Now everyone acts like the name does the trick. From here cries the creature of politically correct language, an invention of roof designers who do not want to face the complex task of changing reality from the ground up. The idea of ??the magical unrealism of creative naming is that if the name does the thing, the how no longer does. Feijóo tried it by renaming the old crime of sedition des-co (constitutional disloyalty), but he only transformed an investiture into a “motion of censure against a government in office”, in the words of the always sharp Aitor Esteban.
Brands are another thing. The history of advertising is full of campaigns designed to reinforce a name change prompted by business decisions. Each case has its own circumstances. A quarter of a century ago, a popular cleaning product that featured an alopecia with jaundice on the label starred in the “Now Mister Proper se llama Don Limpio” campaign. Now two months ago Elon Musk, who still sports a good tuft, surprised the world by announcing that Twitter would be called X.
X is an unknown. It can designate a pornographic film, a kiss in a letter, an election choice, a mistake, Christ, ten Romans, a crossroads or a canceled text (as in Edgar Allan Poe’s delightful typographic story X-ing a paragraph). Since Twitter is part of the global conversation, communication professionals are often called upon to do so. Calling it just Ics sounds ambiguous to them, so some continue to call it Twitter, others opt for “X, the old Twitter” and still others say “X, the new Twitter”.
To all of them, remind them that forty years of Franco’s regime did not get us Barcelonans to call the Diagonal or the Gran Via by the names that appeared on the official plaques.
