“Sylvan Learning Systems Inc. has something many companies can only dream of — a brand name so well known that most consumers recognize it.

Tomorrow, the Baltimore company starts from scratch.

It will announce that it’s now calling itself Laureate Education Inc., a switch made necessary a year ago when officials sold their familiar tutoring centers and other kindergarten-to-12th-grade businesses to focus on running foreign and online universities. New York-based investment fund Apollo Management LP, the buyer of the tutoring business, got the Sylvan label as part of the deal….

“The first thing you learn is just about everything with a vowel is taken,” said Douglas L. Becker, Laureate’s chairman and chief executive officer.” Brand New Identity: A household name in tutoring, Sylvan had to find a new name to fit its new mission: Laureate, by Jamie Smith Hopkins, Baltimore Sun, May 16, 2004

Well, you could just buy a vowel. This is a good article about renaming, with some nice quotes from other folks in the naming biz (but not Catchword - must speak to PR department about that). Laureate is a good name for them - meaningful, aspirational, a real English word to boot. Good choice!

Posted in Advertising, Company Naming, In-the-News | No Comments

“It’s only been a few days since Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin introduced their 9 lb., 11 oz. bouncing baby Apple to the world, and already we’re sick of the puns (”Apple of Gwyn’s eye,” “Pomme in the oven,” “Gwynny Smith,” and pretty much anything in the “core” or “peel” genre). No word on the significance of the oddball appellation, though theories have ranged from a New York homage to a wacky Beatles tribute to the most expensive Mac product placement ever.” Sour Apple: Gwyneth joins the bad celebrity baby-name brigade, by Kat Giantis, MSN Entertainment, May 17, 2004

The rest of this article lists the other, uh, odd names celebrities have given their children. Do they assume their children won’t have to go live in the real world, ever? Hmm, maybe they won’t, at that. Do non-American celebs do this too? Paul McCartney’s kids (and their linear descendents through the 30th century) will never have to work, but at least they have normal names.

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“MEETINGS: Meetings have become so tainted they now go by a number of other names. These definitions from a recent Jared Sandberg column in the Wall Street Journal were so accurate BuzzWhack decided to share them with its readers:

BRIEFINGS — meetings that last longer than intended

SEMINARS — expensive meetings with handouts

PRESENTATIONS — meetings preceded and followed by many other meetings

VIDEOCONFERENCES — meetings with technical difficulties

CONFERENCE CALLS — meetings with eye-rolling” Buzzword of the Day for May 20, 2004

Yes to all of the above. I might also add “checking your email and surfing the web” to Conference Calls. Remember to hit that mute button, people, I can hear your keyboard clicking.

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“‘Torture is torture is torture,” Secretary of State Colin Powell said this week in an interview on “Fox News Sunday” with Chris Wallace.

That depends on what papers you read. The media in France, Italy and Germany have been routinely using the word “torture” in the headings of their stories on the abuses in the Abu Ghraib prison. And so have the British papers, not just the left-wing Guardian (”Torture at Abu Ghraib”), but the right-wing Express (”Outrage at U.S. Torture of Prisoners”) and Rupert Murdoch’s Times (”Inside Baghdad’s Torture Jail”).

But the American press has been more circumspect, sticking with vaguer terms such as “abuse” and “mistreatment.” In that, they may have been taking a cue from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Asked about torture in the prison, he said, “What has been charged so far is abuse, which is different from torture. I’m not going to address the ‘torture’ word.”" Don’t torture English to soft-pedal abuse by Geoffrey Nunberg, in Newsday, May 20, 2004

and

“An American soldier refers to an Iraqi prisoner as “it.” A general speaks not of “Iraqi fighters” but of “the enemy.” A weapons manufacturer doesn’t talk about people but about “targets.”

Bullets and bombs are not the only tools of war. Words, too, play their part.

Human beings are social animals, genetically hard-wired to feel compassion toward others. Under normal conditions, most people find it very difficult to kill.

But in war, military recruits must be persuaded that killing other people is not only acceptable but even honorable.

The language of war is intended to bring about that change, and not only for soldiers in the field. In wartime, language must be created to enable combatants and noncombatants alike to see the other side as killable, to overcome the innate queasiness over the taking of human life. Soldiers, and those who remain at home, learn to call their enemies by names that make them seem not quite human — inferior, contemptible and not like “us.”" From Ancient Greece to Iraq, the Power of Words in Wartime, by Robin Tolmach Lakoff, NYTimes, May 18, 2004

Go linguists! Robin Lakoff was my advisor was part of the time I was at Berkeley. I still owe her a book.

Posted in In-the-News, Language use | No Comments