language as property

[Rankin, Robert L]

>I would like to speak to something linguists don't often talk about--the
real selling of bits and pieces of language that might be the impetus behind
the copyright attempts.

>Although linguists and academics in general do not make much money from
Native American languages,there are folks out there who do make some.

Sara makes an interesting point, and one I tend to agree with in principle
(except that I don't think the particular group I was damning is responding
to Sara's concerns). But I tend to think that what is involved is good taste
and common courtesy rather than the law.

I haven't been approached by commercial outfits looking for sexy product
names (but, hey, my shingle is out), but they would certainly be a gray area
that some might be concerned about. The Sioux would certainly be entitled to
be incensed if Phillips came out with a new laxative called Uslee-Tonka
(although a sci-fi show on TV once involved a "miracle drug" called
"Creve-u-lax" and no French speakers complained). These problems do not fall
under the topic of copyright law though, because they are not proper names.
They fall under the topic of good taste.

Companies don't like bad publicity and seek to avoid it. This is true even
for "dead" languages. Lexus, for example, is not a Latin word. Luxus is, and
lexis is, but not lexus. Nor Elantra, nor Sephia, nor Sentra, etc. They've
been pretty careful about this sort of thing. But even if they weren't, I
think you'd want to be pretty careful about any precedent that would allow
copyright of words other than bonafide proper names. Do the French own the
rights to Chevrolet (little goat)? Or the English to Excel (or does the fact
that excel is a loanword make it copyrightable by the French instead)? This
is not a road we want to go down.

Proper names are indeed another matter (but they are ALREADY covered under
US copyright law). The Bell helicopter corp. has for years used tribal names
for their various products (the Cheyenne, the Kiowa, etc.), but as far as I
know, they not only consulted the tribes in question, they held their
roll-out and christening at the reservation or otherwise involved the tribe.
I don't know if there were also monetary arrangements.

Here are a couple for people to chew on though.

Several years ago I was approached by the Kansas Air National Guard who
wanted to name one of their airborne tankers "Kansa Warrior". They wanted to
write it on the nose of the aircraft in the Kaw language. Should I have just
translated it or should I have referred them to the Kaw Nation? (I did both,
and the airplane now bears that name and a staid likeness of a Kaw warrior.)
How horrible, how militaristic, how honored the Kaw Nation was!

Here's another. A researcher at the Univ. Medical Center wanted to name new
organisms he discovered in the Kaw language to honor the aboriginal
inhabitants of the state instead of naming them in the usual classical Latin
or Greek. We never got around to it, and I suspect new names have to pass
muster with some UNESCO or WHO committee in Geneva made up of classical
scholars. But is it a good idea? Do we consult the tribal council every time
a new viral organism is found or created to do a certain job? Do we consult
the Greek government (or the Catholic Church) when we use the Greek or Latin
terms for these critters? I don't have answers, but I don't think it
involves copyright. Just common courtesy.

Bob