Good Morning.
Every few months my supermarket rearranges its merchandise. This is done so shoppers will be exposed to products they might have ignored heretofore. This means when you go to Aisle 4 to pick up some mayonnaise and mustard, you will now see crackers and chips. This is called merchandising, a form of marketing.
Companies hire creative types to come up with enticing names for their stuff. They may use an ad firm or they may have
in-house people, but the point is to get consumers interested in whatever they're selling and this often involves naming
their products in a way that makes the potential buyer delighted to fork over his or her money and who cares how much
the item costs. You're not painting your walls brown, off-white, or pale green; you're painting them Woven Wicker,
Snowbound, and Quietude.
Revlon, a popular television show sponsor during the 1950s, pushed lipsticks called Cherries in the Snow and Fire and Ice because referring to them as red and bright red would have bored a woman to tears. Today she can pop in at Walgreen's and buy a L'Oreal shade called Matte-adamia. Oh my.
You don't drive a Chevy sedan or a Ford station wagon anymore; you drive a Kia Soul, a Ford Edge, or, for the geriatric set,
a Buick Envision. Someone figured out that old people take road trips and do a lot of looking around. Floyd and Edna may have received silver place settings for twelve when they got married in patterns called Buttercup or Strasbourg, but their grandkids don't want the fuss of polishing their teaspoons or washing them by hand. If it can't be thrown in he dishwasher, it goes to the attic with the boxes of toys and old magazines.
Eating and drinking establishments can be named something fairly generic like Joe's Bar and Grille or Peterson's Fine Dining,
but not so for the Brits. They name their pubs Crocker's Folly, The Blind Beggar, and The Frog and the Pinafore, although in my city, there's a place called The 18th Amendment in honor of prohibition. Some feel it would be more rightly called The 21st Amendment that repealed it, but I prefer the cynicism connected to the name the owners selected. And think of the
names of the beverages we love so dearly: a Bloody Mary that recalls a dreadful old queen and Sex on the Beach, no further comment.
People also name their places of residence, often the grand estates of the wealthy like Winterthur, home of the DuPonts in Delaware, and Mar-a-Lago in Florida, but also the much smaller, quaint cottages owned by regular folks. If you are fortunate enough to have a house at the beach, name it something that makes you smile every time you drive up, as the people do who live at On the Rocks, Salty Dog, and Land of Ahhs. My father had a friend who owned a sand and gravel business and he named his boat The Sandman. I named my former home The Alamo because of its Tex-Mex persuasion.
Which brings me to what people name their children. It's all well and good to honor a dear relative or choose something trendy so the kid will fit in, but in an admittedly dog-eat-dog world, parents are marketing their children for an adult life
by what they choose to call them when they're tipping the scale at under ten pounds. Who would nominate a female named Ditty Jo Johnson for the Supreme Court despite her fabulous qualifications? And for heaven's sake, if your last name is Thomas, please opt for Jacob rather than John.
Best regards,
Elisabeth
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