Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2013 December 15

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December 15

Ford, DuPont, Apple, Microsoft, PayPal, Amazon, Facebook.....

Earlier companies are generally called after their founder's names.

More recent companies are much more likely named differently.

I wonder if anyone has discussed this issue. -- Toytoy (talk) 00:19, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

I wonder too, because I'd like to know if your claim is true. The oldest company I can think of, the East India Company, probably wasn't named after Mr East India. HiLo48 (talk) 01:01, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Here I'd thought you were trying to be ironic. Nyttend (talk) 02:20, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Generally named after founders... such as General Electric, General Motors, General Dynamics, General Foods, General Mills... Names of companies and brand names are always about marketing strategy. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:08, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Probably more relevant than date-of-creation is the earliest form of the company. Companies founded by a person or a family have often carried that name, e.g. Kroger and Wal-Mart in retailing, or Carnegie Steel in heavy industry. When you start out as a corporation with multiple shareholders, it can be inconvenient to go with everyone's names; J&L Steel started out as the American Iron Company and changed its name only after Mr Laughlin bought out Mr Jones' original partner, by which time the company was already prominent. You also need to consider the company's business model: when you're doing business online or remotely, like Apple, Microsoft, PayPal, Amazon, and Facebook, your own name won't help and might be confusing (hearing it for the first time, you'd understand "Facebook" better than you would "Zuckerberg"), but when you're doing business face-to-face or otherwise much closer to the customer, it doesn't matter as much: you go to Mr Ford and pay him to build you a car, or a factory owner uses his company's library to learn that Mr DuPont is the guy who owns that chemical company and thus the guy he'll need to contact on that chemical purchase. Nyttend (talk) 01:31, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

I think you've nailed it pretty well. The name of a given company is going to be whatever its owners think is the right name at any given time. I was just reading about John D. Rockefeller, which is quite enlightening in many ways. One aspect was the company name - his name and his partners' names were on various early versions of their companies, but when they began to expand both his operation and his ambitions and goals, he changed the name to Standard Oil - a self-defining name if there ever was one, as it spoke to those ambitions. Both Wal-Mart and Sam's Club retain their founder's name. Other department stores do too. Sears, Macy's, etc. are obvious. K-Mart was originally under the name some guy named Kresge. Most if not all car companies started out as the names of their founders. It just happens that Ford was never acquired by someone. General Motors was a combination of several companies that were named for their founders, but the individual product lines retained their founders' names. Likewise with Chrysler, except there actually was a guy named Chrysler. And so on. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:51, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Whether you use your own name is probably dependent on the uniqueness of the name, too. If your company goes by "Gates", people are more likely to imagine that you're a construction company, not a company selling a disk operating system. A less-common name, like Kroger, may work like a made-up name such as Kodak: people might never have heard of Barney Kroger, but once they're familiar with his company, it has instant brand recognition — "Kroger" instantly means a grocery store to them, but "Gates" may mean plenty of things unrelated to software. Consider also the issue of using first names versus last names. How many businesses go by someone's first name? Most of them are small restaurants whose owners serve local clientele, many of whom know the guy whose name it is; and even when you see a big firm with a first name, it can be a small restaurant that became big, e.g. Wendy's. Nyttend (talk) 02:20, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Ray Kroc kept the name "McDonald's" as the name of his franchise after he acquired it from the McDonald brothers; as he said, "What are you going to do with a name like Kroc?" Dave Thomas, who got his start by helping save the fledgling KFC corporation, incorporated an altered version of his daughter's name to give an identity to his new burger company. Burger King, meanwhile, has no particular identity, but it seems to have done OK. As noted below, companies always have some kind of strategy in their naming. It's just a bit more obvious sometimes. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:54, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

• "Verizon" paid a good deal of money to have consultants create that portmanteau from veritas/horizon. (The significance of using the red, white and black of the Third Reich instead of the pacific blue and green of Bell Atlantic is less clear.) The use of v and z was supposed to be futuristic. This was discussed quite a lot in the press, as was the fact that the word as the company would have you pronounce it violates normal pronunciation rules. See http://verizon.com/about/name.html and for criticism and some background facts http://www.identityworks.com/reviews/2000/verizon.htm. See also rebranding, which mentions the firm that created "verizon". μηδείς (talk) 02:11, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Place names play a fairly common part in company names. The world's largest mining company, BHP Billiton, still retains an abbreviated form of the name of the place where it all began. British Petroleum has obvious geographic roots. British Airways is a bit of a give-away. I believe Kodak was chosen as a name that would be pronounced fairly similarly in most languages. Shell really was originally a company selling sea-shells. HiLo48 (talk) 02:26, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

See "List of company name etymologies".

—Wavelength (talk) 02:39, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Is there a list of wikipedia editor user names? μηδείς (talk) 18:33, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Special:ListUsers. Deor (talk) 19:11, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

I am sorry, I meant giving their (self-reported) etymologies, in response to Wavelength's post. Most people seem to think my name means Mad Black Woman. μηδείς (talk) 20:12, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

I googled [Medeis] and the first thing that came up was your user page with some sort of rebuke on it. That kind of thing is why I use the "NOINDEX" feature. It would be interesting if users put an explanation for their user ID's when they're not their actual names and are not necessarily obvious. Jack of Oz would be someone named Jack who lives in Australia. HiLo48 is also an Aussie, but the username is not at all obvious (not to me, anyway). And while "Medeis" sounds the name of a character from Greek mythology, it appears not to be. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:12, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm me! Hope that helps. Itsmejudith (talk) 14:58, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

It's an alternative form to the name Odysseus gives to Polyphemus in the Odyssey, so it could be considered to have a tenuous quasi-mythological connection. The feminine singular form would technically be μηδεμια. Mine is obviously "Anonymous" modified towards "Moose", with the additional constraint that my ISP only allowed usernames 8 letters long... AnonMoos (talk) 01:27, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Can someone either link to or give the noindex markup? Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 01:33, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Do a quick "edit" on my user page and you'll see it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:08, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Great, thanks. μηδείς (talk) 02:14, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

My user name is the names of the two cats I had when I joined WP. --TammyMoet (talk) 14:58, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

I've never been entirely satisfied with my username, and have developed a handy list of alternative names should I ever decide to become someone else. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:56, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Most of those are good. I would avoid Enoch because it could lead to a infinite loop: "Knock-Knock." "Who's there?" "Enoch." "Who?" etc. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:15, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Explaining mine leads very quickly to having to deny the blood libel, so it's left as a (fairly easy) exercise for the reader. Tevildo (talk) 19:11, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Ownerless land under common law

Imagine that a declining nonprofit organisation owns a piece of unused land but its members forget about it. Eventually the members decide to dissolve the organisation, and they donate specific possessions to various entities but never mention the forgotten piece of land. Under traditional English-and-Welsh common law, what would happen to the still-unused land? I can imagine someone gaining title through adverse possession, but not to unused land; is this a likely candidate for escheatment? The situation arises from the post-demise history of the American Colonization Society, which apparently forgot about an empty lot in Liberia after they dissolved and gave their documents to a US institution. I'm asking about English-and-Welsh law because it's the most recent kind of law that's probably applicable and yet well known: I don't expect any of you to know about Liberian property law, which presumably was founded on a combination of US states' property laws (but which ones is probably unknown to anyone except specialists in Liberian history), which were generally founded on English-and-Welsh property law. Nyttend (talk) 01:02, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

You seem to have answered your own question with adverse possession and escheatment. The question of land that's unclaimed by any private or public entity is technically moot, since there is no claim. (The moment anyone notices that will likely change.) The usual caveat that local law will apply applies. Is there some specific jurisdiction you are looking for? Or a third option beyond squatters and seizure? μηδείς (talk) 02:51, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

But I'm asking whether escheatment would be likely, since land possession is only mentioned in the escheatment article in a feudal context, wherein the previous tenant lost it by misbehaving: the article addresses escheatment of forgotten personal property but doesn't mention whether the same process could be applied to real property. My question addresses two jurisdictions (England-and-Wales centuries ago, as a remote way of understanding recent Liberia), and I was also curious if a third option might arise. I'm guessing that the Liberian situation got resolved by seizure for unpaid property taxes (see the article section that I mention), but that presumably wouldn't have been possible before 1910 in England and Wales. Nyttend (talk) 03:03, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Adverse possession is the most on point concept towards your central point. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who knew about English or American law on this board, let alone some despotic nation that's had four versions of government recently (i'm sure that wont' stop some of our more loquacious contributors from making guesses though). Shadowjams (talk) 08:40, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Under actual English law in England, such property devolves to the Crown as bona vacantia. I don't know what the position is in Liberia. Tevildo (talk) 10:17, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the input, Tevildo; good thing that we had someone who knew about English law on this board, especially since Liberia's a non-despotic nation with three forms of government in 1-2/3 centuries. Nyttend (talk) 19:43, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Non-despotic is debatable. It's non-monarchical. Let's just leave it at that. --Jayron32 22:12, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Dangerous Goods Emergency Kit on aircraft

I just flew in the back row of a Turkish Airlines 737 and noticed the last overhead bin said "crew use only" and that it said it contained a "Dangerous Goods Emergency Kit" (or very similar wording - I should have taken a photo). I think I have a basic understanding of things that should not be loaded on a plane (acids, explosives, and so on) but I wonder a) what do they think they have to worry about in the cabin and b) what might the kit contain? Hayttom 17:01, 15 December 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hayttom (talk • contribs)

One potential danger is portable oxygen tanks, since, if they leak, they can pose a fire hazard, because things become far more flammable in 100% oxygen. Recently portable oxygen generators have eliminated the need for oxygen tanks, which allows people with reduced lung function to travel more safely. StuRat (talk) 17:05, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

This is such a kit, as sold in Australia - other kits tailored to specific national requirements are probably available. They contain things such as safety glasses, safety gloves, face masks, etc. The main risk in the passenger cabin of an aircraft will be lithium-ion laptop batteries and suchlike. Tevildo (talk) 17:13, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

It also contains stuff to deal with spillages or leaking packages, some instructions for use at [1] MilborneOne (talk) 17:16, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

wunderbar Hayttom 18:59, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Resolved