lots of stories, but no funny ones.
At least there will be plenty of wine, you’ll be relieved to know. But you’re going to have to wait forever before you can start drinking it. If your hosts serve a traditional kosher wine, once you finally do get a taste of it you’ll understand why no one seemed like they were in much of a hurry to drink. The Name Inspector recommends having cocktail hour at home before the Seder if possible.
Come to think of it, you might want to have some appetizers beforehand as well. The food at a Seder is chosen mainly for its symbolism. As you surely know, Jews have had some pretty tough times throughout history, and they have the culinary traditions to prove it. For example, at one point during dinner you might be invited to dip some parsley in a bowl of salt water and eat it. Now, the polite thing is to go along with this, but don’t get your hopes up flavor-wise. It’s meant to represent the bitterness of the Jewish experience and the tears of the Jews, and it does a pretty good job.
Then theres’ the bread, called matzo, which is like a big cracker. Any kind of puffy bread is a faux pas during Passover, so don’t try to demonstrate your cultural savvy by showing up with a bag of bagels.
The thing you’re really going to want to get your hands on is the charoset, a tasty mixture of chopped fruits and nuts and spices, like something you’d bake into cinnamon buns. There’s even a little wine in there. If you’re really lucky, your Seder will have a Sephardic touch, and the charoset will have dates in it. Matzo by itself isn’t much, but matzo with Sephardic charoset is delicious.
The funnest part of Seder is when the little kids get to ask four questions about why Passover is special, and also at the end when they have a treasure hunt. All they find is some of the big cracker, but they seem to enjoy it. And then they get some money.
So there you have it! You’re now a veritable Passover Seder expert. Oh, one other thing: at the end, people will say something about seeing you next year in Jerusalem. It’s confusing, but just smile and play along–they won’t actually mean it literally.
Queasy living
Originally published Mar 13, 2012
A building named Vertigo, and James Stewart about to fall off a building in the movie Vertigo. Before the financial unpleasantness of recent years, and the attendant collapse in the housing market, developers were throwing up cheap condos all over Seattle trying to accommodate /capitalize on the growing population. Now you see these condos everywhere, and most are hurting for tenants.
One building that has caught The Name Inspector’s eye is right next to the Capitol Hill branch of the Seattle Public Library. It’s called Vertigo. It actually says that in big letters right on the side.
The name Vertigo is probably supposed to imply that the building is so awesome it will make you dizzy with excitement. (Never mind that someone identified it as possibly the “ugliest condo building in Seattle”.) And Vertigo is the title of a classic movie by Alfred Hitchcock, right? One that’s hiply alluded to in the prize-winning title sequence for the popular television series Mad Men?
Granted, the movie is about a guy who falls off a building. (Spoiler alert!) And then has nightmares about it. And then sees his girlfriend fall to her death from a building. And then gets another girlfriend similar to the first and breaks up with her/tries to arrest her and sees her fall off a building.
But the guy does survive his own fall. And in his nightmare he falls stylishly, with op art in the background.
And the Mad Men guy, he falls in a really stylish way, past beautiful models and luxury goods, and lands safely in what is probably a totally collectible mid-century modern chair, and he’s even smoking a cigarette.
So on balance, the associations of Vertigo are probably pretty positive. Besides, this building in Seattle isn’t even that tall. You’d probably survive if you fell off it.
Hmm, Pinteresting
Someone should write about the name Pinterest.
Pause.
Don’t you think someone should write about Pinterest?
Pause.
OK, it looks like The Name Inspector is going to have to do it.
Pause.
Sometimes it seems like he’s the only one who ever does any name inspecting around here.
Pinterest, like Groupon, is one of those blend names that doesn’t seem to exhibit any obvious design flaws but that still doesn’t quite work, at least for The Name Inspector’s ears and eyes. Clearly the name combines the words pin and interest. The service is a bit like an online cork board onto which you pin things that interest you. What could be simpler?
On the face of it the name is well constructed. The word pin, which deserves its own emphasis, replaces the first emphasized syllable of interest, which it rhymes with. So there’s no obvious here. But there’s still something a bit odd about this blend.
One thing that bothers The Name Inspector about the name Pinterest is its distracting resemblance to the word Pinteresque, which describes a literary work written in the manner of English playwright and screenwriter Harold Pinter. Ever see Meryl Streep in The French Lieutenant’s Woman? Pinter wrote that screenplay. He also wrote a play called Betrayal, which had a great screen adaptation starring Jeremy Irons, Ben Kingsley, and Patricia Hodge. It’s the story of an adulterous affair told in reverse chronological order.
Don’t worry, The Name Inspector won’t tell you how it starts.
Pinteresque works have mundane yet tense or ominous dialogue with lots of awkward silences.
Anyway, what was The Name Inspector talking about? And have you seen his glasses?
How silly, they’re right here on his face.
Oh, right, Pinterest. The Name Inspector started hearing so much about it that he had to try it. And it’s great! It’s a simple idea that seems obvious in retrospect, and it’s easy to see why people are excited about it. Everyone likes those designy sites that show their posts as a checkerboard of images, right? Pinterest lets you make one of those out of your web bookmarks. Or really, it’s more of a patchwork, because the “pins”, as they’re called, aren’t all the same size, but the experience is appealing in the same way.
The experience offered by the name Pinterest, on the other hand, is less satisfying. The linguistic reasons for that remain somewhat obscure, but The Name Inspector is determined to ferret them out. He suspects it might have to do with the minimal duration of the first syllable of interest. Compare it to the first syllable of syntax, for example, which seems longer and more complete. Or it might have to do with the abstract meaning of interest. Or the particular syntactic contexts it occurs in, which sound funny with the blend: This might be of Pinterest to you, I have a strong Pinterest in neologism, etc.
But these are trifles to trouble only The Name Inspector’s mind. He suspects most people will be merrily pinning, not caring much about the name. So pin away!
Achieve life goals and odd spellings beyond your wildest dreams!
Originally published Jan 30, 2012
The Name Inspector was amused–and appalled–to read in the New York Times about a website called Noomii. It’s a directory to help you find a life coach or business coach, and yes, it’s supposed to evoke the phrase “new me”.
From one point of view, the name is appropriate. New you, new spelling!
But The Name Inspector would like to tell you about the other point of view. One of the main points of the NY Times article is that the coaching field is booming, and a bunch of newish university programs are cranking out coaches who are a bit…unseasoned. Like, hardly half the age of some of their clients.
Now, there’s much to be said for an infusion of youthful energy and enthusiasm to jumpstart a flagging career or personal life. But shouldn’t a coach also have some relevant experience to draw on? To paraphrase the headline for the NY Times article, shouldn’t a life coach have a life first?
That question must be on the minds of some potential coaching clients. Granted, proponents of coaching say that it’s not the same as mentoring. If you’re looking for an insider’s advice on your chosen field, look somewhere else. But still, you have to have some confidence in your coach as a knowledgeable human being, right? Does a 45-year-old with new professional ambitions really want to visit a site with a name that flouts conventional spelling with such whimsical abandon? Or, to put it more accurately, a site with a name that abandons conventionally conventional spelling to so fully embrace the contrived whimsy of a web startup struggling to find an available domain name?
Maybe the kooky spelling of Noomii represents all that is youthful and fresh. In fact, maybe barely post-adolescent coaches should text their clients inspiring messages like “UR 2 gr8 2 fail!” But The Name Inspector doesn’t think so. In this context, he’ll take a little grizzled experience and boring old-fashioned spelling any day.
Microstyle in Korean!
Originally published Nov 21, 2011
The Name Inspector received a mysterious package of books today from Norton, publisher of his book Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little. The paperback version already? No, too early for that. Inside he was delighted to find four copies of the Korean translation of Microstyle, with the distinctive exclamation point graphic on the cover replaced by a leaping rabbit!
The rabbit also makes several appearances inside the book, which has a lovely interior design. The section headings, for example, appear inside little thought bubbles coming out of the bunny’s brain. The text is printed in two colors, so the rabbits and the examples are in a different color from the body text. The whole look is pretty cool, and, let’s come right out and say it, a bit on the cute side. Thank you, Banbibooks!
Now, are there any Korean speakers out there who can tell The Name Inspector what he wrote?
Seattle Interactive Conference
Originally published Oct 6, 2011
Come meet this cute, colorful little owl at the very first Seattle Interactive Conference next month! Actually, The Name Inspector isn’t sure the owl will be there. But the conference is sure to be colorful anyway.
Seattle Interactive is about the sweet spot where “technology, creativity, and emergent trends” intersect. That means entrepreneurs will be chatting with UX designers, and advertising creatives will be rubbing shoulders with crack Ruby coders. Interactive indeed! You’ve heard of SXSW? Well, this is like a nascent NXNW, but with no homicidal crop duster.
There are some really great speakers lined up. You’re probably thinking, “Who? Who?” Why, The Name Inspector himself is one of them, and there will be many others on stage that you’ll no doubt find even more interesting, such as Jeff Barr, Vanessa Fox, and Sir Mix-A-Lot!
If you want to attend this conference (and you probably do) The Name Inspector can get you a deal. A really great deal, actually: $150 off the price of registration. Since the reg fee is only $350 to begin with, that makes this exciting inaugural event practically free. 200 smackers, to be specific. Just register using the code SICSPEAKER2011.
The name Kindle Fire: Hot or not?
Originally published Sep 29, 2011
At first glance, Kindle Fire seems like a pretty good name. It uses a thematically coherent naming strategy, similar to the one that Apple used when it named the Macintosh, presumably inspired by the apple variety McIntosh. What’s more, the word fire, like the word apple, is simple and familiar, and has lots of metaphorical significance and emotional oomph.
But the name Kindle Fire doesn’t work the way the name Apple Macintosh did. The name Macintosh applied part of the taxonomy of apples, in a witty analogy, to the world of Apple products: just as a McIntosh is a type of apple, a Macintosh was a type of Apple. The name Kindle Fire is different. While the words are thematically related, there isn’t a taxonomic relation between them.
The relation that does exist between the words kindle and fire makes the name Kindle Fire unsatisfying.
First, it’s redundant. The concept of fire is implicit in the concept of kindling. The word fire, being so generic, doesn’t add any information.
Second, Kindle Fire is metaphorically incoherent. The metaphor behind the name Kindle suggests that the device is something that kindles, or starts, fire. The fire itself could be the flame of knowledge, or burning curiosity, or something else interesting like that. Successful branding of the device could reflect those interpretations and the broader emotional and cultural significance of fire.
But giving a Kindle device the name Fire short-circuits the coherent and appropriate metaphorical interpretations, forcing us to apply the word fire to the device itself, and that doesn’t make sense. It can’t kindle and be fire at the same time.
For those reasons, the name Kindle Fire doesn’t burn as brightly as it should.
Six letters, but at what price?
Originally published Sep 26, 2011
The Name Inspector was going to write a post about Qwikster, the terrible new name that Netflix has given to the movie-by-mail arm of its business. But really, what is there to say that ?
So The Name Inspector has turned to a lesser-known tacky misspelled name, Egnyte, which belongs to a Silicon Alley “Cloud File Server” startup. This is a name with a very clear rationale: based on the word ignite, easy to pronounce, short (it meets the persistent six-letters-max expectation for domain names), and available or acquirable as a .com domain name. The E-for-I substitution works phonetically here, as it does in , because there’s little if any distinction between the two vowels when they occur in an unemphasized syllable.
That’s all fine. Yet, this name is just so unappealing.
The Name Inspector is not opposed in principle to creative spelling. But there are better and worse ways to do it. Creative spelling should have a little subtlety and/or flair. It should be almost unnoticeable, as in the name Flickr, or it should be motivated by wordplay, as in the name Automattic, or it should be efficient and phonetically apt, as in the name Pipl (which is almost how the word people is spelled in the International Phonetic Alphabet), or it should be odd in a way that’s cute or comical, as in the name Digg. Egnyte comes closest to falling into the last camp, because it’s odd, but it lacks humor. Somehow individual vowel substitutions just aren’t funny. Unless they involve umlauts.
The Name Inspector doesn’t presume to know exactly how the people at Egnyte
came up with their name. But he suspects they used this common technique: pick a real word and keep respelling it until you find an available domain name. That’s one of the least imaginative ways to do it.
Unsocial: Not what you think it is
Originally published Aug 3, 2011
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
-Lewis Carroll
Do you spend too much time on Facebook, or Twitter, or Google+? Well take heart, because there’s a new app called Unsocial, which might be just what you need to wean yourself from your social networking addiction. Except it’s not. It’s actually a social networking app.
The Name Inspector was quite surprised to learn about this name, and wondered what would lead someone to think it up for an app that helps you meet people. After all, a person who is “unsocial” is someone who doesn’t want to be around other people. Isn’t this a bit like calling your paper towels Mess? Or your encryption software Expose? Yes, it is.
The tagline for Unsocial is “It’s not who you know. It’s who you need to know.” This location-based app helps you meet people who match your specified criteria when you’re hanging out in a hotel lobby, airport, or some other public space. So in a way it’s not merely about being social–it’s about being downright extroverted.
Re-purposing the word unsocial to name this app is just wishful thinking. It doesn’t say “go beyond social”. It says “I’d rather just stay in my hotel room and watch HBO”.
