Link Banana

The internet’s a place where people often call themselves strange things. In the legal realm, however, a judge has to allow you to take such a name. Eugene Volokh documents some of the most interesting names, and the judge’s ruling:

1. 1069. No dice. The North Dakota Supreme Court (1976) and Minnesota Supreme Court (1979) both say: Names can’t be numbers.

2. III, to be pronounced “Three.” Nope, on the same grounds, said the California Court of Appeal in 1984 to Thomas Boyd Ritchie III. A concurring judge asserted that the problem was that III was a symbol, rather than just that it was a number. Such subtle distinctions are what law is all about.

China, forced by the Olympic to worry about the translations of restaurant’s food names, has mandated changes to some of the weirdest ones. Dishes being changed:

• Bean curd made by a pock-marked woman (to become “Mapo tofu”)
• Chicken without sexual life (to become “Steamed pullet”)
• Husband and wife’s lung slice (to become “Beef and ox tripe in chili sauce”)

(via kottke, who also highlights a Manhattan restaurant serving “sea urchin bukkake”)

This whole list from mental_floss surprised me:

1. Cellophane was originally trademarked by DuPont.
2. Crock-Pot is actually trademarked by Rival Industries, but crock pot and crockpot are used generically.
3. Dry Ice was trademarked by the Dry Ice Corporation of America in 1925.
4. Escalator was a trademark of the Otis Elevator company.
5. Heroin was trademarked by Friedrich Bayer & Co.
6. Kerosene has been around since 1852, when it was coined by Canadian Abraham Gesner.
7. Linoleum was invented by Frederick Walton who founded the Linoleum Manufacturing Company.
8. Touch-tone was used exclusively by AT&T.
9. Trampoline was originally trademarked by George Nissen.
10. Zipper, similarly, was trademarked by an individual - B.F. Goodrich.

I thought I posted this yesterday… alas, Slate’s Explainer tackles the question of whether it’s Myanmar or Burma that’s refusing to let outside relief workers into the country.

Some err on the side of letting the country itself decide, while others don’t. On the Burma/Myanmar question, both newspapers and countries are divided over whether to recognize the switcheroo. Burma’s military leaders changed the English-language version of the country’s name to Myanmar in 1989, based on the short version of the country’s name in Burmese, “Myanma Naingngandaw.” While the United Nations adopted the new name in June of that year, the United States continues to call the country Burma because the change was never ratified by a legislative body in the country.

Two interesting stories.

• It seems, based on a terribly unsure-of-itself discussion here, that there are fewer Smiths in America than there used to be.
• Popular baby names in Kenya? Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Raila Odinga, and especially Kofi Annan.

(via Mr. Sullivan and Passport, respectively)

As someone with an incredibly common name, this project looks really interesting. I am rather surprised that every “Grace Lee” she found seems to be Asian…

(via Metafilter)

The Economist’s Europe.view has some interesting things to say about the ongoing name dispute between the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Greece, which has a province of Macedonia.

Membership in the Atlantic alliance has proved a highly effective means of calming old rows (not least between Greece and Turkey). It is hard to argue that Greece will be more secure if it vetoes Macedonia’s NATO membership at the alliance’s summit in Bucharest between April 2nd and 4th, especially if Albania and Croatia gain membership.

America is promoting compromises (Independent Republic of Macedonia, New Republic of Macedonia, Democratic Republic of Macedonia and Constitutional Republic of Macedonia). Greece rejects these, and wants a different qualifier (Upper, Northern, Vardar or Skopje). Macedonia says it will accept an extra label, but not a geographical one.

EDIT (3/27/2008): UN Dispatch says that the UN has settled on the name “The Republic of Macedonia (Skopje)” for what was the FYROM.