Names of the year 2023

The brand names, place names, and personal names — and one long string of numbers — that .stood out this year

Last week I published my words-of-the-year list, from enshittification to sprinkle sprinkle. Now it’s time to shine a light on the noteworthy upper-case names of 2023.

I have nothing to add to Laura Wattenberg’s superb defense of Barbie as the overall name of the year — a name, she wrote, that “speaks volumes, not just about gender but about our changing views of names and identity itself.” Read her post on the Namerology blog.

And here’s to another big name of 2023: Time’s Person of the Year, Taylor Swift. I analyzed “Taylor,” “Swift,” and “TaylorSwift®” in an October newsletter.

Onward!

Place name of the year

Gaza. One of the oldest cities in the world, and the center of an unfolding, seemingly insoluble tragedy as Israelis and Palestinians battle in the narrow slice of land known since 1948 as the Gaza Strip. “Gaza” comes from Hebrew “Azzah,” which translates roughly to “strong city.”

Eyeless in Gaza, a novel by Aldous Huxley (1936). The title derives from the Old Testament story of Samson, whose eyes were gouged out by Philistines in Gaza.

Criminal name of the year

#PO1135809. In August, Donald Trump became the first former US president to have an inmate number: #PO1135809. He was one of 19 defendants charged by the Fulton County (Georgia) grand jury with interfering in the 2020 presidential election. “Posing for his mug shot in the sheriff’s office, the former president got off just the menacing glower he had practiced for the occasion, succeeding in projecting a sort of ‘Super Felon’ look he knew would thrill his faithful base,” wrote former assistant US attorney Jeff Robbins. “And, boy, are they ever faithful. ABC anchor Kyra Phillips put her finger on what Trump’s flock is worshipping: it is ‘defiance,’ and all that goes with it. But defiance of what? Of laws that prohibit every citizen, including presidents, from stealing nuclear secrets, obstructing grand jury investigations and trying to steamroll elected officials into falsifying election results so that an unsuccessful candidate for reelection can remain in office despite the will of American voters?”

Pharmaceutical names of the year

Ozempic, Mounjaro, Wegovy, Zepbound. Four trade names for similar GLP-1 receptor agonists: injectable compounds originally developed as diabetes drugs. (GLP-1 receptor agonists lower blood sugar by enabling the pancreas to make more insulin.) The drugs have an off-label side effect: weight loss, which caught the attention of celebrities (Oprah Winfrey among them) and tech moguls. “Will the Ozempic era change how we think about being fat and being thin?” the New Yorker asked in a March article. In November, the New York Times noted that the medications “can be expensive without insurance — the list price for Wegovy is over $1,300 for a 28-day supply, and Ozempic can cost around $892 for a monthly supply without insurance — and people who don’t meet the F.D.A.'s criteria will likely have trouble getting insurance to cover it.” As for the drugs’ trade names — sorry, I have no idea who came up with them or why. See my story “Those Crazy Drug Names.”

Fast-food name of the year

CosMc’s. McDonald’s is been famously protective of its exclusive right to the Mc- element of its trademark (less successfully in the EU than in North America). In December the fast-food behemoth introduced a new brand that moved Mc to the rear. CosMc’s, which so far is open in just one Chicago-suburb location, is “a new small-format, beverage-led concept that’s truly out of this world.” Eater Chicago, which called the Bolingbrook, Illinois, CosMc’s “a boba cafe in clown’s clothing,” reported that “[f]olks can’t customize their drinks or the sugar level — it’s all about the rush; these drinks would appeal to gamers trying to survive long late-night sessions or folks trying to power through an entire season of a beloved TV show in one sitting.” The CosMc’s name and branding carry more than a whiff of competitor Sonic’s general vibe.¹

CosMc’s sign

AI name of the year

Grok. It’s an all-in-the-family Grokfest! In early November, xAI, which is owned by Elon Musk, launched Grok, an AI bot that “combines sarcasm with lofty ambitions,” according to a Wall Street Journal headline, and is “anti-woke,” according to Musk. (Whoops! A month later, some users were whining that wokeness had prevailed: Grok “often sounds like a strident progressive, championing everything from gender fluidity to Musk's long-time foe, President Joe Biden.”) Meanwhile, Grimes, the Canadian singer who gave birth to three of Musk’s children, is providing the voice for an AI-powered children’s toy also called Grok (gift link). The Grok toy, manufactured by a Silicon Valley startup, Curio, is allegedly unrelated to the Grok snarkbot; it’s probably a total coincidence that trademark applications were filed for both products within days of each other, in October. Grimes, who is an advisor to Curio, has said her Grok is a shortening of “Grocket,” “which was coined because Grimes’ children are exposed to a lot of rockets through their father’s ownership of SpaceX.” (So shouldn’t it be spelled Grock?) As for the origin and meaning of grok, here’s what I wrote about it in November.

Grok the toy. Source: Curio.

The name change that wasn’t

Frankmobile. In May, Oscar Meyer announced it was changing the name of its hot-dog-shaped vehicle, known since 1936 as the Wienermobile. The name change — to Frankmobile — was a publicity stunt that lasted barely five months, which was long enough for a lot of people to completely lose their shit.

New auto name of the year

Revuelto. I remember ordering huevos revueltos on a trip to Mexico, when I was 19, and giggling about the word for “scrambled” sounding so much like “revolting.” Now Lamborghini has introduced a plug-in hybrid “supercar” it calls the Revuelto, and revulsion is hardly on the menu. As is Lamborghini tradition, the car is named after a famous fighting bull. But “Revuelto” here is also a reference to the car’s “mixed up” three electric motors. And there’s even a suggestion of “revolution.” (My all-time favorite Lambo model name, however, remains the Countach.)

The Lamgorghini Revuelto: Not revolting at all.

Cursed name of the year

OceanGate. Someone should have warned the founders of OceanGate, makers of deep-sea submersible vessels, that the -gate suffix is a bad omen. The company developed the Titan submersible that imploded en route to the wreckage of the Titanic, on June 18, 2023, killing all five of its passengers. A movie about the tragedy, Salvaged, is in the works.

The OceanGate Titan (RIP)

Local (wannabe) name of the year

Cerebral Valley. A bunch of AI developers have set up shop on a stretch of San Francisco’s Hayes Valley neighborhood, and some of them are intent on calling the area “Cerebral Valley,” in pointed reference to the more-famous Silicon Valley to the south. “For the record,” the San Francisco Standard commented in January, “we at The Standard think the techies missed a big opportunity in renaming it ‘HAIyes Valley’” Hayes Valley, by the way, takes its name from Hayes Street, which is named not after U.S. President Rutherford Hayes but after Thomas Hayes, a 19th-century county clerk who started the Market Street Railway.

1. For a completely different McDonald’s look, check out

Rusty Blazenhoff

’s latest newsletter, in which she reveals the unusual McBranding in the small town of Leavenworth, Washington. Plus lots of other cool stuff. Subscribe!