.
I had need of something to write with yesterday and asked a young receptionist if I could borrow his biro. He looked quizzically at me and, realising he didn’t know what I was talking about, I asked to borrow his pen.
It made me think how many brand names have entered our everyday language. Just a cursory thought is enough to remind us that the words hoover, astroturf, coke, formica, thermos and portakabin, for example, no longer represent only a brand but the generic products themselves.
We usually refer to musak when we hear the music being played in supermarkets and other places, to velcro regardless as to its make, and xerox, tannoy and dictaphone without thought to the manufacturer of the machine we are using. Durex has one meaning in this country and another in places such as Australia where it is a brand of sticky tape which, over here is often referred to as sellotape.
Look more closely into the subject of genericised brand names and trademarks and you realise just how many there are: aspirin, butterscotch, cellophane, escalator, linoleum, jacuzzi, frisbee, scotch-tape, frigidaire, portaloo and tippex are just a few instances. All these and the other names mentioned above have been registered in one way or another.
Mr László Bíró, the inventor of the ballpoint pen in 1938, had no idea that his name might come to refer to all ballpoint pens, at least to my generation. But his is an example of how a trademark or the brand name of a very good and useful invention, often copied or improved by others, becomes generic.
And, in so doing, often enters our everyday language.
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I had need of something to write with yesterday and asked a young receptionist if I could borrow his biro. He looked quizzically at me and, realising he didn’t know what I was talking about, I asked to borrow his pen.
It made me think how many brand names have entered our everyday language. Just a cursory thought is enough to remind us that the words hoover, astroturf, coke, formica, thermos and portakabin, for example, no longer represent only a brand but the generic products themselves.
We usually refer to musak when we hear the music being played in supermarkets and other places, to velcro regardless as to its make, and xerox, tannoy and dictaphone without thought to the manufacturer of the machine we are using. Durex has one meaning in this country and another in places such as Australia where it is a brand of sticky tape which, over here is often referred to as sellotape.
Look more closely into the subject of genericised brand names and trademarks and you realise just how many there are: aspirin, butterscotch, cellophane, escalator, linoleum, jacuzzi, frisbee, scotch-tape, frigidaire, portaloo and tippex are just a few instances. All these and the other names mentioned above have been registered in one way or another.
Mr László Bíró, the inventor of the ballpoint pen in 1938, had no idea that his name might come to refer to all ballpoint pens, at least to my generation. But his is an example of how a trademark or the brand name of a very good and useful invention, often copied or improved by others, becomes generic.
And, in so doing, often enters our everyday language.
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