While putting on my shorts this morning I noticed in the waistband the words: Duxbak Since 1904 with a picture of a duck next to the words.
Does anyone know when this practice originated and which company was the first to use it?
If I got the second word in my subject header wrong, it was not deliberate!
Thanks
Quasi
I can’t cite a first instance, but it’s definitely a result of trademark law. You can’t trademark “duck’s back” because it’s common language. You can trademark “duxbak” as long as no one beats you to it. The reason we have so many companies with goofy names is that they want very secure trademark status before spending so much money on branding and advertising.
To clarify a bit, you can register a trademark for real words or combinations thereof (such as a slogan), but it is likely to be more difficult, especially in the case of a common term like “duck’s back”. Made-up or misspelled words go much easier through the process, as mikko said.
Woops- sorry for the mistake on your name micco, I know a mikko in real life and muscle memory must have taken over there.
I have no idea when or with whom this disagreeable practice started, and to me, a more pertinanat question would be WHY? I don’t know for sure but I have some theories:
The name in question isn’t misspelled; it just happens to sound like something else, and they put a picture of the something else on the label. Duxbak could be a family name, which just happens to sound like “duck’s back”. The company name and its homonym have nothing in common except pronunciation, and that it makes a cute logo.
It may be hard to get a trademark or exclusive use agreement for common phrases. “Duck’s back” is in fairly common use, and it would be hard to convince the powers that be that everyone is referring to your product or company when they use the phrase.
Misspellings look ‘catchy’ to marketing folk. I can imagine a conversation wherein water-resistant drawers are compared to the effect of water off a duck’s back. Marketing Genius 1: “Hey, we could misspell Duck’s Back and people would make the connection and it would be funny all at the same time!” Marketing Genius 2: “I like it!”
This applies more to mom and pop types than big corporations, but lots of names are already taken. In the district where you apply for a business license, there may already be a Kathy’s Cut-N-Curl, so you better call yours Kathy’s Kut-N-Kurl, to differentiate. Or Kathy’s Kut Hut, or some other such nonsense.
Kuntry Kitchen, and that he almost drove off the road laughing so hard. Does this count for anything?
Another example would be Compaq. The company couldn’t call itself Compact Computers because it is too common, but they could alter it so you get the idea that the company makes small computers.
A trademark can’t be the real name of what something is.
You couldn’t sell a brand of automobile that was called “Automobile”.
While some of the business names that appear misspelled may be due to family name or something like that, the previous posters’ references to trademarks are the far more common cause. Some famous (in business circles anyway) cases relating to this include:
Words like Kleenex, aspirin, etc… which become so commonplace and aren’t sufficiently well protected and lost their trademark status - kind of the opposite type of issue from the OP
The Chevy Nova - No va of course means “it doesn’t go” in Spanish; or the story that when Coca Cola tried to spell its name phonetically in Chinese, it ended up marketing its beverage as “Bite the Wax Tadpole” - again, not the same issue as the OP, but it makes it clear that companies need to very clearly identify unique, universal names they can protect and which aren’t offensive
As for when it got started, certainly before the turn of the century (1900). I don’t have a cite, but I seem to remember some brands of goods being named based on local slang, which ended up having the benefit of being unique. Also, there were legitimate alternate spellings (“shoppe”, “inne” etc.) that businesses used and realized they set them apart. Every business wants to stand out, but obviously what stinks is that everyone’s wants our share of mind and we don’t want to give it to them, cute spelling or not…
A different but related question has to do with Rock bands - which band was the first to have a unique spelling? I think the Beatles popularized it - much to our detriment, what with with Motley Crue, etc…, but were they the first to do it?
BobT, Compaq is named for “Compatibility and Quality”. The similarity to “compact” is incidental.
This is an urban legend.
So is this. (Although at least this one has a grain of truth to it, unlike the Chevy Nova UL.)
Wow - thanks for the correction, MsWhatsit - I was told both of those in business school (one that lands at the top of rankings regularly, but I am ashamed to name at this time) by a marketing professor, so didn’t even bother to research them…
A better example is the Mitsubishi Montero, which is called “Pajero” in non-U.S. and non-Spanish-speaking markets. “Pajero” is slang for “masturbator” in Spanish.
Chilitos, a product you can buy at taco hell, is mexican slang for “penis” (when you get right down to it, what ISN’T slang for some sex organ or other?) so mexican boys working the counter used to burst out laughing when women would ask for chilitos. LeMans was misunderstood by Koreans to mean “lemons” because apparently the word has crossed the pacific so they wouldn’t buy the car. And Joanie Loves Chachi, according to Gary Marshall, was an unexpectedly big hit in Korea because Chachi means “penis” (see above). I don’t know if any of these are true. Don’t care.
Locomobile was a brand of car for a while. I don’t know why they went out of business. Pyrex and Fire King had a set-to over oven-safe glassware. Fire King came out first, I believe. Then Pyrex (combined pyre–fire–and rex–king) came out and there was a court case but Pyrex was different enough to coexist.
If you use a word like Xerox or Jello in print with a lowercase letter or to refer to a photocopy or a gelatin dessert, you’re likely to receive a pleasant letter from Xerox or General Foods reminding you that Xerox or Jello are adjectives and should only be used when referring to the products made by those companies. Xerox copier, Jello gelatin. And they’d sort of like you to put a TM or R bug next to it, too. They don’t want their trademarks to become common speech, because then you might see Ricoh xerox machines or SureJel jello dessert. So far, Scott Paper has refrained from marketing Scott kleenexes, but there is probably no reason, other than protracted legal battles, why they shouldn’t.
Interpreting the thread title another way, there is another reason for deliberate misspelling of a business name.
This is where a company will name its product so that it looks almost identical to a well-known brand name.
There are many examples of this, but one I recall from personal experience is ordering what I thought was a Gordon’s gin in a bar on a Greek island.
It was only after three of four of these beverages that I looked more closely at the bottle, only to discover that I had been drinking the somewhat less famous Grodon’s gin.
No, I wasn’t drunk.
Don’t worry about it. It happens to the best of us. 
(I still cringe to think how many times I told the Catherine the Great and the horse story before someone informed me it was just a myth.)
Well, that makes sense.
Hmmm, now that i look at, this Rolex watch has two Xs… Shucks!
Probably true that Compaq stands for “compatibility and quality,” but i think it’s far from an accident that it resembles a real, positive-associated word that people know (“compact”). “Compqual” is a closer contraction, but they probably realized it isn’t as rememberable.
For 500 points, does anyone know what Kodak stands for?
I’ve always found it bizarre how drug stores and food markets always have names with botched spellings… like Rite-aid, Valu-mart, Quik-stop, etc. I guess they are marketing toward people who don’t know how to spell…?
“Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself: “Mankind”. Basically, it’s made up of two separate words - “mank” and “ind”. What do these words mean ? It’s a mystery, and that’s why so is mankind.” – Jack Handley, “Deep Thoughts”
This is a trick question.
The name is purely arbitrary.
George Eastman chose it because he just happened to like words that began and ended in “k”.
I haven’t been able to find who it was that started the use of misspelled words to brand products. But it is worth remembering that the use of branded products is, in itself, a fairly recent phenomenon. Until the mid to late ninetenth century, most products were without such identifiers. Tools and large items would often be purchased from an artisan who would make them to order. Household goods, especially food, was normally bought by wieght from grocers who stored the product in bulk. And many things that we buy today were still made in the home: bread, soap, even clothing.
Branding became more important with the growth of national communication and transportation links, and changes in manufacturing and packaging technology that resulted in huge increases in output that then had to be sold. The rise of modern advertising can be largely traced to similar developments.
As historian Susan Strasser points out, the branding of products served to esablish a link between the manufacturer and the consumer, rather than the local retailer and the buyer, as had previously been the case. This branding was also strengthened by stronger trademark legislation, as some on this thread have already noted. By identifying a product with a manufacturer, branding also had the effect of holding the maker responsible for quality, at a time when new production techniques and the growing role of factories made many people worry about such things.
(see Susan Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market)
To get back on topic a little bit, some names that were originally brand names have descended into the generic sphere in both a common and a legal sense. These include:
There are others that many people use generically, but which still legally apply to particular companies’ products, and they include:
These quotes are from the master himself, Cecil, who addresses the issue here.