Minding the language business
 One of the most unusual sources of words is trademark names. Most of
the original trademark names cannot be found in dictionaries. They are
new words, abbreviations or names of the founder of a company.
Companies want their goods to be well known. After all, if when
thinking about early morning foods you think of cornflakes rather than
breakfast cereal, you are most likely to purchase the cereal trademarked
Cornflakes than any other brand.
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Langama is the Sinhala abbreviation for CTB bus |
However there comes a point where the trademark name takes over from
the generic word, so that people start referring to all breakfast
cereals as cornflakes, and the trademark becomes just one more word in
English language. Cutex is another name for nail polish, but thus it’s a
trade name for another brand of nail polish.
Such popularization of trademark words can cause immense legal
difficulties for the companies concerned, as they may lose their
exclusive rights to the word, a process neatly termed genericide.
This is particularly likely when the original trademark starts to be
used as a verb. For example you might ‘xerox’ a page from a book or may
be ‘hoover’ the carpet. Xerox is a photocopier brand name and Hoover is
a company which makes floor polishers and vacuum cleaners.
It is really surprising to see how many trademarks are used in
everyday English. There are interesting little histories behind some
words that were originally trademarks. Heroin, for instance was first
produced as a medical replacement for morphine and so used to be a
company product like Panadol.
Tabloid as a trademark referred to a compressed medical tablet. The
meaning was then applied to a compressed style of journalism. And Zipper
was originally a trademark for a make of boots with zippers rather than
the fastening themselves. Along with aspirin, dry ice, escalator,
Jacuzzi and ping pong, these illustrate how trademark names have come to
pervade everyday English.
The most common sources of company names are abbreviations and the
names of founders. From the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) and
Nabisco (National Biscuit Company) to more subtle names such as Qantas
(Queensland and Northern Territory Aviation Service) and Q8 (Kuwait
Petroliam International) abbreviations provide a succinct way of stating
key information about a company.
We love to go to ‘sathosa’ (Sinhala abbreviation for CWE) to buy day
today items for a reasonable price and prefer to be on board a ‘langama’
(Sinhala abbreviation for CTB) bus other than a private bus.
Then there are the original founders who name companies after
themselves - Henry Ford, Soichiro Honda and Shozo Kawasaki. Every Sri
Lankan knows what are Jayaratne and Monis. Those names have been infused
and integrated into Sri Lankan life.
Some company names have deep meanings in other languages. Daewoo
means great universe in Korean, Hitachi is sunrise in Japanese, Nintendo
means heaven blesses hard work in Japanese, and Volkswagen is people’s
car in German.
There are other idiosyncratic origins of company names. Coca Cola
commemorates the coca leaves and Kola nuts originally used as
flavorings, whereas Pepsi alludes to dyspepsia, an ailment the drink was
designed to alleviate. Shell started off importing seashells and both
Lada and Nike commemorate gods.
Animals also feature: Reebok is an antelope and Lycos is short for a
family of wolf spiders. As Sri Lankans we all know ‘Parakumba’ was a
name for great kings, but also equally known as a powder which used for
teeth cleaning purpose.
The most peculiar company name of all must be Fanta. The drink was
originally made from cheese and jam by-products in Second World War
Germany. Clearly, a bit of imagination (or Fantasie in German) was
needed to think that it tasted of oranges. |
