22 Comments
Sep 23Liked by Nancy Friedman

Perhaps they got interested in alliteration. In decreasing order of size, they offer these models: Pilot, Passport, Prologue.*

Some other name notes from Honda:

The minivan is the Odyssey, surely a description of traveling anywhere at all in the company of several children.

Their version of the testosterone truck (not a particularly excellent offering of same) is the Ridgeline, which describes approximately 0% of the terrain over or near which it will be driven.

The mini-est SUV is (was?) the RAV4, which always sounded vaguely berserkr but is in fact a tame little suburban vehicle.

And their more obviously sensible models are the Civic and Accord.

* How quaint that they didn't spell it Prolog, haha.

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Sep 23Liked by Nancy Friedman

It never occurred to me how civilized Civic and Accord sound. I guess the current moment is better defined by discord and urban warfare.

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author

Haha indeed.

Good points, although the RAV4 is a Toyota, not a Honda.

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Sep 23Liked by Nancy Friedman

Oh, that's why I didn't see it. I was struck by the name because I was recently at an Ur-suburban dinner party where two (2) people were gushing about their new RAV4 hybrids.

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So you don’t think they break down the sounds and meanings into chunks for an overall associations. Eg: “pro” = yes, affirming, up + “log” = record, document, substance. Assiciation: Optimistic groundedness.

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It's possible!

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Sep 23Liked by Nancy Friedman

Would you buy a Honda Prologue before or after your Toyota Previa? (I always saw that one as Latin for "ex-wife.")

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Sep 23·edited Sep 23Liked by Nancy Friedman

Why, I wouldn't have one of them Hondas if you give it to me. I drive a manly Subaru Forester.

By the way, a friend of mine who went to Hong Kong told me the name "Black Giant" didn't refer to the car at all. Each vehicle came with a huge dildo in the glove compartment.

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Hahaha

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Sep 23Liked by Nancy Friedman

The Audi Avant is an extremely high-end station wagon (2024 model started at $126K).

My very unscientific impression is that carmakers choose names by the sound almost above all. By that standard, we should eventually see the Ves-TIGE, pronounced that way.

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Ah, the Avant — an echo of the Studebaker Avanti. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studebaker_Avanti

I insist on calling it the Cadillac Esca-LAHD.

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Sep 23Liked by Nancy Friedman

"That's"?? Oof. But if they wanted people to exclaim, "That's it!," they should have called the car "It." Then it would be "The 'It' Car," which might have been fun (assuming it was the 1970s). Sort of like the car called "The Thing."

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author

The VW Thing! Originally a West German army thing.

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Sep 23Liked by Nancy Friedman

Just West German? I thought it was inspired by the Kübelwagen — ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_K%C3%BCbelwagen

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Sep 23Liked by Nancy Friedman

Ha! I like "tub-car"--thanks for the link!

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Sep 23Liked by Nancy Friedman

This is so funny! Especially as I'm thinking about the prologue to my next book. Perhaps everyone who gets into that car will soon die tragically but in time will have a hit that comes to define the turning point of our nation. I love the anecdote about Toyota "amicably" "giving" Honda the name. As if. And no wonder! Who'd want it!

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Speaking of discord (but not cars), maybe someone can explain why Discord was chosen as the name of an app that's meant to facilitate conversation.

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Sep 29Liked by Nancy Friedman

Ha! That's interesting. No idea but it looks like it's for gamers? so maybe that explains it. I have a friend from high school with a consulting group that fosters conversation/understanding (in a large-scale way for municipalities and governmental entities and the like) called Civity. https://www.civity.org

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Originally for gamers but now widespread. Various NPR programs have their own Discord channels. Podcasts too. https://blog.simplecast.com/how-podcast-creators-are-using-discord

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So why is Slack used at work - is it for slackers? I don't know when all these apps were introduced but maybe we're all participating in Trump's big lie, things are the opposite of what they seem campaign? (Forgive me if I've gotten the name wrong, getting over a migraine.)

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Slack is (supposedly) an acronym for "Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge." ImTge company hadn't revealed that story when I wrote this post in 2015: https://nancyfriedman.typepad.com/away_with_words/2015/05/name-in-the-news-slack.html

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What a fun entry!

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