Semantic Compositions: On the apparent common etymology of "Verizon" and "Amtrak"

January 2009

May 08, 2007

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On the apparent common etymology of "Verizon" and "Amtrak"

Keeping up the theme of progressively dropping greater hints about the major upcoming change around here, SC would like today to direct readers' attention to three things: 1) the lexical sub-geniushood of the folks responsible for coining "Verizon", 2) the similarly sub-genius nature of the folks who brought you "Amtrak", and 3) how these two organizations conspire to afflict SC mightily.

Verizon is alleged to be a portmanteau derived from "veritas" and "horizon". Per the link (to an official corporate page), the people behind it cannot distinguish between common nouns and proper names; hence the statement in the link that "[T]he root names for Verizon are "veritas" and "horizon." This is nonsense, of course, or at least a very strained back-formation; there's no obvious connection between the company and either of those things, just as "Altria" isn't a derivative of the Latin word "altus" (except perhaps in that strange world where pseudorandom combinations of terms from astronomy and physics are inherently desirable names). The same people who tried this stunt with the Verizon coinage have more recently tried to claim that "Idearc" is: 1) a plausible word pronounced as though it stands for "Idea Arc" (and not as though a hypercorrecting New Yorker had gotten hung up on the word "idea"), and 2) the best idearc anyone could come up with for the name of a new company. Based on a 6-hour ordeal yesterday where your host's $60/month "broadband" connection entirely failed to operate, SC has finally come to appreciate that they might be telling the truth about the "horizon" part, as in "He's ready to punt his Verizon-labeled Blackberry over the horizon".

The ridiculousness of the Verizon portmanteau pales by comparison to the choice of "Amtrak", though, which is supposed to stand for "National Railroad Passenger Corporation". OK, that's not entirely fair -- it actually is a portmanteau of "American" and "track", as in "we are run by the American government" and "we like to have trains sit on a track for 4 hours at a time without moving an inch."

At this point, it should be abundantly clear that SC spent 6 hours on an Amtrak train yesterday, 4 hours of which involved total immobility due to the train breaking down, and that he was unable to do anything productive due to the wholesale failure of his Verizon-provided Internet connection. Your host apologizes for the rant, and will wrap it up by tying it in with what it is hinting at; like the genuinely brilliant mind behind Despair, Inc., says, "If we don't take care of the customer, maybe they'll stop bugging us". Amtrak and Verizon have spent a long time trying to get SC to stop bugging them.

May 08, 2007 in Miscellaneous Musings | Permalink

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