While this is sort of "silly season" stuff for this list, I'll add
another item.
 
On Mon, 5 Sep 1994, Murph Sewall wrote:
 
> On Mon, 5 Sep 1994 16:56:00 EDT, Peter M. Weiss wrote:
> >It is my understanding (urban legend?) that large multinational
> >companies check their acroynms for their company and products
> >to make sure they don't mean something "nasty" in other languages.
>
> That's TRUE and not only because it might mean something nasty.  Remember
> the Cheverolet Nova (how's your Spanish?)  What a concept--naming a car the
> "Doesn't go!"
>
>
> Standard of NJ tried to become the "Humble Oil Company" in the late 60s
> (maybe early 70s).  Oxymoron that; people couldn't stop giggling.  It
> didn't take too long before they gave that idea up.
 
Humble Oil Co. was used for a long time.  I was familiar with it as
soon as I could read (late 50s).  Then they changed the names on the
gas stations to Enco (which I hated) in the very early 60s, but the
storage and processing facilities seemed to remain Humble.  They had
a mascot (like "the tiger") of a blue saluting figure, with the head
as a yellowish orange drop of oil.  You can still see traces of it
on older storage tanks.  This was in the southwest (Texas and near
neighbors, including, as I recall, Mexico).
 
> A computer was used to generate all possible 4 and 5 letter combinations
> starting with 'E' and containing at least one other vowel.  The final
> candidates were compared against all the world's languages to be sure they
> had NO other meaning (I recall reading that Standard of NJ had a heck of a
> time verifying no other meaning in African tribal languages, Indian
> sub-continent dialects, and Native American languages).  As you know Exxon
> was the result. FQDNs and their literal meaning (somewhere).
 
As I recall, it was the double "x" that was supposed to do the trick,
as they found no lanquage which had any word which had such spelling.
But they missed an obscure language or dialect (African as I recall).
It was not only unfortunate (like Nova) but down right nasty.
 
        Douglas Winship    Austin, Texas    [log in to unmask]
                    Secondary AUTOCAT Listowner