4.0426 Trademark Neologisms (7/100)

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Mon, 27 Aug 90 17:03:26 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 4, No. 0426. Monday, 27 Aug 1990.


(1) Date: Friday, 24 Aug 1990 23:09:03 EDT (6 lines)
From: "Patrick W. Conner" <U47C2@WVNVM>
Subject: 4.0420 More on Trademarks (6/122)

(2) Date: Sat, 25 Aug 90 12:53:08 BST (21 lines)
From: DEL2@phoenix.cambridge.ac.uk
Subject: Re: [4.0413 Trademark Neologisms

(3) Date: Sat, 25 Aug 90 09:22:20 EDT (23 lines)
From: Ken Steele <KSTEELE@vm.epas.utoronto.ca>
Subject: Re: 4.0420 More on Trademarks

(4) Date: Sun, 26 Aug 90 10:48:55 EDT (11 lines)
From: Ken Steele <KSTEELE@vm.epas.utoronto.ca>
Subject: Generic Trademarks

(5) Date: Mon, 27 Aug 90 02:07:44 +0100 (12 lines)
From: iwml@ukc.ac.uk
Subject: Hoovers - cleaners or Presidents?

(6) Date: Mon, 27 Aug 1990 13:43:56 EDT (11 lines)
From: TVICKERY@SUNRISE.ACS.SYR.EDU (Tom Rusk Vickery)
Subject: RE: Tradenames

(7) Date: 27 August 1990 13:35:34 CDT (16 lines)
From: "Michael Sperberg-McQueen 312 996-2477 -2981" <U35395@UICVM>
Subject: why 'computer' *and* brand names: the one that got away

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Friday, 24 Aug 1990 23:09:03 EDT
From: "Patrick W. Conner" <U47C2@WVNVM>
Subject: 4.0420 More on Trademarks (6/122)

Is BIC not used as a generic for ballpoint pen in French? Un bic?
--Pat Conner
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------33----
Date: Sat, 25 Aug 90 12:53:08 BST
From: DEL2@phoenix.cambridge.ac.uk
Subject: Re: [4.0413 Trademark Neologisms (2/51)]

Bob Kraft raises again the significance of the transatlantic language
barrier. I agree that the use of a personal name for an object or
activity (bowler [hat], [trade] boycott, gerrymander, &c) is rather
different from using the name of a manufacturing company (as I would
guess in Hoover for vacuum). Interstingly we have biros, not bics.
Was biro ever a manufacturing company?

More significantly. I am currently reading a putatively scholarly
work about St Paul, in which the greek root mo_r- (long 'o') is
consistently translated 'moron[ic]'. That word in British English has
connotations so strong that the immediate reaction is almost to want to
apply it to the author. Does it have a very different significance
across the water? My English-German dictionary has a little mark
against certain words (like aktuell and actual) to warn of the dangers
of assuming similar meanings. Is there a US-UK equivalent?!

Regards to all, Douglas de Lacey
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------33----
Date: Sat, 25 Aug 90 09:22:20 EDT
From: Ken Steele <KSTEELE@vm.epas.utoronto.ca>
Subject: Re: 4.0420 More on Trademarks (6/122)

Let's not forget (off the top of my head) "Band-Aid," "Scotch Tape,"
"Walkman," "Kitty Litter," "X-Acto Knife," and perhaps also "Windex"
(the name I say regardless of the label on the bottle, anyway).
Local retailers use "Smarties" to refer to any number of brands of
candy-coated chocolate (you have to buy "Rowntree Smarties" to be sure
you're getting the real thing), and we say we're buying no-name
"Kraft Dinner" (although of course the President's Choice people can't
call it that). When we cook chicken coated with bread crumbs, it's
"Shake 'n' Bake" whether we bought a brand-name coating mix or mixed
it up ourselves.

Although I understand people who call xeroxes xeroxes, I have always
called them "photocopies" and have never been tempted otherwise.
But some of the examples in my previous paragraph may likewise be part
of my own, my family's, or the region's ideolect; doubtless the use of
such brand-name shorthand can be either widespread or local.

Ken Steele
University of Toronto
(4) --------------------------------------------------------------20----
Date: Sun, 26 Aug 90 10:48:55 EDT
From: Ken Steele <KSTEELE@vm.epas.utoronto.ca>
Subject: Generic Trademarks

Sorry, a few late arrivals: how about "Thermos," "Popsicle," "Post-It
Notes," "Levis," "Camcorder," and (according to my wife) "Wet Ones"
(for pre-moistened cloth wipes)? Aren't word games fun? What was
the point of all this again?

Ken Steele
University of Toronto
(5) --------------------------------------------------------------24----
Date: Mon, 27 Aug 90 02:07:44 +0100
From: iwml@ukc.ac.uk
Subject: Hoovers - cleaners or Presidents?


My thanks to those who can translate American English into proper English
for me!

There I was thinking that I had selected a transatlantic trade mark!

Ian Mitchell Lambert
University of Kent at Canterbury
(6) --------------------------------------------------------------23----
Date: Mon, 27 Aug 1990 13:43:56 EDT
From: TVICKERY@SUNRISE.ACS.SYR.EDU (Tom Rusk Vickery)
Subject: RE: Tradenames

A colleague just returned from Indonesia with the information that small
boats are not propelled by outboard motors but by johnsons [I don't know
if it is capitalized or not]. And a few years ago one of my graduate
students from Ghana, who was fascinated by bleu cheese, reported that,
yes, they did have cheese in Ghana. When I asked what kind, he said,
"Kraft." And while we are having fun with this, would Crapper as a term
for a water closet come here?
(7) --------------------------------------------------------------35----
Date: 27 August 1990 13:35:34 CDT
From: "Michael Sperberg-McQueen 312 996-2477 -2981" <U35395@UICVM>
Subject: why 'computer' *and* brand names: the one that got away

One name hasn't come up in the recent discussion of brand names becoming
generic, possibly because it later lost out to 'computer'. The
histories of the subject say that in the (early?) 50s, the common
colloquial term for 'computer' was 'univac'--unless I'm forgetting and
it was some other trade name. It lost out, presumably, because Sperry
Rand lost its commanding lead in the market when IBM expanded its
business from punched-card machines to, ah, computers.

Michael Sperberg-McQueen

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