Don’t You Dare Call It an iPod

All right, so I’m going to expound a little bit on a term I used in my previous post: proprietary eponym. Why? Because it’s awesome.

In the last post, I pompously challenged recommended that those unfamiliar with the term and its application have a look-see on Wikipedia to find out exactly what it meant. I will briefly expound on it now, just so we’ve got all of the bases covered.

The term proprietary eponym is defined by Wikipedia thusly:

“A brand name or trademark of a successful product, that has come into general use to refer to the generic class of objects rather than the specific brand type.”

If the light bulb still hasn’t come on, refer to these examples:

• Kleenex
• Band-Aid
• Zipper
• Q-Tip
• iPod

“Why, yes,” you might say. “You’ve just named several common household objects. Give yourself a pat on the back.” I might then respond, “Why, thank you,” and then proceed to give myself a pat on the back. Or, I could inform you that whenever you use any of the words listed above to refer to the (respective) common household objects typically associated with them, you’re using a proprietary eponym. Ha. Allow me to translate:

• Facial tissue
• Adhesive bandage
• Zip fastener
• Cotton swab
• MP3 player

“But, a kleenex is a kleenex, a zipper a zipper. A rose, by any other name, is still a rose,” you might protest. Well, you’d be right about the rose, but as for the rest, they were all originally brand names for the products they’re associated with. Kleenex is a brand of facial tissue, iPod is a brand of MP3 player, Toyota is a brand of car. You don’t refer to all cars as Toyotas, do you? But when informing a friend that their jeans are hanging wide open, you’ll probably never say, “Your zip fastener is open,” either.

So if a zipper is not really a zipper, then why do we call it that? It could be because the company that developed and named the product had a monopoly on that particular market, and because no other brands were producing said product at the time, consumers just naturally began calling it by the brand name alone for convenience. The Zipper zip fastener became, simply, the zipper. The Dempster garbage receptacle became the dumpster (which was both clever wordplay and a proprietary eponym).

Or, even if there are multiple brand names associated with a given product, one particular brand may stand out, either through popularity, or simply because it’s better than all the rest. Then again, it may be something no more complicated than an influential person deciding one day to begin referring to their state-of-the-art home security system as their “Brink’s” for a proprietary eponym to be born. It’s a phenomenon that can often take decades and a loss of trademark rights to occur (see: genericized trademark), or it may occur within a few years (e.g., the iPod).

It’s really enough to drive one mad, if you think about it long enough. Is a lamp really a lamp, a magazine really a magazine? When you refer to things like granola or a frisbee, everyone knows exactly what you mean, because we’ve reached an understanding (at some point in time) that that’s how we will refer to said object. But was that always the case? Next time you’ve managed to chase down the ice cream truck and are asking for a popsicle between gasps, take the opportunity to inform the pedophile driver that you’ve just used a proprietary eponym. Not only will you astound the driver with your acute intelligence, you’ll be introducing yourself to a healthier, more frozen-dairy-products-free lifestyle because the ice cream truck will probably never come down your street again.