The Growlery (October 2003)
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Michael Gilleland
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The Growlery (October 2003)
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It amazes me when companies throw away decades of hard-won brand recognition on a new corporate name. Bell Atlantic was named after the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, but a few years ago the company inexplicably changed its name to Verizon. Bell Atlantic was obviously a phone company based in the eastern United States, but who could guess, from its name, what Verizon sells? The name is apparently an amalgam of "veritas" (the Latin word for truth) and "horizon" -- what truth and horizon have to do with each other or the phone business escapes my feeble comprehension. Bell Labs likewise changed its name to Lucent, an English word which means "gleaming".
Other corporations have also shed venerable family names. Woolworth Corporation changed its name first to Venator Group, then to Foot Locker. "Venator" means hunter in Latin, but the connection between Venator Group and hunting is a mystery. Dayton's is now Marshall Field's.
New Zealand outdoor clothing chain Fairydown has just changed its name to Zone, because some men were uncomfortable wearing shirts with the Fairydown label. Sir Edmund Hilary, who wore Fairydown clothing when he climbed Mount Everest, isn't among them. He said, "Reading that connotation into the name is just absolutely stupid. It's a good brand. I have a Fairydown jacket and I am very proud to wear it."
There are obvious fads in these new names. Lucent made the ending -ent popular. Two Lutheran aid societies (Aid Association for Lutherans and Lutheran Brotherhood) recently combined as Thrivent Financial, and Universal Foods is now Sensient Technologies. At least Lucent is a real word. Thrivent and Sensient are ugly-sounding and misshapen coinages. In English we say thriving and sentient, but only a Mrs. Malaprop could dream up thrivent and sensient. Some other corporate names which are supposed to sound new-fangled and "with it" (but actually sound bizarre) are Navistar (formerly International Harvester) and Novartis (born of the marriage of Ciba Geigy and Sandoz).
Believe it or not, but there are actually companies which get paid big bucks for thinking up these crazy monikers. So-called "identity firms" include Landor, Idiom, A Hundred Monkeys, Interbrand, NameLab, NameBase, Name/It, NameTrade, Namestormers, TrueNames, and ABC Namebank.
One favorite ploy is deliberately to misspell an English word and make that your corporate name. Cellular One was spelled correctly, but its new name Cingular Wireless is not. Presumably Cingular is supposed to mean "singular" (unique), although it reminds me of Latin "cingula" (girdle). Another orthographically challenged corporate name is Xcel Energy (formerly Northern States Power).
Like a criminal changing his name after release from prison, some corporations rush to change their names after they get into trouble. ValuJet changed its name to AirTran after a 1996 crash in the Florida Everglades which killed 110 people. After its involvement in the Enron debacle became known, Andersen Consulting changed its name to Accenture. Enron itself came about as the merger of InterNorth of Omaha and Houston Natural Gas in 1986. The first choice for the corporate name was Enteron, until someone looked in the dictionary and realized that "enteron" means "alimentary canal, digestive tract." Maybe they should have stuck with Enteron, since events proved that Ken Lay and his cronies were totally full of crap, like a bloated large intestine.
Philip Morris sold poison for decades -- two of its advertising icons, Marlboro Men Wayne McLaren and David McLean, died of lung cancer caused by smoking. Now Philip Morris wants to refurbish its tarnished corporate image by calling itself Altria Group. Chairman and Chief Executive officer Geoffrey C. Bible explains the name change thus on the corporate web site:
The significance of the name "Altria" is derived from the Latin word "altus," which reflects the corporation’s desire for its family of companies to always "reach higher" in striving to achieve greater financial strength and growth through operational excellence, consumer brand expertise and a growing understanding of corporate responsibility.Corporate responsibility from a manufacturer of cancer sticks. Yeah, sure.
There are some products which could use a name change. Flonase reminds me of "flow" plus the Latin word for nose (nasum), i.e. a runny nose. I picture a toddler with the glazed donut look between nose and upper lip. And NasalCrom evokes "nasal crumbs," an unappealing image.
The creeping curse of commercialization infects even academia these days, where students are considered clients, and so it's no surprise to find that institutions of higher learning are imitating corporations by changing their names. Beaver College, founded in 1853, changed its name to Arcadia University in 2001. President Bette E. Landman explained that the old name "too often elicits ridicule in the form of derogatory remarks pertaining to the rodent, the TV show 'Leave It to Beaver' and the vulgar reference to the female anatomy."
One of my favorite corporate name change fiascos occurred last year in neighboring Wisconsin, where Wisconsin Energy renamed its subsidiary Wisconsin Electric-Wisconsin Gas to WE Energies. Wags instantly christened the company "Wiener-gies," to the chagrin of the marketing bozos responsible. For a time there was a parody web site with logos for Wiener-gies, such as a bratwurst in a bun, but it doesn't seem to have survived in cyberspace.
By the way, I've decided to re-brand myself. Henceforth you can call me E-Mike, rather than just plain Mike.
Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) was a Catholic of the belligerent, unapologetic variety, definitely not a Milquetoast. During his campaign for a seat in Parliament in 1906, he rejected advice to softpedal his religion convictions, and once went so far as to open a speech with these defiant words: "Gentlemen, I am a Catholic. As far as possible, I go to Mass every day. This is a rosary. As far as possible, I kneel down and tell these beads, every day. If you reject me on account of my religion, I shall thank God that He has spared me the indignity of being your representative!" Compare John F. Kennedy's weasel words in a 1960 campaign speech: "I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for President who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters -- and the church does not speak for me."
Belloc wrote over a hundred and fifty books. One of the most perennially popular is The Path to Rome, an exuberant account of his walking trip across France, Switzerland, and Italy, from Toul to Rome, a distance of about eight hundred miles, in 1901. In what follows, the page numbers are from the Image Book paperback edition (1956).
Belloc looks back with nostalgia on the pre-Reformation days when Europe was united in the Catholic faith. He recommends daily attendance at morning Mass, but only if the service is short (pp. 38-40); he praises the middle class as the guardian of tradition and good manners (p. 53); he admires roadside shrines in desolate spots (pp. 57-58). One of my favorite passages is this rodomontade against intellectual pride (p. 146):
What! here we are with the jolly world of God all around us, able to sing, to draw, to paint, to hammer and build, to sail, to ride horses, to run, to leap; having for our splendid inheritance love in youth and memory in old age, and we are to take one miserable little faculty, our one-legged, knock-kneed, gimcrack, purblind, rough-skinned, underfed, and perpetually irritated and grumpy intellect, or analytical curiosity rather (a diseased appetite), and let it swell till it eats up every other function? Away with such foolery.
Belloc was a born raconteur. His dizzying walk across the Mont Terrible bridge (pp. 113-115), his first sight of the Alps (pp. 113-115), his failed attempt to cross the Gries (pp. 147-154) -- all these adventures, told with verve and wit, hold the reader spellbound. In Italy he fords the Taro River on the back of his guide, like Christ on the shoulders of St. Christopher (pp. 202-204). He doesn't speak Italian, so he converses in Latin with a priest in the village of Sillano (p. 226).
The very names of the towns on Belloc's route have an exotic ring to them, at least to this armchair traveller. The list includes the French towns of Toul, St. Pierre, Flavigny, Charmes, Thayon, Epinal, Archettes, Rupt, Giromagny, and Belfort. Stations along the way in Switzerland were Porrentruy, St. Ursanne, Glovelier, Undervelier, Moutier, Gansbrunnen, Soleure, Burgdorf, Schangnau, Brienz, Meiringen, Ehringen, Ulrichen, Hospenthal, St. Gothard, Airolo, Faido, Bodio, Biasca, Bellizona, and Lugano. In Italy Belloc passed through Chiasso, Como, Milano, Lodi Vecchio, Secugnano, Piacenza, Firenzuola, Borgo, Medesano, Fornovo, Calestano, Frangi, Beduzzo, Tizzano, Ceregio, Collagna, Sillano, Castel-Nuovo, Lucca, Siena, San Quirico, Acquapendente, Bolsena, Viterbo, and Ronciglione, before arriving in Rome.
One could make an interesting series of Web pages devoted to Belloc's trek. On the Internet you can see many of the same sights that Belloc did, such as the Lion of Belfort (p. 74) and carvings of devils at Fornovo (p. 204).
The Path to Rome is a quirky book. It's filled with scraps of original verse, in English (pp. 105-106) and Latin (pp. 176, 247). Occasionally an imaginary reader (lector) interrupts interrupts the author (auctor), as on p. 232:
LECTOR. Why did you write this book?Belloc might have written for his own amusement, but the book has delighted readers in the century since it was first printed.
AUCTOR. For my amusement.
LECTOR. And why do you suppose I got it?
AUCTOR. I cannot conceive...
A few years ago novelist and film maker Peter Francis Browne retraced Belloc's steps and wrote about his journey in Rambling: On the Road to Rome (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1990).
The two books could not be more different. Browne was raised a Catholic, but he boasts about his loss of faith and sneers at the centerpiece of Catholicism, the Mass (pp. 140-141, 182). In Undervelier, Switzerland, the spectacle of the townsfolk singing the old hymn "Te lucis ante terminum" at Vespers moved Belloc to tears, but Browne condescendingly regards "such a herd instinct as the epitome of conformity" (pp. 103-104).
Since Browne obviously has little sympathy with Belloc or his beliefs, one wonders why he decided to make this trip at all. Retracing Jack Kerouac's drunken trip across the United States in On the Road might have been more in Browne's line (p. 70).
In a conversation about literature with a pharmacist and his wife in Castelnovo ne' Monte (p. 219), Browne confessed, "I admire people who go out on a limb. In writing and everything else. I can't stand people who hold everything back." This explains his crudeness and lack of restraint throughout the book. Here's one example (p. 73) of many: "I needed company, but the only occupants of the bar were a young couple exchanging saliva. And so, after a glass of wine, I went to bed."
Whereas Belloc would have been a jolly companion on the road, Browne is a disagreeable prig. He takes a perverse delight in getting into arguments with other travellers, especially young, less sophisticated ones, and then insulting them (pp. 92-94, 138-139, 242-244). In fact, there are only a few passages in Rambling which reveal Browne's better side -- he gives money to a beggar (p. 82), and he sheds tears remembering his dead mother (pp. 246-247).
I read Browne's book to get a sense of the differences in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century, when Belloc made his journey, and the end, when Browne made his. One difference is the influx of Arabs into Europe. They now number over five million in France alone. At Giromagny and Valdoie, Browne saw what he first thought were women dressed in traditional, local garb. He soon realized that they were North Africans (pp. 80-82). Christian Europe once fought fiercely and valiantly, at Lepanto in 1571 and Vienna in 1683, to keep Mohammedanism out, but now, without resistance, the invaders build mosques in every nation of western Europe. It would be different if there were cathedrals and synagogues dotting the landscape in Saudi Arabia, but as it is, we're saps, victims of our own generosity and tolerance. The government of Italy donated land for a huge mosque at Monte Antenne in Rome, which opened in 1995, while the government of Egypt makes it almost impossible to construct a Coptic church in that country. Peter Hitchens wonders Will Britain convert to Islam? I wonder, Will Europe convert to Islam?
An interesting historical footnote: One of the Europeans who fought the Muslim invasion in the fifteenth century was a prince of Wallachia named Dracula (1431-1476). His real name was Vlad, but he took the nickname Dracula (son of the Dragon) from his father (Vlad, nicknamed Dracul), who was a member of the Order of the Dragon, a knightly organization sworn to expel the Turks from Europe. A rare coin from Vlad Dracul's time shows an eagle looking at the Cross on the obverse, with a dragon on the reverse. There was a film made about the Order of the Dragon.
Another striking difference is the difficulty (not to mention life-threatening danger) of walking at the close of the twentieth century. Browne describes the road south of Lugano, Switzerland (p. 174):
Without warning the concrete slabs contracted into a kerb only a boot wide along which I had to balance, turning as the traffic approached, my rucksack resting on the crash barrier above the drop. But I continued, determined not to be thwarted so close to the bridge, now less than a kilometre away.
Then there was not even a kerb. Drivers hooted and flashed their lights at me; and, squeezed between rockface and barrier, there was no place to hide. A man, having nearly hit me, stopped his car and shouted abuse before speeding away like a rally driver with his tyres screeching and his horn blaring.
Reluctantly I turned and walked all the way back to Lugano.
Optimists, Pollyannas, and cheerleaders of "progress" might argue that life in Europe now is a vast improvement over what it was in 1901, and I'm sure they would have the statistics to support their assertion. But my overwhelming impression, after reading Belloc's book and Browne's, is one of sadness. So much that was good and worth preserving has now perished irretrievably. Oh, well. At least Belloc's book is still in print. Browne's is not.
Dickens on political campaigns (Pickwick Papers, chapter XIII):
"Slumkey for ever!" roared the honest and independent.
"Slumkey for ever!" echoed Mr. Pickwick, taking off his hat.
"No Fizkin!" roared the crowd.
"Certainly not!" shouted Mr. Pickwick.
"Hurrah!" And then there was another roaring, like that of a whole menagerie when the elephant has rung the bell for the cold meat.
"Who is Slumkey?" whispered Mr. Tupman.
"I don't know," replied Mr. Pickwick, in the same tone. "Hush. Don't ask any questions. It's always best on these occasions to do what the mob do."
"But suppose there are two mobs?" suggested Mr. Snodgrass.
"Shout with the largest," replied Mr. Pickwick.
Dickens on credit card debt (David Copperfield, chapter XII):
"My other piece of advice, Copperfield," said Mr. Micawber, "you know. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the god of day goes down upon the dreary scene, and -- and in short you are for ever floored. As I am!"
Dickens on real estate closings (Oliver Twist, chapter IX):
When the breakfast was cleared away; the merry old gentleman and the two boys played at a very curious and uncommon game, which was performed in this way. The merry old gentleman, placing a snuff-box in one pocket of his trousers, a note-case in the other, and a watch in his waistcoat pocket, with a guard-chain round his neck, and sticking a mock diamond pin in his shirt: buttoned his coat tight round him, and putting his spectacle-case and handkerchief in his pockets, trotted up and down the room with a stick, in imitation of the manner in which old gentlemen walk about the streets any hour in the day. Sometimes he stopped at the fire-place, and sometimes at the door, making believe that he was staring with all his might into shop-windows. At such times, he would look constantly round him, for fear of thieves, and would keep slapping all his pockets in turn, to see that he hadn't lost anything, in such a very funny and natural manner, that Oliver laughed till the tears ran down his face. All this time, the two boys followed him closely about: getting out of his sight, so nimbly, every time he turned round, that it was impossible to follow their motions. At last, the Dodger trod upon his toes, or ran upon his boot accidently, while Charley Bates stumbled up against him behind; and in that one moment they took from him, with the most extraordinary rapidity, snuff-box, note-case, watch-guard, chain, shirt-pin, pocket-handkerchief, even the spectacle-case. If the old gentleman felt a hand in any one of his pockets, he cried out where it was; and then the game began all over again.
