What's in a name?

A "name" of this "band" is our pictogram . This very presentation of the name, electronically, conveys more of the names meaning than the example being presented as the name. Certainly more than any utterance.

The name conveys a notion. It is not really a specific image and it is certainly not the sound of a particular pronunciation. That is to say, euphemistically speaking, these three symbols collectively represent the idea of the work in the same way as, in Platos' cave metaphor for knowledge and conciousness, the shadow is related to the object that casts it . No more and no less.

None the less, because we live in a world where we learn to hear and speak thought before we learn to read and write thought (certainly before we master thought- if we ever master thought), this band, which advocates thought, needed an aural equivalent of its quintessentially pictographic representation. While this flys in the face of our desire to keep the meaning of the name uncorrupted we are prepared to make a concession. A singular perfection being unattainable, the only adequate compromise was to use various phonetic spellings that suggest a number of possible expressions and interpretations that consistently evoke the totality of the metasymbol .

The name of this venture may be spelled (sunz-uv-a-lee-en-tek-naw-loh-je). It may also be spelled (sunz-uph-ale-e-n-tek-nowl-edge-e). Or even (sontz-uf-aie-lean-tek-gnaw-ler-gee) The different spellings suggest possible regional inflections that may appear throughout the speaking world. We prefer none over any other. The same is essentially true for the pictoglyphs. The images may change as long as the meaning is maintained. Actually for the name to convey our meaning, the images MUST change.

This pictoglyph has been the name of this work from its inception. In fact, without this name, this work would not exist.

Such is the power of names.

This is not a reaction to and has nothing to do with " Prince " , or  
" O)+> " (as seen on Oprah) or whatever euphemism he responds to because this is not an attempt to redefine a public persona. This is all the persona you're going to get out of us, unless "we", "all", see the merit in doing otherwise.

We are courteously provoking an active assessment of the relationship between a thought, a representation of thought, a presentation of that representation and the subsequent dillution of meaning. It just makes for 'good' business sense.

This is the abridged version of my "On the Need for Overstating the Name of this Product" published in 1994.

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