MODERATOR
Mark Abley
Poet, writer, editor; columnist for the Montreal Gazette
More PANELISTS
Robert Jones
Brand strategist, Wolff Olins, and
professor at University of East Anglia
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Frank Nuessel
Professor
of Languages and
Linguistics and
University Scholar at the University of
Louisville
More 
Ben Zimmer
Executive producer of the Visual
Thesarus and Vocabulary.com; columnist for the Boston
Globe
More |
Session
3
ModeratorMark
Abley
As our
discussions draw to a close, I'm reminded of the question I asked Ben at the
start of our live chat: is Juliet right when, in Shakespeare's classic tragedy,
she says, "That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet"?
Ben replied with instant erudition by evoking the linguist Ferdinand de
Saussure (to whom we returned in the last round). Being of a more down-to-earth
mind, I was thinking about my garden. I've always hated the word "hydrangea"—its
odd vowels, its long middle syllable with that "drain" sound, its abrupt
ending. Gertrude Stein may have answered Shakespeare by insisting that a rose
was a rose was a rose, but did she ever get her hands dirty? I suspect that if
the name of a rose were "hydrangea," it would smell nothing like as sweet.
Is this fanciful of me? Of course. Discussions about names, words, brands, and
titles often come down to the power of the imagination. But then, isn't that
what art is frequently all about? Naming gives every artist—and every parent—the
chance to let their imagination run wild. Robert observed that any naming
decision tends to reflect a battle, or at least a tension, between convention
and nonconformity. We began our conversation by reflecting on the sculpture of John
Chamberlain, and I think that particular tension is evident in the titles of
his works. His choices entailed a divine ricochet (to cite the inventive name
of one of his sculptures) between sense and nonsense, the referential and the
arbitrary, the absurd and, as Frank pointed out, the autobiographical.
There's no recipe, no magic formula to producing a successful name. As one of
the participants in our live chat suggested, success in both business and
politics can have a lot to do with name recognition. Therefore the power of
names goes beyond questions of pure linguistics; personal, social, and
political factors can all come into play.
I think the idea of play is a good way for us to end the discussion. I want to
thank the readers of this Forum, the three panelists, and the Guggenheim Museum
for giving us all the opportunity to engage in some serious, provocative play—on
words.
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