Comments on: Naming the Future

By: meg

meg — Tue, 01 Jun 2004 20:16:56 +0000

So, I’d kept my two cents in my pocket until after my mother left town (speaking of matricidal tendencies...) so that I could answer at leisure—and I see, Kathleen, that you’ve said most everything that I wanted to say.

Of course, I’ll go ahead and say it anyway, just to hear myself talk.

I agree about “MediaCommons” being not quite right. For one thing, you new-media types don’t hold the intellectual property to mourning/reforming the monograph system. Okay, maybe you do, but ya shouldn’t.

Also, I’m tremendously in favor of the one-name wonder (a la Eudora). That adverb-adjective (Tightly Wound, Easily Distracted) or adjective-noun (Crooked Timber, Critical Mass....Planned Obsolescence) nomenclature has been too thoroughly claimed by the blog, even if “Comparatively Literate” is easier to pronounce than “Farrar Straus & Giroux.”

And I like Electra not only for the reasons you mention (esp. the deep meaningfulnessitude), but also for its quiet nod to naming tradition (Ada, Eudora).

By: Matt K.

Matt K. — Mon, 31 May 2004 20:19:15 +0000

Kathleen, you should check out the NINES project if you haven’t already seen it:

http://www.nines.org

By: KF

KF — Mon, 31 May 2004 16:15:22 +0000

Interesting that you should suggest that, Rory. The solution, which I think I’ve arrived at, was very similar: over lunch yesterday, R. convinced me of the perfectness of Electra. It’s got the obvious “electr-onic” reference, and the slightly less obvious “e-lecture” reference, but there’s also Electra’s willingness to utterly upset the order of things when pressed to do so. One can either mourn the death of the father—or the monograph—or one can fight back. (I’ll leave the matricidal implications of that fighting-back out for now.)

By: Rory

Rory — Mon, 31 May 2004 08:57:17 +0000

Looking good! Hmm, names… Eudora, yes, for similar reasons to yours. Safari, which evokes what we’d like our surfing to be even if it’s overly romantic. And… pretty much no other software I can see on my hard-drive; the names are all awful.

Websites… After Dinner, The White Shoe Irregular, Fluffy Battle Kitten… it’s so hard to stand out from the sea of blogs that the name is almost irrelevant; you just want it to be non-cheesy. Best to avoid puns, although I do like ‘Twist of Fait Accompli’. I was always proud of Walking West.

Organisations… no, can’t think of anything particularly inspiring there. Barnardo’s? Actually UK banks aren’t bad: Barclays, Lloyds. Shades of the McSweeney’s quirky-surname thing, I guess; which brings us back to Eudora. How about finding a suitably inspirational historical figure and naming it after them?

By: collin

collin — Mon, 31 May 2004 02:34:14 +0000

I’m a fan of Ecto, to continue with the E’s. Not quite non-literal, but definitely simple, and it evokes for me an arrow pointing outward every time I fire it up.

cgb

By: Shasta

Shasta — Sun, 30 May 2004 20:00:10 +0000

I’m on your side in the “names are important” debate, and I think “evocative and non-literal but simple” is an admirable goal. I like Eudora. I also like names like McSweeney’s, Tin House, and Celluloid Skyline. Some friends of mine used to have an urban photography site called Lost Cities.

When I’m trying to think of a good name, I typically just start picking up the books on my shelves and thinking about character names or phrases that capture something about the spirit of my project; that’s how my site ended up being called “major weather.” I like “Imaginary Gardens.” “Blue Guitar.” “Botticelli’s Niece” (not from a book, but that’s okay). Ishmael is a great name, as is Queequeg. I don’t even like James Fenimore Cooper, but I like Bumppo.

I could go on like this for hours.