The Name Inspector
Latest Content

Office hours, tomorrow only! - 10 days ago
The experiment continues. The Name Inspector is once again having “office hours” consultations at greatly reduced prices. In-person meetings are best (for you Seattle folks), but phone/chat works too. Contact him today or tomorrow for details. Topics: News, Offers, office hours, Seattle Interest

Meet Nordy, the plush toy designed by Wittgenstein! - 13 days ago
Not so long ago, The Name Inspector’s younger son got his first pair of shoes at Nordstrom. As a little lagniappe, he also got a plush toy named Nordy, whose head is shown on the right above. This is definitely The Name Inspector’s favorite... Topics: ambiguity, duckrabbit, News, Nordy, Peculiar, wittgenstein

Why the “millionth word” story is silly - 23 days ago
On Wednesday the Global Language Monitor “announced” that English got its one-millionth word at precisely 10:22 am GMT that day. And the word was Web 2.0, so naturally, blogs such as Mashable, John Battelle’s Searchblog, and... Topics: Bad Linguistics, idioms, News, Orthography, snowclones, Uncategorized, Words

Will we bing? Having bung, will we ever google again? - 36 days ago
The Name Inspector knew it. He just knew that Microsoft went with the name Bing because it makes a better verb than, say, Kumo, which sounds like a radio or TV station (like Seattle’s KOMO). Or that crazy killer dog dreamt up by Stephen King.When... Topics: bing, genericide, Sound Symbolism, the name bing, Trademark Issues, trademarks, Web App Names

It takes two to dango (at least) - 40 days ago
A few days ago John Cook reported that lawyers from job site Jobdango want the folks at Zoodango, a site that has nothing to do with jobs, to stop using the name Zoodango because the -dango ending infringes on Jobdango’s trademark. Zoodango CEO... Topics: Bad Linguistics, Bad Names, Company Names, jobdango, Metaphor, moldy hot dog buns, News, Seattle Interest, the name jobdango, the name zoodango, Trademark Issues, trademarks, zoodango














