For every disastrous rebrand, there is an IT person trying to steer away from the precipice This Monday's Who, Me? is a reminder that for every ludicrous bit of company branding, there is always somebody behind the scenes yelling "No!" Our story, from a reader Regomised as "Will", concerns an unfortunately named service from much-missed computer company Wang. It was back in the 1980s, when Wang was enjoying success …
A former Wanger here too. For the launch of Wang Cares, Wang Ireland took delivery of a brochure and some baseball caps, to be sent to all customers during the launch week. I still have my "Wang Cares" cap somewhere.
And the title of the launch week? Why, "Wang Cares Awareness Week", of course!
There's also an episode of the Simpson's when Homer, hearing Marge's suggestions for the bane of their first child, makes a point of considering how easily each name could be rhymed with something derogatory in the playground.
Though Homer doesn't see any problem with 'Bart', he does at least deserve credit for following 'due process' - even if he doesn't follow it perfectly.
a "wank", in addition to the obvious meaning, mainly refers to "easy" in the US and Canada. So Bart was saying the last day of school was very easy (because there will be no homework, tests etc.)
Like a lot of words, kids and soccer moms can use the phrase because the meaning of wank has become benign, which sucks.
Ever spoken up, only to be slapped down and blamed when the wheels came off?
Yes, and it effectively cost me my job (although I was happy to take a substantial redundancy package rather than resign).
The American corporate I was working for had decided to implement Baan* globally at the same time as trying to re-engineer the European business units. I was specifically asked to check out whether the system could work in the way they wanted and told them categorically that no, it wouldn't, and nor would any other system. They wanted to run Europe as a single business unit with all accounting in Euros which simply wouldn't work in the UK without leaving them wide open to major issues. My advice was inevitably rejected right up until they were getting ready for launch when I was able to say, "I told you so!"
I don't know what happened in the US but in Europe they went with SAP and all-but closed down the UK operation, turning it into a pure distribution operation for German manufactured tools.
*That, of course, was their first mistake!
A similar thing happened to me a long time ago. One of my clients asked me to develop an off-shoot of one of his packages and it was to work in a particular way. I did my damnedest to explain why it wouldn't work very well in practice but he was adamant he wanted it done his way. So I did it his way and he was surprised that it didn't work as he'd hoped. He then blamed me for not pushing him hard enough not to do it that way in the first place. Sometime you just can't win.
In the late 70's, I was in UK pre-sales support for a US semiconductor company that had a side-line in small business computers, and wanted to promote them using the strapline The Informer. I managed to convince the ad agency that The Sweeney had probably queered the pitch (although I would also have had to explain that phrase) as far as the image of informers was concerned.
The term "informer" has the same, exact set of meanings here in the US as it does in Blighty. And we had more than our fair share of bad cop shows that used it with the same monotonous regularity. I wonder why you Brits are more prone to take such terms out of context than us Yanks?
"also we get american tv so understand slang in both directions."
Would it surprise you that likewise, us Yanks get British TV, and thus have a decent knowledge of British slang? I'll bet it would REALLY surprise you to learn that the BBC makes a hell of a lot of money selling advertising space on the Yank airwaves (That's right, Dr. Who with commercials on BBC America. Lovely, eh? Thank gawd/ess for MythTV.) ... and I'll bet further it would surprise you even more to learn that more Yanks have seen British programming than Brits.
> more Yanks have seen British programming than Brits.
For that to be true it would only require roughly 1/5 of US citizens to have seen some British television ever. That's not a huge ask.
However, it doesn't tell us anything about how much British slang terms have permeated the USA. That would require knowledge of what fraction of Americans have watched what type of British content and how regularly.
Not sure how often Downton Abby, Dr Who or David Attenborough use the word 'wanker'. But for all I know, Gordan Ramsey might be a big hit West of the pond.
In the three weeks we visited the US of A 6 years agoe I think we spent about 5 mins watching TV.
To be fare, that is about standard for almost everywhere we travel to. After all we are on Holiday.
Nowadays we almost exclusivlely watch pre-recorded TV or programs that have no adverts (BBC) or sports on SKY (Footbvall on Sky only has averts before/after and at half time. F1 only before and after the race.
"Yanks get British TV"
You don't even 'get' your own TV! ;-)
"ABC entertainment president Tony Thomopoulos said that 'Police Squad!' was canceled because 'the viewer had to watch it in order to appreciate it,' "
"Who are you, and how did you get in here?"
"I'm a locksmith. And I'm a locksmith."
"ABC entertainment president Tony Thomopoulos said that 'Police Squad!' was canceled because 'the viewer had to watch it in order to appreciate it,' "
Actually the implication was that you had to THINK while you were watching to appreciate it. The LAST thing that American TV viewers want to do is think, and the last thing the networks want to put on is something that requires thinking. Ask the audience to think and they will immediately switch channels.
There are exceptions of course, but the aggregate picture is sitting on the couch, blank stare, with drool coming from the mouth and a beer in hand. Since I know that most of the audience here is from the UK, the best picture I can draw of the average American TV viewer is the beer-swilling brother-in-law in the TV show "Keeping Up Appearances".
(Same AC)
Come to think of it, maybe it's the networks who don't want to think - "Eh, put enough sex and violence into the show and they'll watch. No need to bother with a plot." Same lack of thinking is probably what resulted in the endless series of sequels, prequels, and reboots we currently have, instead of original content.
"The LAST thing that American TV viewers want to do is think"
As opposed to "a woman singing hymns whilst men waved their penises (in full view) in tune" (copied from Friday's On Call comments)? Or, for that matter, most Monty Python. (Some of which I do like, but it definitely doesn't take much thought.)
I remember working on an update to an aircraft loading system which had been running for years apparently without anyone noticing that the adjacent Fuel and CheckedBags column headers were abbreviated to save space (80-character screen) and so read FU CK
Over the the years I've come across quite a few issues with names. Here are a few gems:
1)
A car manufacturer that wanted to introduce their S5-model in the Netherlands. I was part of the market research team that had been hired. My supervisor told me the project was going to run for several weeks. I predicted it would be abandoned within a few days. S5 is the Dutch military designation for failure to pass the intelligence test...
2)
The Project Management Team at a company I worked for jumped on the bandwagon to call everything "Services". So, PMT naturally became "PMS". A gal in the neighboring cubicle pod worked for this team, and we could never keep a straight face when she answered the phone. "Good morning, PMS, this is Susie."
3)
Another team decided to run a campaign called "No More Lies". It had to be catchy, of course, so they settled on "No Moo Lies". With the domain name "nomoolies.com". Fortunately they dropped that when I pointed out that "moolies" is a derogatory slang term.
4)
Just this year a school district in the US created a new website for their online school. The county name starts with an "H", so add "Online School" and you get "hos"... They did in fact use the subdomain "hos.schooldistrictname.org". A quick online search would have immediately revealed that "hos" is not exactly an appropriate term. Radio talk show hosts have lost their jobs over the use of it...
"S5 is the Dutch military designation for failure to pass the intelligence test"
No, that would be I5. I for Intelligence.
S means (emotional) Stability.
And since long before I entered the military in the early 90s, S5 had such a stigma that it was never awarded, making S4 the de facto "maximum" score (range 1 to 5, lower is better).
Working for a mainframe software company I am often confronted by the word Dump, used without even a smirk. It's perfect sensible, that's what happens when a mainframe program gets too full of crap, it produces a dump. Sadly no one managed to convince the owner not to choose a product name featuring that word. It's Marketing I feel sorry for (which is something I have never said before) when they always lose first place on Google to the urban dictionary.
"The Ford Escort sold just fine in the UK"
...where it was always referred to as the "Scrote". Ford had a penchant for issuing corruptible names, such as the Concertina, Transhit, Grandma, and others that I can't put my finger on just now. Of course, Ford weren't alone, how about the Hillman Pimple?
The Nova brand name has no issues in Spanish speaking countries. See Snopes take on it here
I have no idea if the MR2 story is a similar myth, but it wouldn't surprise me.
The Snopes article itself has a couple of issues in left-pond English: 'dinette set' is meaningless - or at least its meaning has to be reverse engineered and 'an English speaker would describe a broken-down car by saying that it “doesn’t run” rather than it “doesn’t go,”'. The latter might be true of an American speaker but but hereabouts "doesn't go" would be the norm.
Tricky stuff, language.
The estate agent who sold me the first house I owned in England was all excited to show me the newly remodeled kitchen, complete with breakfast nook & built-in dinette set ... It was written that way in their advertising, too. Ugly piece of shit; at least a dozen naugas must have died to upholster it. Was the first thing I ripped out.
Doesn't go, doesn't run, knackered, fucked ... Your friendly neighborhood mechanic will understand regardless, so who's quibbling?
Copied from the Wiki article for Honda Jazz / Fit:
"Honda had planned to use the name Fitta, and was released in Japan under that name in 2001.[165] Because Fitta in Scandinavian languages is slang for vagina, Honda instead used Jazz in most markets and Fit in the Americas.[166][167][168][169][170]"
I've heard this on and off over the years, and it never sounded quite right to me ... so I finally looked it up. Turns out that it's only half plausible (that is to say, not at all). Ford's "Escort" brand name debuted in 1955, and the magazine about a quarter century later. Ford's "Fiesta" brand debuted in 1976, the magazine about a decade earlier.
Note that I don't have a dog in this race, never having purchased any of them ... why bother when one can usually find one or another stuffed into a local hedgerow.
... the term "wanker" was very well known to most Yanks back then (and earlier). It came across the pond (oooh, matron!) with the GIs following one World War or another. We just didn't, and still don't, use it much.
However, Dr. Wang made it very well known that any and all attempts to make his name into an object of locker-room humo(u)r were to be ignored. And they pretty much were, company wide. Sometimes with sub-optimal results.
And now you know the rest of the story.
When I was learning mandarin, it pleased me no end that the Chinese surname "Wang" translated as "King" (according to the instructor, some of the vocab we were taught was very incorrect...), unsurprisingly as I am still incredibly puerile that became my favourite character flash card...
Ex-GF (from a very long time ago) youngest brother worked there too until it was closed down. When I visited him his house was full of all the latest and greatest in IT tech of the time with WANG logos slapped on everything. He said that when the place closed down everyone grabbed an empty shopping trolley and walked out with a full one.
Several years ago at my last company my CEO was flying out to France for meeting with the parent company. The day before he asked me to knock up some slides to explain what we were spending the money on and to justify spending more. So half an hour before his flight I emailed him the slides knowing what he'd not have time to read them before the meeting that afternoon.
He then stood up and presented project GONADS, of course it was more subtle than that but the main boss (a really likeable French guy) had very good English and immediately got what it was, started laughing and then explained to the rest of the board.
They thought it was so funny we got our cash and I wasn't sacked.
Back in the 1980s I worked for a large US hardware manufacturer (which alas no longer exists) whose newest Wide Area Network software update was named the "WAN Kit". The female tech specialist who briefed us on this wonder spent her entire update glowing slightly pink.
In the UK the surname "Johnson" is slang for penis. The surname "Bush" is slang for female genitalia. Hasn't harmed politicians much. Half the country seems to have been at Uni with a "Richard Head" whenever silly names come up in conversation. "Dick" and "Willy" are normal first names (although a lot less common now than earlier generations).
And anyone who has had to read "Swallows and Amazons" to young relatives as a bedtime book will know about the old short-form of Letitia.
Hey - leave Swallows and Amazons alone!
I discovered it, over here in the US, in my school library, and my kids loved it. Getting the complete set of books was a bit of a job, but thanks to The Internet (and used bookstores) I managed.
And since the first part of your post referenced two well known (if not well-liked) US politicians, I'll close with the rhyming couplet that was popular among us teens in 1972 (we were clever back then):
"You wouldn't change Dicks in the middle of a screw, stick with Nixon in seventy-two"
Titty wasn't a shortened form of Leticia. She was a Mavis, iirc. It was just a nickname.
I used to know one of the Altounyan grandchildren; she wasn't impressed that I was mainly interested in her because she had the right to go to the Arthur Ransome museum and take Swallow out for a sail :)
Remember the OGC logo they spent 'a lot' of money on, rotated it looked just like a graphical onanist.
https://www.theregister.com/2008/04/22/ogc_logo/
A mate of mine worked for a Dutch oil company, "Dong Energy". Dong is still around and standing proud with their name.
It cracked me up.
DONG was originally short for Danish Oil and Natural Gas. They rebranded to Ørsted in 2017, using green energy as an excuse.
I used to see them at many of the large international industrial exhibitions my company used to attend, and got a range of their promo materials over the years. Anything seemed funny after 4 days standing up in a business suit.
Beer icon, because that's what helped most of us get through the week.
Served my inter year at Unisys in Uxbridge a couple of years after the Sperry/Burroughs merger and they rebadged a variety of UNIX mini systems. One was originally called the Arete (accents optional) and as I didn't speak any French the staffers had to explain to me why the source company had to change the model name once they started selling internationally. Memory is a little hazy.
Ah, found a reference to "Arete Systems Corp" from that era: https://www.cbronline.com/news/unix_banns_plexus_arete_agree_a_merger/
I was told by a member of the Royce family (a fellow engineer) that the Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow was originally going to be called the Silver Mist, and it was only days before its launch that somebody who spoke German pointed out the problem with this. All the ready-printed publicity material and the badges on the show cars had to be redone, just in time...
Working for the UK part of a US organisation, in training, we used to do Training Needs Analysis (TNA), the US told us we couldn't use the abbreviation, TNA referring to parts of the female anatomy.
We also had a Sales & Marketing department, I also remember the S&M cafe near Liverpool station was quite disappointed when it turned out to be Sausage and Mash.
eight months of system maintenance and updates deferred because of "the virus" all need to be accomplished in the next three weeks.
By a staff that has been reduced to 80% because of hiring freezes, and who must work remotely because in-office team meetings are banned.
I suspect that my customer is not alone in this regard. 1Q and 2Q 2021 will be very interesting in terms of systems failures, etc.
Especially when there are lots and lots, and some are community members who may actually know each
other chatting away, I tend to skip over those threads and risk missing seeing a comment I might make. And after scanning the comments I see no mention of General Motors, or Chevy Nova, which my Spanish teacher from a spanish speaking country spoke about. Vauxhall? Is that an outlet store for GM? Like VauxMall?
anyway AC, have one...
"And after scanning the comments I see no mention of General Motors, or Chevy Nova,"
Jake: The Nova brand name has no issues in Spanish speaking countries. See Snopes take on it here
In reply to UK Jim: The Vauxhall Nova did not sell well in Spanish speaking countries.
I assume you're trying to argue that the Chevy Nova and the Vauxhall Nova wouldn't have had the same potential linguistic issues?
Working in the line-of-approval for internal domain names for more than a few years brought a number of "you really didn't read that properly before submitting the application, did you?" requests. Two stick in the memory (domain suffix removed to protect the innocent)
historyofart.thing
campusexchange.thing
The people who spoke up about the fire resistance, or lack of it, of the cladding on Grenfell Tower were slapped down, and 72 people died and many more injured:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/nov/30/kingspan-manager-belligerent-over-fire-concerns-in-2008-grenfell-inquiry-hears
The article makes rather sickening reading, including:
"A senior executive at Kingspan, which made combustible insulation used on Grenfell Tower, said a builder who questioned its product’s fire safety should “go f*ck themselves”, the public inquiry into the fire has heard."
That was the Merlin Tonto, a rebadged ICL OPD (One Per Desk). Basically a Sinclare QL (big brother of your favorite Speccy), without the 8049 peripheral controller but with a POTS communications system grafted onto it. They were built by ICL, and sold by BT. In Oz it was known as the Telecom Australia Computerphone.
The name Merlin seems to have come from the same place as BT's Merlin M4000 line (rebadged Logica VTS-2300 Kennet), although they are in no way related hardware wise. No relation at all to the contemporary AT&T Merlin systems.
Tonto was short for "The Outstanding New Telecoms Opportunity".
All the above was early/mid 1980s.
Note that this has nothing to with the mid-1970s TONTO, The Original New Timbral Orchestra, which is an entirely different subject, and some would say much more interesting.
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