Weather.com Storm Names (Was RE: OT: Saturday 11:30 AM - 26 inches)

[Baker, John]

        The storm names in several instances appear to be playing on associations of public domain names with others' intellectual property.  In addition to Gandolf and Nemo, consider the following:

Draco: The first legislator of Athens in Ancient Greece.  But better known to modern Americans as the first name of Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter books.

Khan: Mongolian conqueror and emperor of the Mongol empire.  Better known in some quarters as a Star Trek character.

Rocky: A single mountain in the Rockies.  But, to many people, more suggestive of Rocky Balboa.

        And I believe that there are other examples; this is by no means a complete list.


John Baker



-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Ben Zimmer
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2013 10:47 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: OT: Saturday 11:30 AM - 26 inches

On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 6:54 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>
> So what -- and when, and why -- were A--- through M---??  (The 2012
> *hurricanes* were not Nemo and Orko, but Nadine and Oscar.  And the
> list ended at Tony, so U--- and V--- are available if we were to
> continue that line.)

A moment's Googling reveals Weather.com's full lineup, along with
glosses for the names:

http://www.weather.com/news/winter-storm-names-20121001

Some interesting choices, such as "Gandolf" (not "Gandalf") for "G" --
glossed as "A character in a 1896 fantasy novel in a pseudo-medieval
countryside." Turns out that's _The Well at the World's End_ by
William Morris, one of Tolkien's inspirations. Perhaps they were
avoiding having to deal with the Tolkien estate by going with the
public-domain spelling.

--bgz

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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