We could spend all evening coming up with punning names we've seen on hairdressers and chip shops but I'm not sure that's what you had in mind. However I will throw in an imaginary one. The haulage firm the keyboardist in Phoenix Nights is called "Sweet Truck Haul". Brilliant.

That still beats the 2 other naming trends: three-letter alphabet soup, and meaningless latinate constructs like "lucent".

Oh, here's a wierd one: "Yellow Rat Bastard", the clothing store.

You have a great point about other company name trends, Julian. But surely such uncouth company names are only further evidence of the erosion of civility in today's world. It's different, I'll grant you that, but change doesn't always mean progress. I consider this sort of thing about as "innovative" as a sudden increase of rudeness from the minimum wage clerks behind cash registers in stores and fast food resturants today.

This isn't a company name, but is a fine example of civility erosion. Arrogant Bastard Ale.

RK Jones

Greystoke: I think civility erosion's temporary. Less like it's being discard. More like, in the age of the scientific "prove it" mindset, it has been temporarily put aside as a sort of mass experiment. People didn't see the need for it, or the reason, and tradition wasn't reason enough - so they dropped it. Much like teenagers often do. I think that, comparably, society will grow out of this, having learned the reason for civility. So you could even see the uncivility as progress of a sort.

Julian, just to play devil's advocate, are you saying that history repeating itself is progress?

Though I agree or perhaps only hope you are right in thinking that there will be a time when the case for civility is so obvious that no one will dispute it, or find much amusement in saying ugly things for shock value.

Regarding Arrogant Bastard Ale, It is hardly unusual to see a "bad attitude" portrayed on bottles of beer or other alcoholic beverages. Take Unibroue, they have such lines as Maudite (curse) which pictures a demon not unlike the one on the label of Arrogant Bastard Ale. I note that Unibroue's lines all date from no earlier than 1995, yet such beer labels seem to cater to what one expects to find on a bottle of booze. Or are XXX, Rot Gut and beer labels with skulls and crossed bones on them purely a product of cartoons? If such

If such labels are a recent phenomenon does that support the idea that civility is eroding? And if booze has had labeling with bad attitudes for a long time, would that necessarily dispute it?
But the point of the post was that where corporations would in the past have had conservative names now have names that are "in your face" not whether products that have in the past been common in the underworld have manners to suit that habitat.

Greystoke asks: "Julian, just to play devil's advocate, are you saying that history repeating itself is progress?"

It's not repeating itself. The progress is the transformation of tradition into empirical knowledge. Tradition is lesser in value because while (with luck) you can "know", you can't "know what you know", or "know why you know". Tradition is functionally more similar to instinct, than to understanding.

In The Hague yesterday I saw a clothes shop called "Mode d'emploi", which for non-francophones out there means literally "method of employment", or more colloquially "Operating Instructions"!!!

Oh, and entirely off topic here, but chalk another one up for gun control - a guy 3 doors down was murdered on Wednesday night, and I live in a GOOD neighbourhood!!! Isn't he just sooo much better off since he couldn't protect himself!

The company names that irritate me are all the "xxCO" names that became trendy 2 or so decades back. Westinghouse Air Brake became WABCO. Atlantic Richfield became "ARCO" (as opposed to pizzicato?).

Looks like companies are following the same trend as music acts. Can anyone imagine one from the 1950s or even the 1960s calling itself P. Diddy, Alice In Chains, or Pearl Jam?

The names that for some unaccountable reason get my goat are those who think it is cool and trendy to chuck in capital letters in the Middle of the word. John Peel was doing the charity spot this morning on Radio 4 and was waffling on about a charity, which the prresenter was at pains to tell us was "

The WellChild Trust, that is one word, Wellchild with a capital C in the middle

I have a photo somewhere of a van emblazoned with the phrase "Stiff Nipples Air-Conditioning Company".

It's probably a hoax, but it certainly lives up to its caption "Best Company Name Ever"