“Salish Sea” was chosen Name of the Year by the American Name Society at its annual meeting in Baltimore, Maryland on January 9, 2010.

Salish Sea was also the Place Name of the Year. This name, created by marine biologist Bart Webber in 1988, was officially adopted as the collective name for the interior ocean waters of British Columbia and Washington state. The Salish Sea stretches from Olympia, WA to Desolation Sound in BC and includes Puget Sound, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and the Strait of Georgia. The US Board on Geographic Names approved the name on November 12, 2009, after it had previously been accepted by the Geographic Names board of Canada. Webber wanted a single name for this entire body of water because forms a connected marine ecosystem. “Salish” was chosen because most of the Native American nations who lived in the area spoke languages that were part of the Coast Salish family.

Twitter was chosen as Trade Name of the Year. Although Twitter was launched in 2006, this was the year it was taken seriously as a global phenomenon. It played a major part in the protests in Iran after the disputed June election. “Twitter” was the year’s fastest-rising Google search, and it made Google’s global list (at #4) for the first time ever.

Max was voted Fictional Name of the Year because of the child hero of the classic children’s book Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, and the 2009 film based on it. tTe fact that many young parents were read the book as a child helps account for Max, Maxwell, and similar names being popular baby names today.

Chesley Burnett “Sully” Sullenberger III was voted Personal Name of the Year. The name of the pilot who safely landed an airliner on the Hudson River last January illustrates how a name some might find odd and even nerdish can gain a heroic image from current events.

ANS members also voted to created a special Miscellaneous Name of the Year for H1N1, the name of the influenza virus that caused worldwide concern in 2009. The replacement of the term “swine flu” by this scientific clinical term was an unusual example of government pronouncements successfully changing a popular public term.

The Global Language Monitor (GLM) is an Austin, Texas-based entity that documents, analyzes and tracks trends in language and publishes a list of the year’s most used English words, names, and phrases.

According to GLM’s algorithm, 2009’s most used word, both online and in print, is Twitter.

GLM’s top ten for 2009:

Twitter
Obama
H1N1
stimulus
vampire
2.0 (as a suffix attached to the next generation of everything. Ex. Web2.0)
deficit
Hadron
healthcare
transparency

A look at the Words of the Year for 2000-2008 recalls the prominent events and personalities of those years:

2000 chad
2001 GroundZero
2002 misunderestimate
2003 embedded
2004 incivility
2005 refugee
2006 sustainable
2007 hybrid
2008 change

Taking the decade as a whole, here are the top ten words with GLC comments:

1. Global Warming (2000) Rated highly from Day One of the decade
2. 9/11 (2001) Another inauspicious start to the decade
3. Obama- (2008 )The US President’s name as a ‘root’ word or ‘word stem’
4. Bailout (2008) The Bank Bailout was but Act One of the crisis
5. Evacuee/refugee (2005) After Katrina, refugees became evacuees
6. Derivative (2007) Financial instrument or analytical tool that engendered the Meltdown
7. Google (2007) Founders misspelled actual word ‘googol’
Surge (2007) The strategy that effectively ended the Iraq War
9. Chinglish (2005) The Chinese-English Hybrid language growing larger as Chinese influence expands [There are an estimated 300 to 500 million users and/or learners of English in the People's Republic of China.]
10. Tsunami (2004) Southeast Asian Tsunami took 250,000 lives

To see the top phrases and names for 2009 and the first decade of the 21st century, explore the Global Language Monitor site.

The folks here at Catchword have been demonstrating varied levels of concern over the Swine Flu pandemic. I think the following quote from a friend of mine, sums up my position on the matter:

“So I’m not in the least bit worried about this Swine Flu (aka H1N1). The question is does that make me crazy, or the last remaining sane person on earth

I vote for “last remaining sane person…”

That being said, I’ve been having some fun with the pandemic’s name. Apparently the pork industry has been squealing about the name of this flu. “It’s gutting our swine sales,” they claim.

Then I got word from a friend that the Swine flu is henceforth known as Pig Pox. Another friend chimed in, that in fact it was now to be called Bacon Lung. That got me thinking… This is proper level of attention to give the pandemic. Here are some of our new names. What are your suggestions?

Pig Pox
• Bacon Lung
• Carnitas-itis
• Hamhocks
• Pigachoo (like Pikachu from Pokemon and “achoo”)
• Heiney (H1N1 in L33T sounds like heiney aka butt. – Gives a whole new meaning to the prhase “I’m so sick I feel like ass!”

So, bring it on. What names will you bestow upon this deadly piggy virus?

And, just for fun, here’s cute little diddy we heard in the Twitterverse yesterday:

“It was once said that a black man would be president “when pigs fly”. Indeed 100 days into Obama’s presidency: Airborne Piggies (aka Swine flu).”

UPDATE: Friends from all across the blogosphere, Twitterverse, and Facebooklandia are adding their two cents:

Tu-pork-ulosis
Hog snot fever
Little piggy sniffles
When pigs die
Oinkfluenza
Treyfitis
Influenza Manteca
The aporkalypse
The pink plague
Mu shu flu
Trough-cough
Porkinson’s disease
Swill kill
Hamthrax
Snoutbreak (via the Daily Show)
Multiple Porkulosis (when it mutates, it becomes)
Monoporkulosis (when teenagers have it)