# It's Iphone not iPhone **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 30, 2013, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-iphone-not-iphone/677488 "2013-12-30T16:04:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Uosdwis\_R.Dewoh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Uosdwis\_R.Dewoh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uosdwis_R.Dewoh)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2013, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-iphone-not-iphone/677488/1 "2013-12-30T16:04:34Z")
Or at least that’s how the _Institute for the Languages of Finland_ thinks it should be written. > [@](#): > > The organiation’s latest publication has some surprising news for fans of one of the world’s best-known products. iPhones, apparently, should not be called iPhones. The correct usage in Finnish is Iphone or I-phone. > > Raija Moilanen says in the latest edition of the institute’s Kielikello periodical that if iPhone is regarded as a compound word then it should be hyphenated. If it is a word in its own right, then Apple is wrong and it should be spelled with a capital ‘I’ and a small ‘p’. One of the institute’s missions is to standardize the usage of loanwords in official communications. What this mean in practice is that if an highschooler uses “iPhone” instead of “Iphone” in a SAT essay she would get reduced points. For some reason I’m amused by the thought. Source: [http://yle.fi/uutiset/iphone\_youre\_spelling\_it\_wrong/7000508](http://yle.fi/uutiset/iphone_youre_spelling_it_wrong/7000508) ---
**Author:** ![Vagabond](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/258eb7/32.png) [@Vagabond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vagabond)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2013, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-iphone-not-iphone/677488/2 "2013-12-30T16:16:39Z")
I’m guessing they are looking at it from the point of…it’s a proper name and should be capitalized with no regard for the stylized logo. I’m guessing they would do the same with the singer Kesha. She spells her stage name/logo Ke$ha. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2013, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-iphone-not-iphone/677488/3 "2013-12-30T16:28:52Z")
I don’t see how they have the right to change the spelling of proper nouns. Apple spells it “iPhone,” and that’s what it should remain. Perhaps these guys can change the spelling in Finnish, but they have no authority over English. And I want to hear how they pronounce “50 Cent” or “Favre” or whatever Prince’s name is these days. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2013, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-iphone-not-iphone/677488/4 "2013-12-30T16:31:30Z")
The Institute of course must realize the young Finns using the device at issue will probably be sending text messages with whatever’s the Finnish equivalent of l33t-speling anyway. What if the theoretical student goes Writer’s Digest on the testmakers and writes _‘An Apple “iPhone”-brand smartphone’_ instead of “an [iPhone/Iphone/I-phone]”? ---
**Author:** ![Uosdwis\_R.Dewoh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Uosdwis\_R.Dewoh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uosdwis_R.Dewoh)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2013, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-iphone-not-iphone/677488/5 "2013-12-30T16:46:51Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > I don’t see how they have the right to change the spelling of proper nouns. Apple spells it “iPhone,” and that’s what it should remain. Perhaps these guys can change the spelling in Finnish, but they have no authority over English. They’re not claiming authority of the English language. What they’re saying is if you use “iPhone” in a Finnish sentence write “Iphone”. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2013, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-iphone-not-iphone/677488/6 "2013-12-30T17:04:37Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > I don’t see how they have the right to change the spelling of proper nouns. Apple spells it “iPhone,” and that’s what it should remain. Perhaps these guys can change the spelling in Finnish, but they have no authority over English. It’s a stylistic issue, and they can make whatever rules they want for their style guides. The article is written a little confusingly, but I don’t get the sense they are talking about anything but what the Institute for the Languages of Finland deems proper for Finnish (and maybe the three other languages mentioned), despite the reporting that “If it is a word in its own right, then Apple is wrong and it should be spelled with a capital ‘I’ and a small ‘p’.” I’m betting that’s sloppy reporting, because I can’t see the Institute giving a shit how Americans spell the company name. And they consistently apply the rule to other spellings, including native ones: "PowerPoints should be Powerpoints, LEGO is Lego and even the Finnish ice hockey clubs SaiPa and KalPa, as they are known to their fans, should eliminate the capital letters in the middle of their names. " American style guides do this, too, to some extent. I believe AP Style (although I don’t have the current edition on hand) is to capitalize the “i” in “iPad” and “iPod” when it begins a sentence, for instance. Or what about companies that are, in their own literature, stylized like E\*TRADE, or IKEA, or Toys “R” Us. (AP calls for the sensible “E-Trade,” “Ikea,” and “Toys R Us” for those.) There’s nothing wrong with the Finnish language institute settling on the style they settled on for consistency’s sake. Whether it will actually catch on or be amended by various publications’ in-house style guides is another issue. AP, for example, held on to “teen-ager” until the 2002 edition, but many newspapers changed that to “teenager” in their in-house style guides. ---
**Author:** ![Uosdwis\_R.Dewoh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Uosdwis\_R.Dewoh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uosdwis_R.Dewoh)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2013, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-iphone-not-iphone/677488/7 "2013-12-30T17:13:49Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > What if the theoretical student goes Writer’s Digest on the testmakers and writes _‘An Apple “iPhone”-brand smartphone’_ instead of “an [iPhone/Iphone/I-phone]”? There’s a difference between using a loanword and the actual English word, which in the case of iPhone is not so obvious as they’re so similar. It’s more noticeable with the word “Sofa” that has evolved in Finnish to “Sohva”. Iphone will probably change into “Ipohna” or something like that in a couple of decades. The theoretical student probably wont make an error if she refers to the “iPhone”-brand phone instead of her “Iphone”. I’m not totally sure about this as I’m not linguist. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2013, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-iphone-not-iphone/677488/8 "2013-12-30T18:03:31Z")
> [@Uosdwis\_R.Dewoh](#): > > They’re not claiming authority of the English language. What they’re saying is if you use “iPhone” in a Finnish sentence write “Iphone”. It’s the long winters with the short days and long nights and nothing to do but drink and watch incomprehensible art films, isn’t it? ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2013, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-iphone-not-iphone/677488/9 "2013-12-30T18:17:28Z")
Brand names beginning with a lowercase letter - iPhone, iPad, iPod, iEverything, eBay - are a PITA. You can’t start sentences with them without having to make style changes. Ban 'em. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2013, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-iphone-not-iphone/677488/10 "2013-12-30T22:57:41Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Brand names beginning with a lowercase letter - iPhone, iPad, iPod, iEverything, eBay - are a PITA. You can’t start sentences with them without having to make style changes. Ban 'em. And then there’s e. e. cummings. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2013, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-iphone-not-iphone/677488/11 "2013-12-30T23:12:16Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > And then there’s e. e. cummings. E. E. Cummings is actually fine to capitalize, and it was his preferred spelling as well. [Cite from the Chicago Manual of Style](http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/ProperNames.html) folks. > [@](#): > > E. E. Cummings can be safely capitalized—not necessarily because he’s no longer around to object, but because it wasn’t his personal preference to lowercase his name (Encyclopædia Britannica, s.v. “Cummings, E. E.,” [http://search.eb.com/eb/article?eu=28649](http://search.eb.com/eb/article?eu=28649)) ---
**Author:** ![James\_Toothpaste](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e56c9b/32.png) [@James\_Toothpaste](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/James_Toothpaste)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2013, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-iphone-not-iphone/677488/12 "2013-12-30T23:34:25Z")
I. Always callit a iPhone. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2013, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-iphone-not-iphone/677488/13 "2013-12-30T23:56:39Z")
iPhone is not a word, it is a trademark, thus not subject to rules. ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 8:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-iphone-not-iphone/677488/14 "2013-12-31T08:38:40Z")
Then it should be pronounced according to standard phonetic rules as a word beginning with a vowel and succeeded by a ‘ph’ and ending with an ‘e’. Iphone. ‘Ip-hone’ or ‘Iffony’, or…?? ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-iphone-not-iphone/677488/15 "2013-12-31T15:20:39Z")
Institutes that think they have the right to standardize language are themselves rather moronic. Even in France most people don’t listen to them. (Almost every French person I know will use the English spelling for tech words, instead of the officialized version.) At least newspapers and similar have an actual reason to standardize something, to create consistency for themselves. An institute on language is an ivory tower that is completely divorced from the actual use of the language in question, giving them the least valid input on how the language should work. The people who use the langauge know what it needs. And when it comes to iPhones, the product is going to say “iPhone” on the box. Thus people are going to spell it that way, and it will create distance whenever they read it it spelled another way. Iphone and iPhone don’t even look alike. You have to stop and think to figure out the first one. (At least I-Phone would still look the right word, even if it does look even more archaic.) ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-iphone-not-iphone/677488/16 "2013-12-31T15:38:25Z")
> [@Uosdwis\_R.Dewoh](#): > > One of the institute’s missions is to standardize the usage of loanwords in official communications. What this mean in practice is that if an highschooler uses “iPhone” instead of “Iphone” in a SAT essay she would get reduced points. For some reason I’m amused by the thought. Oh, wow. I didn’t notice this before. So their “mission” is to protect their language from the influence of dirty foreign words. Here I thought they were just old fuddieduddies. iPhone looks perfectly fine starting a sentence, BTW. There’s still a capital letter, so the eye can still easily see a start to the sentence. It doesn’t change your style in any significant way unless you are insisting on too rigid a style in the first place, citing rules instead of their purpose. The whole point of a style guide is to make language easier to read. Which is exactly why using a lowercase P fails. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-iphone-not-iphone/677488/17 "2013-12-31T15:53:23Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > iPhone is not a word, it is a trademark, thus not subject to rules. Being a trademark doesn’t prevent it from being a word. ‘iPhone’ is a noun. It can’t be a noun without being a word. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-iphone-not-iphone/677488/18 "2013-12-31T17:01:59Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > iPhone is not a word, it is a trademark, thus not subject to rules. > [@RTFirefly](#): > > Being a trademark doesn’t prevent it from being a word. ‘iPhone’ is a noun. It can’t be a noun without being a word. 😃 According to Apple’s site, their trademarks are adjectives used to describe nouns so you should always say “I have an iPhone brand smart phone” and not “I have an iPhone” or “I have a Macintosh computer” and not “I have a Mac”. The irony here, of course, being that Apple is happy to impose it own rules/guidelines on me while ignoring those of whatever language. That’s not directly a jab at Apple since all companies have the same sort of “rules”. ---
**Author:** ![Greg\_Charles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/839c29/32.png) [@Greg\_Charles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Greg_Charles)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-iphone-not-iphone/677488/19 "2013-12-31T19:48:30Z")
I don’t think it’s required for writers to try to duplicate a company’s logo. I write “Toys R Us” with a Latin character, not a Cyrillic one, or I would if I ever needed to write it. I also write “Dot Net”, in a mostly futile gesture to tweak Microsoft. So if Finland wants to tweak Apple’s iPhone in a marginally less futile gesture, then that’s their right. I’m sure it eases the sting of Nokia’s decline in stature. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-iphone-not-iphone/677488/20 "2013-12-31T23:33:02Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > According to Apple’s site, their trademarks are adjectives used to describe nouns so you should always say “I have an iPhone brand smart phone” and not “I have an iPhone” or “I have a Macintosh computer” and not “I have a Mac”. > > The irony here, of course, being that Apple is happy to impose it own rules/guidelines on me while ignoring those of whatever language. That’s not directly a jab at Apple since all companies have the same sort of “rules”. Because they are not grammar guidelines, they are trademark protection advisories, in order to be able to point to a record that their brands are that, _theirs_, not a generic. And though they \*have \*to do it, some cases are not as vulnerable as others – on one end of the spectrum there’s PostIt sticky-notes and Velcro hook-and-pile fasteners, where people will use the more popular brand as a generic no matter how much 3M and Velek scream but they’d better keep screaming or they’ll lose the rights; but at the other end, computers and smartphones have more in common with automobiles: nobody is confused if you say “a Chevy” instead of “an automobile from the Chevrolet division of General Motors”. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-iphone-not-iphone/677488.md?page=2)