Shakespeare was of course right and yet so wrong. The fragrances a flower emits are the same no matter what name we have for that flower. Our mere naming of a plant does not affect its molecules. But our perception of the smell of anything is determined to some degree by our expectations. And the names of things do lead us to expect certain things.
I am sure that there is no need for examples of how the wrong name for a project, a product, or a person have led to missed opportunities. Though I would have liked to back up the previous statement with a reference to some carefully researched paper, some papers are sure to exist.
The reason for this entry regarding names is that people have asked me about the name of my company. Unlike many other artists I have not, apparently, used simply my own name. It might be a mistake since I, as all other performance artists, am selling my self as the product, thus there might be an advantage to have the product name and the company name being the same.
My unscientific opinion is that lecturers and educators unlike performance artists quite often use their company names to sell their product, at least if they are not themselves famous. I guess that although many on the lecture circuit are simply selling a performance under the disguise of motivation or education they like to give the impression of being serious.
Some day I will let the world know my opinion of people that sell BS as information, education, or training. For now I limit myself to the observation that no matter if they believe their own BS or not they rob people of a lot of money.
Still I like to be perceived as serious lecturer myself some day, when I am sure that I am not peddling BS. Hence I created a company with a name different, but not unconnected, from my own.
Here is the explanation to the company’s name, PJOR Entermation.
As can be seen it consists of two parts, the last part is a made up word, my contribution to the English language. Everybody has heard of ‘infotainment’ a melange of ‘information’ and ‘entertainment’, which is a synonym for “pointless-distraction-under-the-cloak-of-importance”. I guess that my opinion on infotainment is quite clear.
My melange of the two words, (enter-tainment and info-rmation) is supposed to convey an idea similar to “important information delivered in an entertaining fashion”.
The first part of the company name can be read out as ‘pure’, and in deed it should be with all the positive connotations the word ‘pure’ carries. The spelling is explained by the proud Swedish tradition of putting your initials in the company’s name (think IKEA). Unlike Ingvar Kamprad I do not confuse the point with the names of the places I am from. PJOR simply stands for Per Johan Olov Råsmark.
A friend pointed out a very good example of the importance of names and how inconsistent we humans are. We all know how calories should be avoided and energy is something good. A drink that has a lot of energy is a good drink and a bagel with a lot of calories is a bad bagel. It might not be necessary to have studied both physics and semantics to notice that they are two names for the same thing, but it helps. The SI unit for measuring energy is Joule but calorie is traditionally used in measuring the energy content of food. The lovely energy rich drink by the other name of “lots of calories” does not smell as sweet.
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