Buy a word

28th of February, 2008 (Last modified: 28th of February, 2008) Håvard Links , Randomness ,

You can buy pretty much anything you like these days -- even words. If I'd had any sort of imagination or even a hint of creativity I would've bought a word like serendipity like Pamela did, or Caramba in honour of Bart. I ended up buying Ceres, after the Roman goddess of agriculture, and gave it to my brothers company, Ceres Engineering Ltd.. They're not doing anything even remotely close to agriculture, but rather creating and innovation.

In Roman mythology, Ceres was the goddess of growing plants (particularly cereals) and of motherly love. Her name derives from the Proto-Indo-European root "ker", meaning "to grow", which is also the root for the words "create" and "increase".

The second word I bought was backpack, which I gave to Jason Fried, the company founder of 37Signals. Not sure why, just seemed like a good idea to give it to him rather than having someone else buying it and sell it for a hefty sum later on.

John Gruber bought Fireball (go figure) and Jiminy. What did you buy?

3 Responses to “Buy a word”

  1. Pamela Mar 6th, 2008 at 18:37

    But why didn’t you buy yourself a word? Not creative? I don’t buy it. You were very creative with the words you bought for others!

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  2. Håvard Mar 8th, 2008 at 17:59

    After buying the second word I realized that buying these words is probably the closest thing I’ll ever get to light a fire to my money. Probably the worst waste of money ever!

    A great concept though, they sure have found a clever way to earn an insane amount of money with very little effort. Kudos!

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  3. andreas Mar 10th, 2008 at 13:24

    Dæven håvard! Ny bloggpost, gratulere. Va jo telåme næstn på kantn t å kunne tolkes som litt usæriøst å.
    Synd æ ikke klarte å produsere en særiøs kommentar på engelsk… Får ta d på neste bloggpost…en gang ut i august 2011 eller nå sånt

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