Comments on: Remembering Aaron Swartz (and Infogami)

By: Staplovich

Staplovich — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 16:22:33 +0000

I was only vaguely aware of Swartz before reading this. Interestingly, I had no idea how to pronounce "Infogami" at first and, in my head, rendered it like "info gamey", with the stress on the first syllable. I didn't pick up on -gami as related to origami at all. I'm still not sure which syllable one would normally stress; in-FAH-gami sounds, to my ear, like one is trying to mock a high-born English accent: "Will you take tea, mum?" "Yes, of course! But do give me a minute, I simply MUST check for updates on Infogami!" (I'm picturing the Dowager Countess from Downton Abbey, by the way.)

By: mollymooly

mollymooly — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 12:55:20 +0000

@Dw:

Equally, the spelling In-FAH-gomee is reveals that the speaker has a North American accent with the father-bother merger.

No, it tells us that about the transcriber (Aaron Swartz), not the speaker (Trevor Blackwell).

By: Ethan

Ethan — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 02:11:49 +0000

Not that it matters from the perspective of connotations carried along in English by the word "origami", but I find it a bit ironic that the "-gami" part of origami means paper, implying that "infogami" might mean a paper with information on it. But information on paper is presumably exactly what infogami/Reddit was trying to get away from.

By: Rubrick

Rubrick — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 00:20:14 +0000

A great strength of brand names which relate in no obvious way to their products, e.g. Google or Apple, is that they're relatively age-proof. Names which are too descriptive have a way of becoming quaintly anachronistic down the road: see American Telephone & Telegraph. A remarkable exception, though, is IBM, whose primary concern continues to be international business machines some 87 years after adopting its current name.

By: Theodore

Theodore — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 21:28:00 +0000

I'm surprised that "verbability" is considered a desirable trait. I would think that leads more readily to genericization of trademarks.

By: Chris Waters

Chris Waters — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 20:54:21 +0000

Interesting. I do have the father-bother merger, but I use a quite different vowel sound for the final 'o' in "info". If I try to say "infogami" as if it were related to origami, I pronounce it the way I pronounce "info", but if I say it as if it were related to "monogamy", I instinctively switch to "ah" for the 'o'.

By: Dw

Dw — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 20:29:44 +0000

The pronunciation spelling of /gɑ/ as "gar" is a tell that Palmer speaks a non-rhotic British dialect. Equally, the spelling In-FAH-gomee is reveals that the speaker has a North American accent with the father-bother merger.

By: Dave K

Dave K — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 20:01:46 +0000

I also hadn't heard of Swartz or Infogami until reading stories about him over the past couple of days, and I, too, assumed that it was pronounced like origami, with the stress on the "ga". It never occurred to me until reading this post that it might be pronounced "in-FAH-gomee".

By: David L

David L — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 18:40:15 +0000

I'd never heard of Infogami until reading about Swartz (never heard of him either, for that matter), but my first instinct on seeing the word was that it was a portmanteau of information and origami, and pronounced accordingly.

InFOGamy, on the monogamy model, seems like an infelicitous choice — fog wrapped in infamy doesn't exactly have positive connotations, business-wise.