The Name Inspector

Tells you what makes names tick.

08/14/2009 05:54 PM

Name watching at Uwajimaya

A fun way to spend a rainy hour in Seattle is to browse in Uwajimaya, a huge Asian supermarket in the International District (which locals call “the ID”). There you can see products that, from a mainland American point of view (at least this mainland American point of view), are pretty exotic. Things like durian-flavored [...]

07/30/2009 06:52 PM

Two brags: Inc. magazine, Top 100 Language Blogs

The Name Inspector has created a new page to round up press mentions of this blog. If you check it out, you’ll find that The Name Inspector is quoted in an article about domain names in the latest issue of Inc. magazine. Who else is quoted in the same paragraph? Bob Parsons, founder of GoDaddy. [...]

07/14/2009 05:17 PM

Enertia: Can Brammo move product with this name?

Watch out! There’s a new electric motorcycle in town. It’s the Enertia, from Brammo. Yes, like the word inertia, but with an E, which The Name Inspector supposes stands for electric. So, electric + inertia. Inertia. Kind of an unusual word choice for a motorcycle, don’t you think? Inertia, as we all remember from physics class, [...]

07/08/2009 06:43 PM

Vote for The Name Inspector, please.

The Name Inspector has been nominated for the “Top 100 Language Blogs 2009″ contest run by the blog LexioPhiles. Please consider giving him your vote.

06/25/2009 09:55 PM

Office hours, tomorrow only!

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.

06/22/2009 07:30 PM

Meet Nordy, the plush toy designed by Wittgenstein!

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 plush toy inspired by a sketch by a famous philosopher of [...]

06/12/2009 08:08 PM

Why the “millionth word” story is silly

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 TechCrunch took notice. Now, The Name Inspector realizes that the “millionth word” story is a ridiculous play for attention that’s [...]

05/30/2009 10:57 PM

Will we bing? Having bung, will we ever google again?

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 people write about the name Google, they almost invariably mention [...]

05/26/2009 09:55 PM

It takes two to dango (at least)

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 James Sun said they’d fight the trademark issue even though they’re changing [...]

05/14/2009 11:05 PM

The Name Inspector’s out of the office

The Name Inspector would like to apologize to those of you who’ve recently contacted him about office hours. He’s been overwhelmed with requests, too busy to schedule times for consultation, and falling behind in his email. So he’s done what any sane person would do under the circumstances: slipped out of his office in disguise [...]

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The Name Inspector

Tells you what makes names tick.