March 3, 2009
I love Mental Floss — Everyone should read it. They ran a fun naming piece yesterday on the origins of eight high-tech brand names. The brand names origins they illuminate include: TiVo, Bluetooth, Hulu, Blackberry, Wii, Wikipedia, Asus (um, what?), and Prius. The post is a fun one, giving origin stories that savvy name aficionados […]
November 5, 2007
At a recent client meeting, Burt and I learned that Bluetooth wasn’t just an abstract brand name. It turns out that the Bluetooth brand name has a story to tell. According to Wikipedia, the source of all things good and true, Harald Bluetooth was a tenth century King of Denmark whose legacy includes uniting (if […]
November 10, 2005
A show of hands: Who thinks I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby is guilty purely on the basis of his name? Immediate associations: summering in the Hamptons, silver spoons, prep school. According to Wikipedia, Cheney’s former Chief of Staff, who has pleaded innocent in the CIA leak case, has offered differing accounts of how he came to […]
May 6, 2005
I was reading an article today about Justice Scalia making his rounds on the college-speech circuit. His speeches focus on interpretation of the Constitution (surprise surprise). I noticed that Scalia labeled himself (and other judges like him) an “Originalist.” Essentially he believes that the U.S. Constitution and state constitutions are static documents that should be […]
October 28, 2004
Who came up with the word “cookie”? Who named spam “spam”? Did you know that the term “booting a computer” was inspired by the story of Baron Munchhausen? Check out the list of computer terms in the Wikipedia. The Oxford English Dictionary Online contains more than half a million words and definitions and adds at […]