I agree 100% It reminds me of when a mayoral aide used the word ‘niggardly’ and everybody freaked out and called him a racist.
Aside of that, these shoe companies should wise up. Didn’t Reebok name a womans shoe ‘Incubis’ a few years back?
BlackKnight:
A totally meaningless nitpick, a distinction without a difference.
I hope you aren’t really trying to say that none of the associations that “Zyklon B” carries would apply to “Zyklon” without the ‘B’.
Agreed.
Inside the German-speaking world.
Outside that world, where the connection with meteorology doesn’t hold, it effectively means, “Death to Jews,” because it was the agent by which death was dealt to millions of us*.
For the reasons given above, I say you’re wrong.
Once again, ‘Zyklon’ isn’t a meteorological event in English-speaking countries, nor in any non-Germanic languages.
Phoenix: you’ll have to state your point. “untill I thought of mustard” is too little to rebut.
- [sub]I say “us” because although I am a Christian by both birth and choice, my father is a full-blooded Jew, and I’m sure that would have sufficed, had I been born fifteen years sooner, and in Europe.[/sub]
Of course not. Zyklon isn’t even IN english. However, to those of us who actually know what it is, it’s both.
Mustard gas caused untold suffering in the previous world war, a new weapon that was one of the most horrific implements of the time.
looks in fridge
Hey, look at what we have here…
That’s pretty damned silly. It isn’t originally an English word, sure. But the language changes. The demonstrated fact that a hell of a lot more people know what “Zyklon B” is, than speak enough German to have encountered the word “zyklon” as a cognate of “cyclone”, shows that it is indeed part of our language.
And its meaning, in English, is “Death to Jews.”
Except it still has no association with tornadoes in English, and that’s what we’re talking about. (As well as other languages than German.) Just gassing large numbers of Jews to death.
In what way does this rebut my point?
An essential component of my argument is that Zyklon has at most negligible prior association with anything at all in English.
Hence its sole association, in this language, is with the Nazi gas chambers.
Mustard is clearly not analogous.
There one of the most poignent associations of the holocaust with shoes that remains today, and it is one of the starkest reminders that humanises and personalises the holocaust.
Go to Auschwitz and look around the museums, one of the things that is most likely to remain with you is the sight of a room full of shoes from the victims.(another is a roomful of human hair)
This really brings home the horror of what went on, shoes are such a personal item of clothing, not many people would wear secondhand shoes.
The thing is, of course, that the instrument of death was Zyclon B, and the folks wearing those same shoes in the holocaust museum at Auschwitz were murdered by it.
So if it were a german product, it’d be just fine? Since zyclon meant cyclone long before it was used as the name of a gas, just as with mustart?
The issue is not where the product is made, but where it’s sold. There may well be a case to be made for saying that it’s OK to market the product under the name “Zyklon” in Germany, where this is a common word meaning “cyclone”, and this strong association masks other associations. But that’s not the case outside the German-speaking world.
Basically, when I hear “mustard” I don’t think of mustard gas. When I hear “Zyklon” I think of gas chambers.
See the difference?
Jesus, are they remaking The Admirable Crichton again?! That James barrie, ya just can’t keep him down.
Jesus H. Christ—I submitted that reply to, obviously, another thread entirely. How the hell did it wind up here?
Umm, please delete? Thanks.
My 2 cents, starting from the top:
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Was naming this shoe “Zyklon” stupid? Maybe. If the connotation of “Nazi death gas” is widely known, then it was dumb. I didn’t know that’s what “Zyklon” meant, and I can’t speak to the claim of “millions” of people instantly think of gassing Jews when they hear the word, but I suppose it’s possible, though I would guess that the vast majority of Americans, at least don’t make that association immediately. To most, it would be a vaguely cool-sounding word. So whoever came up with the name “Zyklon” should probably adopt the habit of dropping future product names into Google to see what pops up. However, since it seems they cam up with word completely at random, they may have figured that the odds of assembling letters at random and coming up with something highly offensive was pretty small. You live, you learn.
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Is the degree of outrage it generated justifiable? Not really. They harmed nobody, and it was an innocent mistake. I would think the level-headed approach for anyone who saw the name “Zyklon” who made a negative association would be to issue a polite letter to Umbro saying, “Hey, did you know that you named your shoe after a poision used to kill a whole lotta people? Might wanna rethink that.” I think describing it as in “insult” is preposterous. More accuratley, it’s an “innocent blunder”.
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Should Umbro have changed it? Well, it’s up to them. I would have, for purely economical reasons. The last thing you want is a bunch of folks demonstrating outside your headquarters calling you Nazi-sympathizers.
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Is this comparable to putting a swastika on your product? Not really. The swastika is universally recognized, the word “Zyklon” much less so. Argue all you want about whether or not it should be universally recognized, the fact is, in the US at least, it’s not.
Jeff
Yeah, that’s about how I was looking at it too, Jeff.
Just a small correction. I don’t think umbro made up the name “Zyklon” by an amazing coincidence. I think they chose it knowing that it meant “cyclone” in German, and hoping that ithe sound of it would at least suggest “cyclone” to an anglophone ear, a cyclone being the kind of powerful and energetic thing that they like to have their boots associated with.
Although Umbro is a British company they give a lot of their soccer boots names taken from other European languages - Risponsa, Velocita, Forza, Speciali, Kontakt. Zyklon is very much in that tradition.
I would have thought it was routine that all product names (even if made up) should be checked for unintended but unfortunate associations before signficant sums are investing in branding goods with them. Obviously that wasn’t done here, so somebody slipped up badly.
I don’t think Umbro intended to give offence. I do think they have been careless. I do think the name is highly, but unintentionally offensive. I don’t think outrage would be called for unless Umbro refused to withdraw the name. But in fact they withdrew it readily when the problem was pointed out.
Ooooh! Perfect! (you’ll see why in a minute).
“Lynch” is an Irish surname (it is where Lynching came from).
Now, would it be ok for Peter Lynch to complain if there was a product called “the Lyncher”?
Zyclon means cyclone. It is unfortunate that it was also the name of a pesticide used to kill people in Concentration Camps.
I can understand how people could be offended by the use of the name “Zyclon”, but are Umbro trading on the name “Zyclon” to invoke imagery of concentration camps?
No, not deliberately. But evoking this imagery upsets people even if it is entirely unintended, so people are perfectly reasonable in asking them to stop using the name.
(And probably also reasonable in criticising Umbro for not checking the name for possible unfortunate connotations before using it.)