About the name. That is, about the power of words

⌈ Language is a system of sound signs that arose through natural development and serves members of the human community to communicate and learn about the world. It satisfies the needs of the whole nation, the community. It is owned by all users, it develops, lives and changes with them. Through it we can achieve individual and group goals. In any community that speaks the same language, it plays an integrating role. → ZPE.gov.pl, accessed: 24.06.2024. ⌋

SOME TIME AGO I RECEIVED as a gift a book by STEVEN PINKER entitled The Linguistic Instinct (translated by Tomasz Biedroń, Poznan 2023). Reading it, every now and then I found myself grasping at the thought of whether or not everything we were taught in school and then in college was untrue? For here is Pinker, a psychologist, cognitive scientist and linguist, professor of philosophy at Harvard University, is a proponent of evolutionary psychology, that's one thing, as well as the evolutionary theory of language. According to him, language is one of the instincts developed along with others, and not something "acquired" in the course of personal development (by a child).

Pinker argues his theses superbly, based on the exceptionally prolific and inquisitive concept of transformational-generative grammar co-invented and developed by its authors - Morris Halle and (above all) Noam Chomsky. I don't understand everything from it, and I don't have that good language skills, but what the author of Instinct... wants to convince us of is clear and very attractive. Besides - he deals with an absolutely unusual issue. At the beginning of the first chapter he writes:

As you read these words, you are taking part in one of the wonders of the natural world. For we belong to a species endowed with a unique ability: we are able to shape events in the brains of others with extraordinary precision. I do not mean telepathy, mind control or other pseudo-scientific nonsense (...). I am referring to language. By making sounds we can reliably cause certain combinations to arise in the minds of other people. This ability is so natural to us that we often forget what a miracle it is (p. 13).

The subtitle of his work is How the mind creates language. And this is something that most linguists and psychologists refuse to agree with. And that's because the current status quo in this regard says that it is language that creates our vision and understanding of the world. Do you remember from school the term "linguistic worldview"? On the Integrated Education Platform of the Ministry of Education we find an explanation, according to which it is a conceptual structure "in which the colloquial judgments about the world inherent in a given community, culture and tradition are reflected." As we further read, we find it in various linguistic phenomena, for example, in the meanings of words, in phraseological compounds, in metaphors, as well as in grammatical forms characteristic of a given language.

The most important statement, however, is the one that comes immediately afterwards:

What kind of grammar, vocabulary we use depends on the culture of a given society (nation). We think differently in foreign languages than in our native language. This knowledge comes from the different traditions in which we were raised.

⸜ Językowy obraz świata, → ZPE.gov.pl, accessed: 24.06.2024 ˻PL˺.

In short, the idea is that we "think with language", at least in this view. That is, that our linguistic area is also the area of our understanding of the world. In line with this line of thinking, one of the articles featured in the latest Polish edition of Świat Nauki - Scientific American is titled Australian languages: an overlooked gift that shapes perception. Its author, Christine Kenneally, recalls that for a long time it seemed that different languages affected time perception differently, and that after deeper research it turned out that, as she writes, "at a basic level, all people perceive the world the same way". And yet:

However, studies of Australian Aboriginal languages have complicated this seemingly simple scheme, especially the latest groundbreaking studies of the Murrinhpatha language. (...) Recently, Rachel Nordlinger, a linguist at the University of Melbourne who has been studying Murrinhpatha speech for 18 years, and her colleagues conducted the first psycholinguistic experiment on the language. The researchers found that when people put thought into words, the mental processes taking place in their brains are shaped by the structure of the language they use.

⸜ CHRISTINE KENNEALLY, Języki australijskie: przeoczony dar, który kształtuje percepcję, „Świat Nauki – Scientific American”, 06/2024 source: → www.PROJEKTPULSAR.pl, accessed: 24.06.2024 ˻PL˺.

While this concept has several weaknesses, it is widely accepted. But, as we can see, not by everyone. But there is also something that unites these views: it is the importance of language. Whether we accept that it is an innate or acquired ability, whether the image of the world is shaped by language or vice versa, the power of the word, so to speak, is something no one disputes.

Which is where I'm getting at - and this is that using language is a causal activity. As Pinker said, with the help of words we are able to change another person, and as a result - even if it sounds slightly pompous - the world. And to a lesser extent, we can, with its help, evoke a certain reaction in the recipient of our message. Or at least try to achieve it. This is why book titles are so important to authors and publishers, why musicians pay so much attention to album titles. That's why - finally - company names, including audio companies, are so important.

It seems to me that we often treat them in a "transparent" way, thinking that they are just a certain designation of the designator and that they have meaning in themselves insofar as they "sound" fancy or not. In reality, the correlation between how a company or brand is named and how we perceive it is deeper than we think. That's why it's so interesting to see how they arise.

The easiest way to name your company is to give it your name. This is how the names Hugo Boss (Hugo Ferdinand Boss), Porsche (Ferdinand Porsche) or Mark Levinson (Mark Levinson) came about. Continuing, then, we have the brands Bang & Olufsen (Peter Bang and Svend Olufsen), Studer (Wilhelm "Willi" Studer), Harman Kardon (Sidney Harman and Bernard Kardon), Bowers & Wilkins (John Bowers and Roy Wilkins) or Pass (Nelson Pass). Interestingly, Studer was originally named Willi Studer, Fabrik für elektronische Apparate, which was shortened over time.

Polish manufacturers are a bit more cautious, as almost always their name is a part of a longer name, such as Rogoz Audio (Janusz Rogoz), Bodnar Audio (Pawel Bodnar) Dubiel Acoustics (Boguslaw Dubiel), with rare exceptions, as in the form of the name Struss (Zdzislaw Hrynkiewicz-Struss). As if they were still ashamed to go all the way. An interesting variation of this strategy is the name of White Bird, a Polish manufacturer specializing in headphone amplifiers, which is derived from the English version of the name of its founder, Mr. Piotr Bocianek. The company Divaldi, formed from the surname of its owner Włodzimierz Duval, and which also echoes the diminutive name of Waldemar Łuczkoś, its designer. If I understand it correctly.

Let the case of Dan D'Agostino attest to the importance and power of this category. In 1980, with his wife Rondi, he founded Krell Industries, which made its mark in the US market as a manufacturer of powerful, solid-state amplifiers operating in Class A. In 2009, the family sold part of its stake in Krell to investors gathered at KP Partners, eager to raise funds for expansion. The new co-owners very quickly led to a situation where the couple, along with their eldest son Bren, head of technical projects, had to leave.

In the same year, Dan establishes the company Dan D'Agostino Master Audio Systems, for which everyone uses the shortened form 'Dan D'Agostino'. In this way, he 'signs' its products to 'himself', so to speak, with a strong accent letting everyone know that it is his and only his company. The company of Franco Serblin, founder of Sonus faber and its chief executive until 2005, was established on a similar basis, albeit in a friendly atmosphere. In February 2007, he sold Sonus to an Italian investor, Quadrivio. Nevertheless, the new company was to be "his and his alone."

Naming a company with one's name is a kind of "stamp", a personal confirmation of product quality. When we speak ill of an amplifier, speakers or any other component of an audio system, we automatically speak of its maker. On the one hand, this somewhat slows down the possible outpouring of dissatisfaction, but on the other hand, it hits harder at the owners themselves, often also the designers - it is to some extent a personal attack.

Thus, it would be one of the "strongest" name types. After all, the designer would be putting his entire reputation on the line. On the one hand, it would then be more difficult to oppose someone like that, and on the other hand, it is somehow better for a person when he or she knows that a particular person, or at least his or her legacy, is behind a given product, in case the designer is no longer among us or has left the company.

In audio, we also encounter names formedfrom the names of several people. Recall the Spendor company, named so after designer Spencer Hughes (SPENdor) and his wife Dorothy (spenDOR), as well as Harbeth, with designer Dudley Harwood (HARwood) and wife Elizabeth. On a similar note, the Rega name was created, after the names of the two founders, Tony RElph and Roy GAndy, were put together.

Slightly further away from this path, but still close enough, is the name of Mark Levinson's new company, Daniel Hertz. As I wrote in the test of his Maria 350 amplifier, the designer has thus paid tribute to his parents - his father (Daniel) and his mother, whose maiden name was Hertz. In the subtext, it was also a reference to his roots and to his kinship with Heinrich Hertz, whom we know mainly from the abbreviation Hz which is a unit of frequency. To this list, let's add an abbreviation we all know, namely JBL (1946), formed from the name of its founder, James Bullough Lansing.

These types of names seem to remove the burden of meaning from the person of the owner, who is often also the designer, retaining something of a connection to his person and family. This takes the pressure off the owner, since the product is no longer signed with his name, no longer refers personally to him, yet retains a personal connection to him. These types of names would therefore be weaker in weight than those bearing the founders' names, but still strongly connected to their founders.

Another popular choice among audio companies is to refer in the name to the scope of the core business, technologies or to the type of material the company uses - the latter especially in the case of cables. After all, Siltech is a composite of the words "silver" and "technology", and Argento Audio is straightforwardly "silver". Pylon Audio, on the other hand, would indicate the sound coming from "pylons", that is, as the definition says, "towers with a rectangular base, raised in pairs and tapering upward", and in the case of Carbide Audio, it would be the main material used for anti-vibration feet, namely carbide (for the balls that go into the bearing).

By the way, 'audio' as a second part of the name occurs extremely often in our industry. But, it seems, only as an ornament. In common perception, Argento Audio is simply Argento, Avatar Audio is Avatar, Haiku-Audio is Haiku, and Ancient Audio is Ancient. This is also true of other names, to cite Mobile Fidelity Audio Lab, known as "Mobile," McIntosh Laboratory, referred to as "McIntosh", or Miyajima Laboratory - simply "Miyajima."

Of those listed above, Siltech and Argento would also be in yet another group, along with Audio Research and the Polish brands Linear Audio Research or Sinus Audio, but also - cited above - Siltech, McIntosh and Mijajima, as well as Audio Research Corporation. This would be a group of companies having 'Labs', 'Laboratory', 'Research', etc. in their names. These are companies whose names say that they are manufacturers attaching importance to laboratory tests, to measurements, to technical reliability. They are supposed to imply that the results are supported by objective - objective in the sense of "measurable" - test results. The most telling name from this group that I know of is the Japanese company Technical Brain.

There are many more examples of how a name shapes a company's image and how it implants certain ideas and perceptions about a product. After all, we haven't yet mentioned Franc Audio Accessories, which indicates the scope of the business (audio accessories), Divine Acoustics, whose name speaks of "divine" acoustics (sound), Pro Audio Bono jokingly alludes to the term pro publico bono, meaning "for the public good, for the good of the public", and Thunder Melody coining that with its products the sound will be "big" and "powerful", even "thunderous". Also humorous is the use of the letter 'i' in Lumin's name in place of the usual letter 'i', but with two 'horns', resembling those of a devil.

It's a wink of an eye to the customer, by definition - open-minded, self-centered and picky. Thus, it is somehow reserved for companies looking for an audience for their products not in the mass market, but rather in a niche. Even within the audiophile world, which is itself a niche. Sometimes, however, as with Lumin, it manages to step outside this bubble. And sometimes, as with the name of the Nagra company, a word completely incomprehensible to a French, German or Italian-speaking resident of Switzerland, and saying that "this thing will record sound," it is different - the name becomes.

However, such a strategy doesn't always work, and it's easy to cross a line that audiences will find ridiculous. And this is not forgiven in audio. You may remember that the Avatar Audio company used to be called Graj-End (referring to high-end), and its products were called GrajPudła and GrajKable? A cool idea, but one that goes perhaps too far in the direction of abstract humor. And audiophiles may have sense of humor, but it's deeply hidden. Even less fortunate was the name Biedaku (which refers in Polish to a poor man).

I don't know if you remember, but in the 1990s Mr. Florian Szcześniak was building tube amplifiers. Not wanting to get over the adoration that domestic audiophiles had for the OnGaku amplifier from Kondo (then still Audio Note Japan), he proposed his own version, many times cheaper, and having, as the builder claimed, similar sonic qualities to the Japanese original. Apparently, however, audiophiles saw nothing funny in this, because the product and the company quickly disappeared from the market.

Words, as I say, have power. Whether we assume that they are the means by which we think, and they organize our "event horizon", or they are acquired through learning and do not directly relate to our thinking structures. Therefore, the name of a company, including an audio company, is an important choice. This is because it will largely determine the trajectory along which the company will move.

But this is not an ironclad rule. For it seems to be even more important in that the name should be "consistent" with the designer and his vision of the world. That it should be the result of an understanding of myself and what I want to achieve. That it should come, in a word, from a love of what one does. An example? - Here you go: the album titles of Depeche Mode. They are all a bit "odd", sometimes difficult to understand and sometimes perverse. Gareth Jones, the sound engineer of four of the group's albums, says:

(…) The album's title is the opposite of how one might describe it. Violator - it sounds really dark. Rape is not something anyone would look for. After all, it's not like: "I'm going out so someone can rape me". A violation of carnality is a violent assault. It's interesting - maybe the point is that Martin and his team had a lot of fun with wordplay, turning the meaning of the emotions contained on the album upside down.

⸜ KEVIN MAY, DAVID McELROY, Halo. The Story Behind Depeche Mode’s Classic Album Violator, Grosvenor House Publishing Limited, Tlworth 2022, p. 227.

The thing is that the Depeche Mode band had absolute freedom in this kind of choices, no one imposed anything on them. They used this freedom by proposing more and more new things, which on common sense should not work. And yet - they worked. Both in terms of musical and image choices. Because the absolute certainty that we are doing something we love, and that we are doing it exactly as we want and as well as we can, can transcend everything else, even words. And let's hold on to that. ●

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» Companies cited in the article:

Porsche (1931), Hugo Boss (1924), Mark Levinson (1972), Bang & Olufsen (1925), Studer (1948), Harman Kardon (1956), Bowers & Wilkins (1966), Pass (1991), Studer (1948), Rogoz Audio (2007), Bodnar Audio (?), Dubiel Acoustics (1979), Struss (1996), White Bird (2009), Divaldi (2010), Krell Industries (1980), Dan D'Agostino Master Audio Systems (2009), Franco Serblin (2006), Sonus faber (1983), Spendor (1967), Harbeth (1977), Rega (1973), Daniel Hertz (2007), JBL (1946), Siltech (1982), Argento Audio (1991), Carbide Audio (2019), Avatar Audio (?), Haiku-Audio (2012), Ancient Audio (1995), Mobile Fidelity Audio Lab (1977), McIntosh Laboratory (1949), Miyajima Laboratory (1980), Audio Research Corporation (1970), Acoustic Research (1954), Linear Audio Research (2004), Sinus Audio (2016), Technical Brain (1979), Franc Audio Accessories (2008), Divine Acoustics (2003), Pro Audio Bono (2010), Thunder Melody (2019), Lumin (2013), Nagra (1951), Audio Note Japan (1979). ●

WOJCIECH PACUŁA
Chief editor