Names of the year for 2024
A hippo, a hurler, a couple of hurricanes, and more.
Earlier this week I published my Words of the Year nominations, which — if you read it very carefully — included one upper-case nomination. I’m repeating it here and adding NOTY nominations in other categories.
First though, much respect to Laura Wattenberg of the Namerology blog, whose 2024 Name of the Year, Shaboozey, was a complete unknown to me. (I guess I need to listen to music radio now and then!) And what a wonderful choice it is: “a product of America and Africa, insiders and outsiders, art and commerce, pride and prejudice.” Moreover, writes Laura, “it blithely ignores all of those divisions, challenging the lines we’re so eager to draw around our identities and traditions.”
Large-mammal name of the year (and overall NOTY)
Moo Deng. The celebrated pygmy hippo was born on July 10 in a Thai zoo and quickly became an internet meme. Her name, chosen through a public poll, means “bouncy pork” in Thai. Her influence was felt in some odd quarters: “Moo Deng makeup” (“wet with lots of blush and gray eye shadow,” according to Glamour) and “Moo Deng skin” (with its “beautiful glow,” according to Jessica DeFino and I <3 Mess’s podcast) became beauty trends. She also correctly “predicted” the outcome of the U.S. presidential election.
Small-mammal name of the year
P’nut aka Peanut. Chances you didn’t have “Gray squirrel becomes right-wing meme” on your 2024 bingo card, but this was a peculiar year and Americans are, well, nuts. The synopsis, via New York Times, November 13: “P’Nut, a gray squirrel who also went by Peanut, was seized on Oct. 30 from his home in Pine City [New York], following complaints about wildlife being kept without the necessary permits. (A raccoon named Fred was also taken.) During the apprehension, officials said, the squirrel bit a wildlife biologist through two pairs of gloves, necessitating the testing, which can only be done post-mortem.” P’Nut was euthanized, thus becoming a martyr to thousands of Don’t-Tread-on-Me types, including Elon “First Buddy” Musk, who spent the weekend before the presidential election tweeting things like “Even if it is illegal to have a pet squirrel (which it shouldn’t be), why kill PNut instead of simply releasing him into the forest!? Why is the Democratic Party so cruel?” One lunatic-leaning tabloid was even more pro–Sciurus carolinensis.
Sporty name of the year
Shohei Ohtani. The Los Angeles Dodgers’ 6'4" pitcher/designated hitter became the first “50/50” player in major-league history, racking up 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in a single season. He hit three home runs in the Dodgers’ September 19 game against the Florida Marlins, which the Dodgers won, 20–4.1 Even I, a sports ignoramus, know that pitchers aren’t generally sluggers or base-stealers. Ohtani was also in the news this year for an unhappier reason: His Japanese-English interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, was indicted in March “after stealing from Ohtani to pay off millions of dollars in sports betting debts” (The Athletic). Mizuhara will be sentenced in January.
Junk food name of the year
McDonald’s introduced its butterscotch-flavored Grandma McFlurry frozen-dessert product on May 21 as a limited-time offering. According to the promotional copy, “The new McFlurry is sweet – just like grandma – and features a delicious syrup and chopped, crunchy candy pieces (like grandma's favorite treat that she hid in her purse!) - all blended in our creamy vanilla soft serve.” An understatement, perhaps: the GMcF packed 600 calories and 86 grams of sugar into a 12-ounce serving. But hey, the “vanilla soft serve” was “low fat.” The original McFlurry, which was Oreo-flavored, was invented by a Canadian franchisee and launched in 1995.
Political name of the year
Kamala. The first name of current U.S. vice president and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris means “lotus” in Sanskrit, inspiring “Lotus for POTUS” and “Yes We KAM” slogans. It was also deemed “hard to pronounce”; Harris’s opponent frequently mispronounced it just to be annoying. Her official campaign marketing avoided confusion by using “Harris.” From my July 26 newsletter: “Even though last-name-basis reads as formal, the familiarity of ‘Harris’ gives the candidate an approachable (and dare I say ‘Anglo’?) edge.”
Climate names of the year
Beryl and Milton. Unprecedentedly violent storms may be our climate-change future, but the names of the two most violent hurricanes of 2024 were plucked from the milder past. Beryl, the Category 5 hurricane that barreled down on the Caribbean, the Yucatán Peninsula, and the U.S. Gulf Coast in late June and early July, is a female name — borrowed from the gemstone — that reached its popularity peak in the U.S. in the early 1900s (see Namerology NameGrapher). Milton — literally “mill town” — the second-most-intense cyclone ever recorded over the Gulf of Mexico, formed on October 5 and wreaked extensive damage on Florida’s west coast and elsewhere.
AI names of the year
Harvey, BERT, Rufus, Claude, Piper. Lest you worry that artificial intelligence is a little too artificial, our AI overlords are bestowing friendly humanoid names on their automata. Harvey (official name Counsel AI Corp.) is an AI for lawyers named for the fictitious corporate lawyer Harvey Specter from the legal drama Suits as well for as an “amalgamation” of things2, according to the company’s CEO. BERT, a large language model from Google, is an acronym, or backronym, of Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers; it was preceded, naturally, by ELMo (Embeddings from Language MOdel). Amazon’s “expert shopping assistant,” Rufus, is named for the company’s first “office dog.” Claude, from Anthropic, was named for artificial-intelligence pioneer Claude Shannon. (See what Claude replied when it was asked about its name.)
And brace yourself for multiple Pipers: one in London (Piper HQ, “your personal AI Leadership Coach”), one in Madrid (Piper AI, “the go-to unintrusive partner for sales teams”), and one in San Francisco, whose ads I’ve been seeing around town. (The SF Piper is from Qualified.com; “she” is “the AI SDR [sales development representative] you’ve been waiting for.”) The Pipers’ name may have been inspired by “pipeline”; other famous Pipers include Piper Aircraft (named for founder William T. Piper), actor Piper Laurie (née Rosetta Jacobs), author Piper Kerman (Orange Is the New Black), a character in the TV series Charmed, and Pied Piper, a fictitious company in HBO’s Silicon Valley (2014–2019).
See my Pinterest board for more companies and products with human(oid) names.
Snafu name of the year
CrowdStrike. The American cybersecurity company lived up to its name in an unfortunate and ironic manner when, on July 19, “it issued a faulty update to its security software that caused global computer outages that disrupted air travel, banking, broadcasting, and other services” (Wikipedia). Yes, the crowds were struck, and Fortune 500 companies lost an estimated $5.4 billion. How did CrowdStrike atone? On July 24, the company “reportedly contacted affected channel partners with apology emails containing Uber Eats gift cards worth $10.”
Read my 2023 Names of the Year post:
Even I know that this is a very extreme score for baseball. As it happens, this particular game was the only sporting event of any description I saw any part of during the entire year — no Olympics for me — and I saw it only because I happened to be visiting my brother in Los Angeles and the TV was on.
That was super fun!
Last month I wrote on Namerology:
"There’s a *lot* of debates right now about what the master narrative of 2024 was, but one of them surely was “who gets to lay claim to America’s legacy?” Shaboozey featured heavily on Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter album, which raised this question in the cultural sphere at the year’s start; now that question is bookending the year, with Shaboozey himself at its center."
Thrilled to see not only that Laura went with my nomination of Shaboozey for NOTY, but also that she did such a beautiful and insightful write-up.