Eponyms, genericiced brand names and capitalisation grammar rules
This is something that crops up whenever I’m doing some work for hotels, leisure centres, gyms and so on – anyplace, really, that’s open to the public and has a whirlpool facility.
Whirlpool, do you mean like a jacuzzi? Why yes, indeed I do. Or is it Jacuzzi, which is what the spellcheckers says it is but that doesn’t look quite right, somehow.
See here’s the thing – and I didn’t know this actually – Jacuzzi is actually a brand name which has come to mean more than the brand itself. It is an example of an eponym.
The Wacky World of Brand Names
In Ireland and the UK kids eat jelly and ice cream, but in North America jelly means jam and they call it and jello, which should actually be written Jell-O. Sometimes brands enter the public lexicon as words to describe the product itself. Ireland’s most famous example of this is Tayto crisps. (Best explained here [slyt nsfw] by Irish comedian Dara O’Briain.)
When we went to the shop after school we’d always ask for “a bottle of coke and a packet of Taytos”, even if it was the really fizzy cheap stuff for 30p and the shop had another brand of crisps. I guess we could have been more accurate, but asking for crisps and a fructose-based soft drink would result in getting a lot of funny looks.
The humble office is, in reality, a treacherous minefield of these genericised words; you might find yourself looking for some Sellotape, or some Tippex or a pack of Post-it notes and a Biro to copy someone’s name off the Rolodex.
These, by rights, should all take capital letters, whereas if you wanted to delete some spam emails that’s fine, unless they’re from someone trying to get you to buy canned ham over the internet, in which case it would be a Spam email. (More on why in a moment.)
If you’re in an office State-side you might need to get something Xeroxed, then again you might need to Photoshop something or do some quick even Googling. Across the Atlantic, meanwhile, the work day’s already nearly over and the cleaners are coming in to do the Hoovering and wipe down the Formica in the canteen.
It’s enough to make your brain implode.
This is the result of the collision between the rules of the English language and the finicky, wacky world of international trademark law. English grammar rules state that when a word references a person directly, e.g. Draconian laws, Machiavellian politics or Herculean tasks, the name and name only is capitalised.
Trademark law, meanwhile, states that when a brand name is used, the brand name must always be capitalised. …So far so good…
Perhaps if the Earl of Sandwich had the foresight to copyright his invention every deli counter on the planet would have to write sandwich with a capital S on their menu for fear of being sued by the Sandwich estate. The word sandwich only gets a capital S when discussing the title of Earl of Sandwich or the district from which the title derives. This seems contrary to the Draconian/Machiavellian rule, which only serves to make things even more confusing.
For this reason most publications have specific rules dealing with these and take them very seriously.
The Times (UK) style guide states that existing brands such as Formica, Hoover, Jacuzzi and Jeep, amongst others, all receive capital letters because:
There is a risk of legal action for failure to do so.
For businesses, therefore, its advisable to avoid using genericised brand names as much as possible, even if four-wheel drive vehicle and whirlpool spa are far more of a mouthful than Jacuzzi or Jeep. If you feel you must use those words, however, then always use the capital letter, just to be on the safe side.
The golden rule, of course, is that, when in doubt, always seek legal advice.
In the example of spam emails, the word spam takes a small S because it is not directly referencing the Spam brand of tinned ham. (Though oddly enough email spam gets its name from a Monty Python sketch which references the brand over 100 times.)
Another example is coke. By rights both Coke and Cola should receive capital C’s, however cola, like sandwich, has also come to be a widely accepted generic term to describe a specific type of food. In this case a soft drink, and the term is now used differentiate it from, say, lemonade, rather than directly referencing the actual Coca-Cola brand.
Whilst Coca-Cola did not trademark the word cola, which is why you also see other products using the name in their brand such as Pepsi Cola or RC Cola, they did trademark the word Coke. So you would write:
“Tony was thirsty so he bought himself a can of Coke” – but only when referencing the brand.
The word coke itself has other uses. One could just as easily be referring to a by-product of coal, used for smelting, in which case it takes a small C. It has come to be used in the vernacular as short form for cocaine.
So, unless Tony is hooked on fizzy drinks, you would write, “Tony was addicted to coke.”
Heroin and Aspirin.
Ironically enough, cocaine was, once upon a time, a generic pharmaceutical name used in various tonics and potions and, rather famously, in Coca Cola itself. It is from the now-banned ingredient of coca leaves from which the brand derives its name.
Heroin, too, was once a legitimate and regularly available pharmaceutical, though in this case it was, believe it or not, an actual brand, rather than a generic name, and so would have originally taken a capital H.
Once its long-term health risks were discovered it was banned and became a generic word for the now-illegal substance.
By that time, Bayer, the company who manufactured it, no longer maintained the brand for a couple of obvious reasons, and so they let it expire, so now heroin now takes a small H.
The reason for this is because copyright law states that if a brand name expires, such as with heroin, the name no longer has to be capitalised. A more benevolent example is aspirin. In many countries, such as the US, Bayer’s trademark is no longer applicable so you can write it with a small a, like any other genericised product. But if you cross the border, into either Canada or Mexico, Bayer’s trademark is still in effect in which case you have to write it with a capital A.
In other words, Asprin would give itself a headache.
And as if all of this wasn’t confusing enough, any pharmaceutical drug that is put on the market today is given two names; the trade name and the brand name. Therefore fluoxetin and sildenafil citrate don’t require capitals but their brand names, Prozac and Viagra, do. This is of particular importance for anyone involved in medical writing.
Transcription firms, for example, will always have specific guidelines for medical transcribers regarding the proper use of capitalisation and the difference between trade and brand names. These are people who transcribe, amongst other things, from recordings of doctors during operations, describing the symptoms and procedures into a Dictaphone. (That’s another one by the way.) If the doctor mentions a specific drug the transcribers will often have to go online to research whether the doctor is referencing a trade name or the brand.
As for diseases and other eponymous illnesses these follow the same Draconian/Machiavellian rule. Examples include Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. These denote and directly reference a person, so they get an apostrophe before the S and the first letter. The word that denotes the actual name is always capitalised whilst the following word, such as disease or syndrome, is not.
Another example of the Draconian rule, and it’s a strange one, is diesel.
If you want to fill your car with diesel that’s not a problem, because you’re talking about a type of fuel, but if you describe the engine itself you have to say the Diesel engine – yes apparently so, the English language is nuts!
That’s because the engine was invented by a man called Rudolf Diesel.
As a German, however, Rudolf Diesel wouldn’t have had to worry about the mind-melting effects of eponymic grammar rules because in German all nouns are capitalised. That’s not to say that German doesn’t have some demented grammar rules of its own, it has plenty – and if you don’t believe me just ask Mark Twain.
Tags: brand names, capitalisation, capitalization, copyright, English, Eponyms, generic, genericiced, grammar, patents, trademarks, writing