Eat My Words - The Kitchen Sink

Raw Modesy, Unharmed Donkeys, Con Men, and other strange naming firm anagrams

One of our favorite websites for wordplay is the Internet Anagram Server. Give it a whirl and see what your name spells when you jumble the letters. (For instance, "Alexandra Watkins" = "An Award In Sex Talk" and "Drink A Sealant Wax.")  We ran the name "Eat My Words" through and here's what we found... Eat My Words =
Meaty Words
Sweaty Dorm
Raw Modesty
Two’s Dreamy
Draw My Toes
Steady Worm
Tawdry Some
Wet Army Sod
Do Sew My Rat
Rowdy Meats
Wordy Teams
Steamy Word
Drowsy Meat
To Wry Dames
Eat My Sword
Store My Wad

Of course we can't just embarrass ourselves. Here are some anagrams of some of our favorite naming firms:
The Naming Company = Nymphomaniac Gent
A Hundred Monkeys = Unharmed Donkeys
Igor International = Rotate Nail In Groin
Landor = No Lard
Catchword Branding = Drab Chanting Crowd
Metaphor = To Hamper
Master McNeil Inc = Immanent Circles
Mnemonic = I’m Con Men
Interbrand = Drab Intern

Photo of unharmed donkeys by Alexandra from her trip to Tanzania in 2004.

Oriental Mildew - a taste of Zimbabwe

If you have ever sucked down a mouthful of African river water like I did in Zimbabwe, where I nearly drowned in the Zambezi and ended up in Zambia, you will be delighted to know that that delicious taste has now been replicated (or at least it sounds like it has) in a new Zimbabwe juice brand, ORIENTAL MILDEW. The product has already flooded most of the retail outlets in Harare where it is high demand. (Okay. And Mugabe won the last election.) I can't track down a photograph of  the Oriental Mildew bottle, but the taste sounds so hideous that surely dictator Mugabe's mug graces the packaging. I know all of this sounds adventurous and exciting, but by all means, do not go to Zimbabwe, which from what I've seen is the most corrupt country on the planet. If you must see Victoria Falls on your way to the Okavango Delta, do it from the kinder, gentler Zambian side. And if you just want to live vicariously through me, here are photos of the mighty Vic Falls, the churning Zambezi below and what it looks like when your raft flips over on top of you in a class 4 rapid. 

This is no understatement

Nothing like a good cheeky descriptive name.  We just became aware of a German männerwäsche store called, um...Balls.  In case you were unclear of their point, there are some new print ads starring a couple of manly men, packaged as it were, to highlight the store's specialty.    Subtle they are not.  Unfortunately, their website is in German, but you get the gist of  what they are doing in a less than perfect Babelfish translation:

"In addition a badly sitting underwear can all day long a bad. Everyone knows these notch clamp down trousers, which one all day long reminded of it to buy next time better laundry".  We don't know about you but we hate it when badly sitting underwear can all day long a bad. 

Of course, this got us to thinking about männerwäsche product names that are hanging out there in the world. 

Here are some of our favorites: Thunderpants, Ballbra, Fig Leaves, Giggleberries, Below The Belt, Brass Monkeys, Freshpair and  Budgy Smuggler - an Australian slang term used to describe  snug-hugging man pants, which, when viewed from the front, looks as though the man in question may be trying to hide a domestic budgerigar (a small parrot) in said man pants.

Point is, underwear is inherently funny, so why have a serious name for either the store or the product?  Some people probably thought they were nuts, but credit goes to Balls for having the Cojónes to bag a great name.  We'll leave you with a little innovative guerrilla marketing program they erected all over Berlin.

Lolita Bed for sexually active pre-teens!

LONDON (Reuters) - A chain of retail stores in Britain has withdrawn the sale of beds named Lolita and designed for six-year-old girls after furious parents pointed out that the name was synonymous with sexually active pre-teens.
    Woolworths said staff who administer the web site selling the beds were not aware of the connection.
    In "Lolita," a 1955 novel by Vladimir Nabokov, the narrator becomes sexually involved with his 12-year-old stepdaughter -- but Woolworths staff had not heard of the classic novel or two subsequent films based on it.
    Hence they saw nothing wrong with advertising the Lolita Midsleeper Combi, a whitewashed wooden bed with pull-out desk and cupboard intended for girls aged about six until a concerned mother raised the alarm on a parenting website.
    "What seems to have happened is the staff who run the website had never heard of Lolita, and to be honest no one else here had either," a spokesman told British newspapers.
    "We had to look it up on (online encyclopedia) Wikipedia. But we certainly know who she is now." Woolworths said the product had now been dropped. "Now this has been brought to our attention, the product has been removed from sale with immediate effect," the chain said.
    "We will be talking to the supplier with regard to how the branding came about."
NOTE: Eat My Words did not name the Lolita bed, although we think Lolita would make a great name for a line of junior prom dresses.

Ghana: Heaven for Namers

Before I went to Ghana, I had read that I could expect to see the country's passion for Jesus reflected in the names of their businesses, but I didn't expect 75% of shop names to have some kind of religious reference. Some of the more unusual names included included Blood of Christ Restaurant, Holy Canteen, and Jesus Loves Fashion. Unfortunately, while Ghanaians love the Lord, they hate cameras, so I didn't get photos of most of the signs I saw as we whizzed by. Here are some snaps of some of my faves...  there's more in the official album.

 

 

 

 

The secret to pearly whites

We think Pray would make a great name for a home pregnancy test, but in Ghana, it's a brand of toothpaste. I picked up a tube and have it at the office if you want to come by and see that it is indeed for real. Ghanaian's do have incredibly white teeth, but their secret is they use tree bark. (Can't you see it now.... NEW Crest Whitening Bark.)  I have seen some pretty strange toothpaste names in my world travels. Here are some other faves.... (I picked up Darkie in Thailand around 20 years ago, but they changed it to Darlie a few years back.

Where's a McDonald's when you need one?

Some of the more interesting food names in Ghana...

A name that's generating a lot of buzz...

                        Eat My Words loves to name consumer electronics but unfortunately we can't take credit for naming OhMiBod or any of their buzz-worthy "Acsexcesories."

"Simply plug OhMiBod into your iPod® or any music player and it automatically vibrates to the rhythm and intensity of the music. Let your body feel the vibrations as you get down with your favorite tunes."

Talk about a name that makes people smile.... even the $69 price fits the brand.

TIP: Even though the "i" in Mi is cute and a wink at iPod, Eat My Words would have spelled  "OhMi Bod with a "y" instead because any time you spell a name differently than it sounds, it's a huge strike against you, especially when people "hear" your name then type it into their web browser. OhMyBod.com is a clothing store. Oops. (At least it's not porn.) We would have suggested that the client call the company OhMyBod (spelled correctly) and simply used a domain like OhMyBodOnline or OhMyBodGirl, which is perfectly acceptable in this case.

 

This evocative name takes the cake...

Recently, my friend John was suffering in 102º heat and sighed, "I dream of air-conditioning." That reminded me of the most wonderful cake shop name ever, I Dream of Cake, which is on trendy Grant Street in SF's North Beach. (I have admired founder Shimnin Li's creations forever and recently got to taste one at a swanky FWE&E event honoring Google maverick Marissa Mayer, who incidentally is an investor in IDOC.) I wrote to Shinmin and asked her about the origin of the name. She said... "I came up with our company name while sitting in a cafe with a friend. We sat over coffee and jotted down any names that came to mind describing cake and art.
I think I Dream of Cake was actually my friend's joke suggestion. But when I heard it the name it immediately stuck with me. It not only conveys the message that I can create anyone's dream cake, but suggests that I, the baker, dreams of cake too. I often will go to bed with a technical or structural cake problem and come up with the solution in my dreams. I also like that the name encourages imagination and creativity. And, this is my dream job." Wow, talk about a name with layers! Eat my words, indeed!  Check out her photo gallery of breathtaking cakes, which include replicas of handbags, shoes, and teapots.

 

Best Laundromat Names

Writing about the dog wash Laundromutt (below) reminded me of SF's hippest laundromat/cafe, Brainwash. It has sleek machines, live music, and you can score crack right outside. I love the wildly colorful chairs, which are so cool, most of them have been stolen. (BTW, the chair artist, Melisssa Hutton, has a piece in the Eat My Words wall-to-wall art collection. My favorite laundromat name is Sit 'n Spin, which was in Seattle's hip Belltown neighborhood. They carried the concept through with shelves of campy board games and plenty of living room furniture for lounging around while your clothes dried. (I just read that they closed two years ago. And now a laundromat in The Castro is using the same name. What's up with that?)