Brionglóid Media Blog

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.
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