At its first appearance in records by explorers, the Chicago area was inhabited by a number of Algonquian peoples, including the Mascouten and Miami. The name “Chicago” is derived from a French rendering of the Native American word shikaakwa, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum, from the Miami-Illinois language. The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as “Checagou” was by Robert de La Salle around 1679 in a memoir. Henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the wild garlic, called “chicagoua”, grew abundantly in the area. According to his diary of late September 1687: “when we arrived at the said place called Chicagou which, according to what we were able to learn of it, has taken this name because of the quantity of garlic which grows in the forests in this region.”

 

Swiss food and beverage giant Nestlé has been forced to rebrand its plant-based Incredible Burger as Sensational following a legal challenge from U.S. meat startup Impossible Foods.

The District Court in The Hague ruled that Nestlé had infringed on Impossible Foods’ trademarks and could confuse consumers and so must change the name of its Garden Gourmet Incredible Burger across the European Union. The Dutch court gave Nestlé four weeks to withdraw the old product name from retail shelves or face a daily fine of €25,000.

Nestlé’s Incredible Burger, made from soy and wheat protein, launched in April 2019 and is sold in 15 countries across Europe. In the U.S., Nestlé sells a meatless patty called “Awesome Burger,” which is largely made of yellow pea protein.

The recent global events of civil and political unrest that started in the US have brought to the fore the complex dynamics of urban memorialisation. The protests have, in some places, led to renewed scrutiny of certain urban symbols such as commemorative statues – what they represent and how they are perceived and interpreted.

Unlike monuments and statues, place names (toponyms) are intangible, and less imposing, but nevertheless, an indispensable part of the urban symbolic landscape. Their inscription, erasure and re-inscription is highly political.

In a study of toponymy in Nairobi, Kenya, Kosuke Matsubara and Melissa Wanjiru (University of Tsukuba, Japan) analysed how streets got their names. It’s important to examine this as street naming and renaming allows to remember and forget events and people in history. It also articulates what values exist in pursuit of political or national interests.

Eskimo Pie announced it will be changing its name and retiring its eponymous character by the end of the year. The decision came within days of Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben’s, Cream of Wheat, and Mrs. Butterworth’s announcing brand overhauls in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests and a broader racial reckoning across the United States.

 

Eskimo Pie, the chocolate-covered vanilla ice cream bar, was invented about a century ago under the name I-Scream Bar, but was renamed Eskimo Pie after founder Christian Kent Nelson partnered with chocolate maker Russell C. Stover. The brand’s character — a little boy with dark hair and a fur-lined parka, sometimes depicted riding a qamutiik-like sled in the past — and name were meant to evoke the chilly north and the indigenous people who lived there. The term “Eskimo” is widely considered to be a derogatory name for native peoples of the Arctic regions.

The New York Times reports on the movement to remove many types of slurs from Scrabble tournaments. Some players have objected, because many slurs are short words and therefore have a high point value:

Hasbro, which owns the rights to Scrabble in North America, said the Scrabble players association had “agreed to remove all slurs from their word list for Scrabble tournament play, which is managed solely by NASPA and available only to members.”

Julie Duffy, a spokeswoman for Hasbro, also said the company will amend Scrabble’s official rules “to make clear that slurs are not permissible in any form of the game.”

The game that Hasbro sells in retail stores has not included slurs in its dictionary since 1994. But the players association, one of the most prominent governing bodies in competitive Scrabble, had still allowed them. The agreement could also affect what words may be played in online versions of the game.

Interestingly, the author of the article, David Waldstein, manages to write about slurs without actually citing any of them; the closest is “n-word”, which appears in a direct quote. Quite a linguistic feat!

A PDF version of the article is available here.