As a professional namer, Aaron Hall found himself thinking about the terms “climate change” and “global warming.” Are these scientific terms too neutral? Could the tools of branding and brand naming create a more resonant, powerful name to grab attention and inspire people to take action?

With all of this in mind, his team of wordsmiths developed the following new names for climate change: Global Meltdown, Global Melting, Climate Collapse, Climate Chaos, Boiling Point, Melting Point or Scorched Earth.

These options are subtle brand shifts from “global warming,” yet they deliver a more negative image. A meltdown is a disastrous event that draws from the ultimate terror of a nuclear meltdown, an apt metaphor for global destruction. In naming, we call metaphorical names “suggestive names,” and they are one of the most popular types of names.

Which do you like most?

A group of pro-independence advocates have claimed that Taiwan’s athletes would not be barred from international competition if a proposed name change for the island’s sporting teams went ahead, challenging a warning from the International Olympic Committee on the issue.

Voters will decide in a referendum this weekend on whether the island should compete as “Taiwan” rather than “Chinese Taipei” in all international sporting events, including the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

Taiwan has competed as Chinese Taipei since 1981, when Beijing – which sees the self-ruled island as a breakaway province to be reunited with the mainland – succeeded in making the IOC alter the island’s official “Republic of China” team name.

Since May 4, the IOC has warned the island three times that it risked losing its IOC membership and its athletes would not be allowed to attend international games if it pushed for the name change.

Have you ever had a Spaniard inform you that today is special because “es el día de mi santo” (which literally means “it’s my saint’s day”)? While this is a foreign concept to most of us who grew up in the US, Spain and many other European countries have a long tradition of observing the Christian calendar of saints.

In Spain, families tend to choose names for their children that come from the Bible or are otherwise connected with history. Thus, they have a special day dedicated to each of these names and this day is almost like a secondary birthday for everyone with this name. Historically, many Spaniards would name their child after the saint whose day the child was born on but today that tradition is not so popular and it more common to have a saint’s day that does not fall on your birthday.

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When you need some money to make it to your next paycheck, you can always call on Dave. If you need budgeting help, reach out to Brigit. And for a personal loan to get you out of credit card debt, try Marcus.

That’s not to presume the names and financial situations of the people in your life: Dave, Brigit, and Marcus are all money-related apps and services that have human first names. Personable products aimed at your wallet are a definite mini-trend. There’s also Frank (student loans), Alice (automated pre-tax spending), Clyde (insurance), Oscar (also insurance), and Albert (savings, investment, and overdraft protection).

What’s behind all these names? ANS Vice President Laurel Sutton spoke to journalist  Meredith Haggerty at Vox to provide some insight. Here’s a sample of the article:

Laurel Sutton, a senior strategist and linguist at the naming agency Catchword, agrees. “They’re trying to take [the brand] away from a faceless institution,” Sutton told Vox. “That kind of branding seems very much on point for millennials or post-millennials.”

…

While chatbot names are even more complicated — humanoid enough to be friendly, singular enough that you’re not constantly triggering your Samsung “John” device — they’ve primed consumers to expect the products they work with intimately, the ones they trust with sensitive information, to feel like a buddy.

One thing Sutton notes about these names is the gender breakdown, the smattering of what she calls, “everyman white guy names.” Not all of these financial brand names follow this rule, but they certainly seem more masculine than the chatbot space with its A and I endings. “The patriarchy will tell you that you want a guy to help you with your money and you want a woman to do stuff for you,” Sutton says.

Want to find out more? Head over to Vox to read the whole article!

After contentious debate, the Missouri city christened a street after the civil rights leader this year. Residents decided to revert it to Paseo Boulevard.

Voters decided to strip the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s name from a street in Kansas City, Mo., nine months after city leaders dedicated a major thoroughfare to the civil rights leader. The decision caps more than a year and a half of contentious debate over how to honor Dr. King. It once again makes Kansas City the rare major American city without a street named for him.

But those who wanted the street returned to its former name, Paseo Boulevard, heralded the result as a win for a black community that they say was ignored when the decision to change the name to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard was first made.

Renaming the Department of Global Communications was a reflection of a shift in the way in which the United Nations approaches communications, the departmental head told the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) after it approved three draft resolutions on decolonization issues before taking up questions relating to information.

Melissa Fleming, Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, told the Committee that the newly renamed entity — formerly the Department of Public Information — aims to make the public care about multilateralism through storytelling and by humanizing its work. She went on to say that coverage of the General Assembly’s recent high-level period demonstrated the Department’s strategic advance planning, which — alongside its more integrated multimedia production — helped to create multilingual content that was distributed in real time across multiple platforms.