06.26.08
Loomin’ Newman illuminates . . .
I recently found myself at an older blog post about creating names. I first thought I had simply surfed there, but now I’m thinking that some kind of karma illuminated my path to said post, The Name Inspector blog’s “10 tips for naming your company, product, or service”:
9. Forget etymology
Maybe it’s shocking for The Name Inspector to say this, but the etymologies of words or word parts that you use in your name don’t matter. What do matter are the associations people make. Sometimes there’s an overlap between the two, though. For example, many people recognize that -lumin- relates to light, and it in fact comes from the Latin word for light. However, most people don’t make the association to light because of their knowledge of Latin or etymology. They make it because they know words like luminous and illuminate and recognize the word part. In general, etymological meaning connections only come through when they’re also part of the living language.
Hmm, says this word maven. My Unfortunate English is devoted to etymology. My Write Tight advises writers to immerse themselves in dictionaries to learn not only vocabulary but also the nuances of word and even syllable origins. “Forget etymology”? “Forget etymology”? Especially in the light (no pun intended) of my undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin, whose motto is “Numen Lumen”? “Forget etymology”?
Yup. In this context, the Name Inspector is dead on. Words mean what they mean today, not what they meant once. New names and other neologisms depend on association and resonance with related, living words, as well as with similarity of sonic resonance and even typographical look.
Is it important to understand a word’s history? Yes!, so buy Unfortunate English or you may contract dandruff of the hand! Or to be more a touch more realistic . . . etymology is fascinating, and edifying, and so often surprising. (I’m wondering how many wedding shops would reconsider using the word bridal in their business names if they were to allow original meanings of words to scare them away. Bridal the adjective is a modification of the noun bride-ale, a wedding celebration that involved lots and lots of the final syllable.)
Etymology is also at times confounding and in some situations outright distracting. Which brings us back to the karma that illuminated my path to this post: No one seems to know exactly what the hell “Numen Lumen” means, a mystery so deep that a 1912 issue of Wisconsin Alumni magazine published the winner of a contest asking who could explain it best (the explanation is so esoteric that the first place entry also won second place). I always thought “Numen Lumen” meant something on the order of “knowledge illuminates,” but, obviously, sometimes knowledge just obfuscates. That revelation is an undergraduate education in itself.
Therefore, when bringing new words to the language—for business and product names, to describe new processes or trends, or just for the fun of it—rely on the now as your guiding lumin.
