MILF (was Re: change from the bottom up)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 4/26/07, Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> wrote:
>
> On Apr 26, 2007, at 9:15 AM, John Baker wrote:
>
> > Any connection with the band Milf, which seems to have
> > flourished in the 1993 - 1995 period?
>
> i'd guess the band name was chosen on the basis of the expression,
> but i don't know anything about the band.

I managed to track down a former member of the band and he emailed
back with some background. He gave me permission to quote his email,
though he chooses to remain anonymous.

-----[begin email]-----

My recollection is that we adopted the name for the band in January
1991. We heard the acronym/word from a friend who was a lifeguard in
the Buffalo area, specifially Fort Niagara State Park (one of my
ex-bandmates, also a lifeguard, yesterday confirmed that it was "a
lifeguard term"). I would not say it was common at that time -- in
fact, it being the first time we'd ever heard it is probably what led
us to choose it as a band name. We probably intended it as a temporary
name. However, as we started to play shows and release music, the name
ended up sticking. The first "national" press mention of the band name
would have been in 1993/1994, when reviews our our music began to show
up in music magazines, such as Alternative Press, Option, and so on.
The band was also probably mentioned in the Buffalo News (Buffalo's
daily newspaper) and other regional publications as early as 1992. The
band ended in the fall of 1995.

Our promotional materials and logo used the word as all lowercase, no periods.

-----[end email]-----

I found a concert ad for the band in The Ithacan (student paper of
Ithaca College) from Sep. 17, 1992, and the name does indeed appear in
all lowercase.

http://dpr.oclc.org/Repository/ITH/1992/09/17/004-ITH-1992-09-17-001-SINGLE.PDF#OLV0_Entity_0023_0002


--Ben Zimmer

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