Here’s a note that came in late yesterday from marketing guru and idea man Spin Williams, who is always in residence at The Meeting That Never Ends.
We’ve got an exciting project underway right now to help some very smart and enterprising people bring back Airships! Several companies are working on it right now, and we have a difficult and challenging assignment here at Spin Williams Ideas and Marketing! Naming!
We’re very, very excited about traveling in these lighter-than-air craft, but please don’t call them blimps, zeppelins or dirigibles! And whatever you do, don’t refer to them as Hindenburgs! All these names are loaded with heavy baggage and you know how it is when you want to go flying – heavy baggage is costly and it slows you down! These are the drawbacks we face:
Blimp – the name sounds round and slow and goofy. In the minds of Americans, “blimp” will always be associated with a tire manufacturer and/or a sandwich shop.
Dirigible – This word is hard to say properly. DEAR-idg-able? Often it comes out as DIRGE-able, and a dirge is always a downer.
Zeppelin – We love the snazzy “Z” at the beginning of this word and the double “P’s”. It has a very nice look and it flies off the tongue, but like so many things, the Nazis ruined it for us! There’s no going back.
Hindenburg – Speaking of Nazis, this name links to a bad memory, even for people who weren’t there at the time and so they can’t actually “remember” it. This name leads directly to visual and aural images of flames and falling and tragedy – unhappy connections, at least until the Broadway musical comes out.
Not The Image We Want
Our assignment is to come up with a new, more popular name to stick on the next generation of lighter than air ships, although our client doesn’t like “airship”. Too much history, he says, preferring “Hybrid Air Vehicle”.
Obviously he is in desperate need of help.
So far at The Meeting That Never Ends, we’ve floated these ideas:
Just like taking a trip in a new generation Hybrid Air Vehicle, it’s been great fun to take off, watching the ropes drop away as we rise majestically into a clear blue sky, but we’re a long, long, long way from getting anywhere!
What do you think of our ideas so far? If you have a new suggestion, we’ll consider any reasonable offers, and we’ll even look at the unreasonable ones!
I told Spin I’m a bit partial to “Puff Plane”, but he and his team should also consider “Stout Bird”.
Rise and Shine without the heat and humidity Babooners:
So far this morning I am not at all good at naming the new Blobbie Thing? But I do enjoy hearing from Spin. He is so energetic? Manic? Happy? Lost In The Clouds?
There is the name: Lost In The Clouds! Like Spin. What a guy. He is so inspiring.
As a father and pet owner I have been involved in picking names with help of others and I guess that has gone okay. I do wonder if it might not be better to let people pick their own names and only give them temporary when they are born. When old enough to pick their own name children could start using that and drop the temporary name. I think this was done in one of my favorite movies, A Thousand Clowns.
I have a seed collection of hierloom and rare vegetables. Sometimes I get seeds that some one has saved, that don’t have a name. Usually seed savers, like myself, make up names that relate to where they are collected, such as a tomato I have which came from my Uncle Jake, and which I named Jake’s.
I had to give some names to new species of nematodes which I discovered when I was a student. There are rules for giving scientic names which I followed and I picked some of the names out of a book that has a lot of latin descriptive words that can be used in scientific names.
You discovered new species as a student? Well done. Have to say one of my chief delights in browsing the Seed Savers catalogue is reading the names and some of the stories that go with them.
Quiet day for me, as something is up with a program we use at work, and I don’t want to hear it was caused by baboons. Will check in and see what merriment ensues later today.
We have some purple string beans, Catherine (dubbed “purple beans) from Seed Savers that are SO good, plus you actually have a shot at finding them all — being purple makes them harder to hide from us.
There is currently very little work being done on describing new species and there are a lot of nematodes, insects and other creatures that have not described and named. With a little training it would not be hard for any who to find and describe a new species if they would like to do this. However, don’t try to find a paying job doing this because this area of science has almost no funding.
Barbara in Robbinsdale, those turn green when you cook them, don’t they. Might have to consider those again, was disappointed they did not stay purple and was not thinking about it from the “ease of finding to pick” aspect.
Well, Spin’s group might want to work with the idea of a wingless bird. For example, the kiwi. That could yield the “Gaseous Kiwi.” Or I’m taken with the way airships carry passengers in those little pods hanging on the tummy, so you could have the “Kangaroo Airship” or some reasonable variant. Safety-conscious travelers might be drawn to the “Flameproof Zep” (hoping to wash away swastika memories by the cute abbreviation of zeppelin). Is Spin’s buddies want to make this type of aircraft sound friendly (like calling a computer “apple”) they might go with “Futuristic Gasbag.”
But I think the best idea is to appeal to people’s sense of fantasy. So here comes my best name: “Cloud Strider.” Dirigible meets JRR Tolkien. That will be my candidate: “Cloud Strider.”
Pippin, from The Lord of the Rings, also known as Peregrine Took. He is a hobbit who manages to get the Fellowship in trouble on more than one occasion.
Pippin is a hobbit. He was one of Frodo’s friends in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He was loyal, courageous and curious. He purposely dropped his elven made brooch on the trail when he was abducted by orcs so that Aragorn (Strider) would know he had passed by that place. He also looked into Saruman’s crystal ball and brought the Eye of Sauron on their group.
oh, ok, I know what Lord of the Rings is. Bilbo and company. I could never read that series. Joanne is more of the reader of the family. I’m the movie watcher.
Have consulted with the s&h and we are unanimous in our evaluation of naming abilities as “lousy”.
As mentioned a while back, our electronics are all named after Harry Potter characters (no idea how that started-but you may recall that our reliable, yet obsolete second hand desktop is Dumbledore). The stuffed animal clan all have very designatory names-but I do really love Secret Agent Oinkers (part Miss Piggy, part Indiana Jones). Naming, not so much, but boy can we create characters.
i like Cloud Strider – maybe a fleet with different names to appeal to different demographics? i’m not good at naming things like cars, farms, people. but cats and goats – i can do them.
i’m not thinking well this morning – still recovering from a milking tragedy. last night, even with a strong fan aimed right at Alba’s heinie, the flies deviled her until there went a gallon of milk all over the milk stand and the ground. it wasn’t her fault – and i’m trying not to cry over it. this morning it was cool and everything went fine. (except, in the coolness, Lassi and Kona were acting like Fred Astaire and Donald O’Conner the way they were bouncing off their furniture and walls 🙂
That’s cool, Barb. But you would get a little nervous, I’d suppose, if the goats dance all the way around the walls and ceiling like Fred Astaire did in “Royal Wedding.”
I admire the deft way you worked in the reference to the old adage against crying over spilled milk.
Greetings! Naming doesn’t come easily to me — and I do like the ideas presented, especially Cloud Strider. But a Star Wars angle always helps — how about Sky Walker or some variant thereof? Sky Strider, Sky Floater, Sky Master …
If you are a normal person, you don’t have to sweat the naming game that much. Unless you are, like, the OctoMom. But certain people have special problems, like dog mushers. Mushers typically have many dogs and are always breeding more. A musher might have 60 to 100 dogs, with maybe 40 pups being born each year. Naming gets difficult when you have to come up with 40 names all at once every year.
My best buddy met this challenge by going to themes. Each new litter of pups got a theme, like world politicians. That yielded puppies named Gorbie, Yeltsin and Lady Thatcher. Another litter was country western stars: Waylon, Willy, Tammy and Emmylou. There was an NBA litter: Magic, Barkley and MJ (I don’t know if there were any females in that litter). An easy one these days would be stars and starlets with fame and no talent. You get the idea.
If I ever have to come up with a bunch of names suddenly, I’ll go MPR: Garrison, Mindy, Dale, Tom and Keri, etc.
A psychologist friend of mine once had to work with 2 male rhesus monkeys named Steve and Idi. I don’t think the pair was noted for their musical ability or affection for one anther.
I’m thinking Cloud Chaser. Not far from Cloud Strider, Steve, but with a little more… drama, adventure.
Best name we picked was for our part Siamese kitten who came out white and Son named him Snowball. But as he grew up he darkened slightly, and was really no longer a snowball, and morphed into…. Slushball, then shortened to Slush.
OT: a day or so ago I noticed we had Blevins’ hind end looking at us, and noone complained or even commented. I’m not sure what it says about our comfort level with this thing, but think about it.
It is a fine, beautiful morning in Zim. Am almost not aware that there isn’t as much light in the morning sky at 5:30am, and haven’t really missed the loud and vigourous singing of the birds in our trees too much; the taselling of the corn in the garden is only faintly visible, in a shimmery, dreamlike way. (Please stay, summer, please, please, please.)
As for naming things, I am the worst. There is a blackboard with the word “Names” in my brain with a piece of unused chalk in the tray. I love to hear names other people pick for children and pets, and things that fly through the air, though. As far as re-naming the blimp, the only name that comes to mind is one that my husband has used to describe various airlines, and that is “Air Chance”. “Cloud Strider” is far more poetic and beautiful than that!
Spin, keep in mind that it’s hip and trendy to play with words and sounds. Don’t be afraid to tweak spelling phonetically or arrange your name in such a way that ‘pushes the envelope,’ ‘creates a new paradigm,’ or whatever hip and trendy doublespeak is currently used to denote what you hope is the next big/cool thing.
Zephyrship
AeroYacht
Arkwynd
Strato-Clipper
Windjazzer
Airsloop
Dreamspanner
Aercraft
Worldwind
Voyagaer
You could have lots of tag lines for ad’s too. Things like:
Put on a stylish air
See that cloud? That could be you.
Be the wind
Man was not meant to fly…like a sardine
Travel. Cool.
tgith – the word air-yacht actually appeared in the airspace of my mind, but then the phrase “yada -yada-yada” came zooming in right after it and pushed the air-yacht off the flight path. Didn’t think “yada-yada-yada” sounded very sleek or stylish, and probabaly couldn’t be used without paying royalties to someone.
Cloud Strider is good, as is HAV. Much better, and more poetic, than how things get named around our house (Fred, Bob, Murgatroid).
Perhaps an option would be to give them a standard name like HAV or Cloud Strider, but then name each ship the same way water craft are named. Then they could have snazzy names like Jeeves, Oberon or Athena (just not Icarus).
Morning-
Of Spin’s choices I like ‘Puff Plane’ but you know that’s gonna get shortened to ‘PP’ and that’s probably not what they’re looking for either…
I would name cows after news events, music or people. Had ‘Rover’ and ‘Sojourner’ (after the Mars rovers), had Comet, Eclipse, Lunar, Apollo; had Danube and Waltz; then Lynne (Who remembers Lynne Warfel Holt?), Sir Ed (as in Edmund Hilary)… named many after friends but oddly enough, the ones I named after my wife didn’t always turn out to be the best of cows so I stopped doing that out of respect to everyone. Mary begat Antoinette so sometimes that was useful. I had one named ‘Antigone’ as in Oedipus’ daughter. When I sold the cows the auctioneer called her ‘Auntie gone’! I said ‘No, “Antigone”, daughter of Oedipus.”…. crickets in the sales ring… One guy sitting in front of me turned around and said ‘I don’t think they get it’.
As for the air ships, I like the HAV idea… and all of TGitH has good suggestions. Let’s think of the graphics too though; a name with a catchy picture to go with it… and how will it look on the website; ‘hav.com’, http://www.Dreamspanner.biz??
How many farmers name their cows after characters from Greek tragedies, I ask you … I hope you didn’t name one Medea — that play still creeps me out. Blanche DuBois wouldn’t work either … mad cow disease, you know.
I am really bad at naming. For example, my first dog, a female beagle, I named Maple. Copy that name from the tree in our yard. Oh and I wanted to name our son Christopher, but Joanne wouldn’t have it! Since we both have a sister named Chris!
Beth-Ann – Re: naming paint colors. I noticed a few years back (or was it just my imagination?) that ‘decorator paint colors’ had three descriptors, eg: hazy grey heather; Tuscan summer brown. Less expensive and more utilitarian colors had only two names, eg: alabaster white; zesty orange. Is it true of ice cream flavors, too?
I spent 19 years working with 2 others to create clear and distinct names for manuals, not clever ones but rather names that would communicate their purpose in 2-5 words. Terminology in education is quixotic, which makes it very hard. Different states use words in different ways. For instance the word “curriculum” seems very clear, but it can mean four distinct different things. I cannot say we proved good at it.
Also, we wrote three to four brochures a year, each trying to look new and fresh but say pretty much what we had said before. For the last year, after we were absorbed by another company, I was dropped from that process, which was a huge relief.
But it was an excellent learning process. If I would ever teach writing again, I would give kids tasks like that. When we assign kids a paper of X number of words, we are teaching kids to be wordy, as per the song in the musical of “Peanuts.” I never assigned a number of words. I assigned a task and told kids to do it fully, clearly, and briefly, even if brief meant 10 pages, but brief for that task.
I used to teach a journalism class, which was where I really worked on that.
Anyway, in most businesses for most things, the naming process is very difficult and not very romantic.
Trail Baboon 
Rise and Shine without the heat and humidity Babooners:
So far this morning I am not at all good at naming the new Blobbie Thing? But I do enjoy hearing from Spin. He is so energetic? Manic? Happy? Lost In The Clouds?
There is the name: Lost In The Clouds! Like Spin. What a guy. He is so inspiring.
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Good Morning to All,
As a father and pet owner I have been involved in picking names with help of others and I guess that has gone okay. I do wonder if it might not be better to let people pick their own names and only give them temporary when they are born. When old enough to pick their own name children could start using that and drop the temporary name. I think this was done in one of my favorite movies, A Thousand Clowns.
I have a seed collection of hierloom and rare vegetables. Sometimes I get seeds that some one has saved, that don’t have a name. Usually seed savers, like myself, make up names that relate to where they are collected, such as a tomato I have which came from my Uncle Jake, and which I named Jake’s.
I had to give some names to new species of nematodes which I discovered when I was a student. There are rules for giving scientic names which I followed and I picked some of the names out of a book that has a lot of latin descriptive words that can be used in scientific names.
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You discovered new species as a student? Well done. Have to say one of my chief delights in browsing the Seed Savers catalogue is reading the names and some of the stories that go with them.
Quiet day for me, as something is up with a program we use at work, and I don’t want to hear it was caused by baboons. Will check in and see what merriment ensues later today.
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Woops, that first one should’ve been under Jim’s.
We have some purple string beans, Catherine (dubbed “purple beans) from Seed Savers that are SO good, plus you actually have a shot at finding them all — being purple makes them harder to hide from us.
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There is currently very little work being done on describing new species and there are a lot of nematodes, insects and other creatures that have not described and named. With a little training it would not be hard for any who to find and describe a new species if they would like to do this. However, don’t try to find a paying job doing this because this area of science has almost no funding.
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I wouldn’t be in it for the money, but the glory.
Barbara in Robbinsdale, those turn green when you cook them, don’t they. Might have to consider those again, was disappointed they did not stay purple and was not thinking about it from the “ease of finding to pick” aspect.
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Ditto on A Thousand Clowns, love that movie. Wish I could recall the names he tried out…
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A Thousand Clowns is one of my favorite movies of all time.
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Well, Spin’s group might want to work with the idea of a wingless bird. For example, the kiwi. That could yield the “Gaseous Kiwi.” Or I’m taken with the way airships carry passengers in those little pods hanging on the tummy, so you could have the “Kangaroo Airship” or some reasonable variant. Safety-conscious travelers might be drawn to the “Flameproof Zep” (hoping to wash away swastika memories by the cute abbreviation of zeppelin). Is Spin’s buddies want to make this type of aircraft sound friendly (like calling a computer “apple”) they might go with “Futuristic Gasbag.”
But I think the best idea is to appeal to people’s sense of fantasy. So here comes my best name: “Cloud Strider.” Dirigible meets JRR Tolkien. That will be my candidate: “Cloud Strider.”
Enjoy this fine day, fellow Baboons!
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B-team keyboard or not… those last two names rule! I’m partial to Cloud Strider. My dog’s name is Pippin.
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Krista No lie? My first cat was Pippin!
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Wow! We think alike!
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What’s a Pippin??
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Pippin, from The Lord of the Rings, also known as Peregrine Took. He is a hobbit who manages to get the Fellowship in trouble on more than one occasion.
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Oops, meant Peregrin 🙂
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Pippin is a hobbit. He was one of Frodo’s friends in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He was loyal, courageous and curious. He purposely dropped his elven made brooch on the trail when he was abducted by orcs so that Aragorn (Strider) would know he had passed by that place. He also looked into Saruman’s crystal ball and brought the Eye of Sauron on their group.
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And here I was thinking son of Charlemagne
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True, madislandgirl, very true. Son of Charlemagne too!
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oh, ok, I know what Lord of the Rings is. Bilbo and company. I could never read that series. Joanne is more of the reader of the family. I’m the movie watcher.
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Ditto to Cloud Strider. Very nice
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Air Boat? May be not as good as Cloud Strider or Puff Plane.
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how about “Floating Pickle” or some other similar vegie? “Air Quuke” or “Zuke ship”
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Yep, Cloud Strider is the one.
Have consulted with the s&h and we are unanimous in our evaluation of naming abilities as “lousy”.
As mentioned a while back, our electronics are all named after Harry Potter characters (no idea how that started-but you may recall that our reliable, yet obsolete second hand desktop is Dumbledore). The stuffed animal clan all have very designatory names-but I do really love Secret Agent Oinkers (part Miss Piggy, part Indiana Jones). Naming, not so much, but boy can we create characters.
LikeLike
They don’t get better than Secret Agent Oinkers!
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I think Secret Agent Oinkers needs his (her?) own story and book.
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Also variety of apple!
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Should be up there with Pippin.
Steve and Anna, do not give that little pig any bigger ideas that she already has!
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i like Cloud Strider – maybe a fleet with different names to appeal to different demographics? i’m not good at naming things like cars, farms, people. but cats and goats – i can do them.
i’m not thinking well this morning – still recovering from a milking tragedy. last night, even with a strong fan aimed right at Alba’s heinie, the flies deviled her until there went a gallon of milk all over the milk stand and the ground. it wasn’t her fault – and i’m trying not to cry over it. this morning it was cool and everything went fine. (except, in the coolness, Lassi and Kona were acting like Fred Astaire and Donald O’Conner the way they were bouncing off their furniture and walls 🙂
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Love the goat dancing image, Barb.
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That’s cool, Barb. But you would get a little nervous, I’d suppose, if the goats dance all the way around the walls and ceiling like Fred Astaire did in “Royal Wedding.”
I admire the deft way you worked in the reference to the old adage against crying over spilled milk.
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My husband suggested that the new craft be named The Bloat. You could also introduce some southern European elan and call them Zeppolinis.
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Like “The Love Bloat?”
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How about “The Politician”? It’s full of hot air!
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Greetings! Naming doesn’t come easily to me — and I do like the ideas presented, especially Cloud Strider. But a Star Wars angle always helps — how about Sky Walker or some variant thereof? Sky Strider, Sky Floater, Sky Master …
LikeLike
If you are a normal person, you don’t have to sweat the naming game that much. Unless you are, like, the OctoMom. But certain people have special problems, like dog mushers. Mushers typically have many dogs and are always breeding more. A musher might have 60 to 100 dogs, with maybe 40 pups being born each year. Naming gets difficult when you have to come up with 40 names all at once every year.
My best buddy met this challenge by going to themes. Each new litter of pups got a theme, like world politicians. That yielded puppies named Gorbie, Yeltsin and Lady Thatcher. Another litter was country western stars: Waylon, Willy, Tammy and Emmylou. There was an NBA litter: Magic, Barkley and MJ (I don’t know if there were any females in that litter). An easy one these days would be stars and starlets with fame and no talent. You get the idea.
If I ever have to come up with a bunch of names suddenly, I’ll go MPR: Garrison, Mindy, Dale, Tom and Keri, etc.
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A psychologist friend of mine once had to work with 2 male rhesus monkeys named Steve and Idi. I don’t think the pair was noted for their musical ability or affection for one anther.
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I did not realize Idi Amin was musical
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No, but Edie was (0r still is),
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I’m thinking Cloud Chaser. Not far from Cloud Strider, Steve, but with a little more… drama, adventure.
Best name we picked was for our part Siamese kitten who came out white and Son named him Snowball. But as he grew up he darkened slightly, and was really no longer a snowball, and morphed into…. Slushball, then shortened to Slush.
OT: a day or so ago I noticed we had Blevins’ hind end looking at us, and noone complained or even commented. I’m not sure what it says about our comfort level with this thing, but think about it.
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Good observation. Good point.
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It is a fine, beautiful morning in Zim. Am almost not aware that there isn’t as much light in the morning sky at 5:30am, and haven’t really missed the loud and vigourous singing of the birds in our trees too much; the taselling of the corn in the garden is only faintly visible, in a shimmery, dreamlike way. (Please stay, summer, please, please, please.)
As for naming things, I am the worst. There is a blackboard with the word “Names” in my brain with a piece of unused chalk in the tray. I love to hear names other people pick for children and pets, and things that fly through the air, though. As far as re-naming the blimp, the only name that comes to mind is one that my husband has used to describe various airlines, and that is “Air Chance”. “Cloud Strider” is far more poetic and beautiful than that!
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You kids are so darn clever with names. I’ll offer Cloud Straight No Chaser and The Big Buoydoinkie.
FYI Barbara in R, I always take notice of Blevin’s a**. It’s just that I’m too much of a lady to mention it.
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…and apparently you aren’t the only one, Donna!
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Why not just call them by their acronym -HAV’s. (Hybred Air Vehicles). Humvee was a fairly successful name until gas prices went up.
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But you might end up in a moral dilemma, Renee, regarding people who couldn’t afford to use the HAV’s. They would be the HAV-nots.
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Spin, keep in mind that it’s hip and trendy to play with words and sounds. Don’t be afraid to tweak spelling phonetically or arrange your name in such a way that ‘pushes the envelope,’ ‘creates a new paradigm,’ or whatever hip and trendy doublespeak is currently used to denote what you hope is the next big/cool thing.
Zephyrship
AeroYacht
Arkwynd
Strato-Clipper
Windjazzer
Airsloop
Dreamspanner
Aercraft
Worldwind
Voyagaer
You could have lots of tag lines for ad’s too. Things like:
Put on a stylish air
See that cloud? That could be you.
Be the wind
Man was not meant to fly…like a sardine
Travel. Cool.
LikeLike
tgith – the word air-yacht actually appeared in the airspace of my mind, but then the phrase “yada -yada-yada” came zooming in right after it and pushed the air-yacht off the flight path. Didn’t think “yada-yada-yada” sounded very sleek or stylish, and probabaly couldn’t be used without paying royalties to someone.
LikeLike
Cloud Strider is good, as is HAV. Much better, and more poetic, than how things get named around our house (Fred, Bob, Murgatroid).
Perhaps an option would be to give them a standard name like HAV or Cloud Strider, but then name each ship the same way water craft are named. Then they could have snazzy names like Jeeves, Oberon or Athena (just not Icarus).
LikeLike
Morning-
Of Spin’s choices I like ‘Puff Plane’ but you know that’s gonna get shortened to ‘PP’ and that’s probably not what they’re looking for either…
I would name cows after news events, music or people. Had ‘Rover’ and ‘Sojourner’ (after the Mars rovers), had Comet, Eclipse, Lunar, Apollo; had Danube and Waltz; then Lynne (Who remembers Lynne Warfel Holt?), Sir Ed (as in Edmund Hilary)… named many after friends but oddly enough, the ones I named after my wife didn’t always turn out to be the best of cows so I stopped doing that out of respect to everyone. Mary begat Antoinette so sometimes that was useful. I had one named ‘Antigone’ as in Oedipus’ daughter. When I sold the cows the auctioneer called her ‘Auntie gone’! I said ‘No, “Antigone”, daughter of Oedipus.”…. crickets in the sales ring… One guy sitting in front of me turned around and said ‘I don’t think they get it’.
As for the air ships, I like the HAV idea… and all of TGitH has good suggestions. Let’s think of the graphics too though; a name with a catchy picture to go with it… and how will it look on the website; ‘hav.com’, http://www.Dreamspanner.biz??
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Oops; didn’t think that would actually create a link! At least it’s not a real site- yet.
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“Auntie Gone?” Ben that’s a SCREAM!
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Is anti-gone the same thing as “here”?
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Auntie Gone? My son’s have 2 Auntie Christ(ine)
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How many farmers name their cows after characters from Greek tragedies, I ask you … I hope you didn’t name one Medea — that play still creeps me out. Blanche DuBois wouldn’t work either … mad cow disease, you know.
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OK, I remember Lynne Warfel-Holt, and she’s back on MPR as Lynne Warfel, but only in the wee early hours on weekends so far, last time I checked.
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And take a look at this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320326899989&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT
A very cool airship pin from artist Phil Folgio. …i got mine…
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Ooops…typo…Phil Foglio
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I am really bad at naming. For example, my first dog, a female beagle, I named Maple. Copy that name from the tree in our yard. Oh and I wanted to name our son Christopher, but Joanne wouldn’t have it! Since we both have a sister named Chris!
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We could of called him Topher for short, like our friends did with their son.
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When I was a kid, my Dad wanted to name our dog, “Zip.” Fortunately, I was able to talk him out of it. “Rockford of Greenhaven” was much better.
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When I tire of my current career, I would like a job naming paint colors or ice cream flavors.
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there is a line in the movie “Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind” about naming hair colors.
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Beth-Ann – Re: naming paint colors. I noticed a few years back (or was it just my imagination?) that ‘decorator paint colors’ had three descriptors, eg: hazy grey heather; Tuscan summer brown. Less expensive and more utilitarian colors had only two names, eg: alabaster white; zesty orange. Is it true of ice cream flavors, too?
LikeLike
I spent 19 years working with 2 others to create clear and distinct names for manuals, not clever ones but rather names that would communicate their purpose in 2-5 words. Terminology in education is quixotic, which makes it very hard. Different states use words in different ways. For instance the word “curriculum” seems very clear, but it can mean four distinct different things. I cannot say we proved good at it.
Also, we wrote three to four brochures a year, each trying to look new and fresh but say pretty much what we had said before. For the last year, after we were absorbed by another company, I was dropped from that process, which was a huge relief.
But it was an excellent learning process. If I would ever teach writing again, I would give kids tasks like that. When we assign kids a paper of X number of words, we are teaching kids to be wordy, as per the song in the musical of “Peanuts.” I never assigned a number of words. I assigned a task and told kids to do it fully, clearly, and briefly, even if brief meant 10 pages, but brief for that task.
I used to teach a journalism class, which was where I really worked on that.
Anyway, in most businesses for most things, the naming process is very difficult and not very romantic.
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A Book Report on Peter Rabbit! Classic! Thanks for the memory, Clyde.
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Wish I could’ve had a writing class from you, Clyde.
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Now I like:
“Cloud Strider”
“The Big Bouydoinkie”
and “Zuke Ship”
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Hello all… yet one more hellish day in my cube. Thanks for end-o-the day chuckles.
I like CloudStrider as well. One my dogs is named Thorin, from the Hobbit, so I’m partial to the Middle Earth names.
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Hey Gang, been busy all day so just back to catch up… You all are FUNNY!
I vote for ‘The Big Bouydoinkie’! Love it!!
Thanks for the cow naming comments… ‘Anti-gone’ equals ‘here’. Never thought of that before but I’m going to use that!
I did read that Lynne Warfel was back on MPR but I haven’t heard her myself. She was very pleased to have LynneCow.
Later Y’all–
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i admire your critter-naming abilities, Ben and what a great story about Antigone, ha, ha!
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I have heard Lynn Warfel a few times, too – on Sat mornings, I think. So wonderful to hear her voice again. Wish we could hear Dale again, too. Sigh.
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