British Airways' truly misguided slogan for their Terminal 5 opening is depicted here, in a pretty sorry state of repair for Day 1:
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Yes, it's day 13 of the Heathrow Terminal 5 baggage debacle, and we have yet to receive our luggage nor hear any word from British as to its location. Know where to go? I'll tell them where.

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So I happened upon a bottle of Bubo Pinot Grigio today, and recoiled in horror. Hmm, I thought to myself, doesn’t "bubo" mean suppurating (not Super 8-ing) wound or something like that? I checked the bottle, where the anodyne copy explained that "bubo" is Latin for "owl."
I didn’t buy it, literally or figuratively. So after numerous fruitless circuits around Whole Foods,¹ I took my bag of groceries home (meatloaf tonight, if you’re curious) and ran to my trusty New Oxford American Dictionary.² And indeed, I was pretty damn close: It’s "a swollen, inflamed lymph node in the armpit or groin."
So I’m just wondering about the thought process that led to the selection of Bubo as the name for wine. Was a Latin dictionary the only one handy that day? Did no one check to see if the word had any meaning in English? I just ran it through Google and the very first hit was to the Wikipedia entry, which link you don’t even need to click on to see immediately that it means "a swelling of the lymph nodes, found in an infection such as bubonic plague, gonorrhea, tuberculosis or syphilis." L'chaim indeed! Makes the cat pee aroma identified as a characteristic of certain sauvignon blancs sound positively enticing!
Listen, your product name can have a suggestive and evocative meaning in a dead language, and on that basis make a great trademark, but that's all worth nothing if the mark means something completely disgusting in English.
Bottom line for me is that if you’re offering me a cool glass of Bubo,³ I think I’m going to pass.
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¹ Here I’m being literal. We live in the goddamn apple capital of the world, yet apples cost, at a minimum in this area, $1.99/lb. And then they supersize the damn things so each apple is three quarters of a pound. And the organic ones? A cool $2.99/lb. I’ll go to Costco, thanks.
²Skillfully edited, of course, by Erin McKean.
³I long ago prosecuted a trademark application for the mark MONKEY RIVER for soft drinks, and had nightmares about what the phrase "a nice cold Monkey River" might mean.
Exhibit A: Musical group Cracker.
Exhibit B: Musical performer Uncle Kracker.
Apparently they can and do coexist.
Discuss.²
¹Witco
Chem. Co. v. Whitfield Chem. Co., 418 F.2d 1403, 1405, 164
U.S.P.Q. 43, 44-45 (C.C.P.A. 1969), aff’g 153 U.S.P.Q. 412 (T.T.A.B. 1967)
²Why the heck, you ask? I saw a song by Cracker on XM Radio and my mind just started whirring . . .