Herbie, KITT and Vanish are more than cute and clever nicknames. They are the monikers of automobiles forever etched into our psyche — and they are not alone. The onscreen Volkswagen Beetle, Pontiac Trans Am and Aston Martin V12 Vanquish are representative of thousands of less famous vehicles that dot driveways around the globe.
There are two reasons why people give a personal term of endearment to an inanimate object such as a car, says Victor Thiessen, a sociologist with the Atlantic Research Data Centre at Dalhousie University in Halifax.
First, there is the desire to proclaim ownership. A uniquely named vehicle means “this car is mine and mine alone,” he says. “It belongs to me.”
A name also puts a personalized stamp on the vehicle, even if that name is never shared. The mere fact of entitling a car gives the car its own personal identity, an identity that has specific meaning only to the owner. In some cases, the name is a shared memory, joke or experience between two or more people who drive the car and so the name, like the vehicle itself, becomes a bond.
The second reason for giving a car a name is to distinguish it from all others on the road, says Thiessen. There may be thousands of Ford Escorts or Pontiac Sunbirds on the road but there is only one Muffin and one Buckaroo.
In sociological terms, the desire to name something is linked to conspicuous consumption, a term coined by Thorstein Veblen in his treatise The Theory of the Leisure Class. Veblen argued that individuals with money and means acquire goods and services as a show of their status. Veblen’s book was written in 1899, but his theory is relevant for car namers in the 21st century.
Naming a car, says Thiessen, is the same as painting your door a different colour from all the other row houses on your block. It makes that house stand out. It’s a way of saying, “Look at me. I’m special.” The same motivation lurks, often unconsciously, behind naming objects of value such as automobiles.
In a label-conscious age, naming your car is also a reflection of a marketing-saturated society, says Mark Gascoigne, managing director of Trampoline Creative Inc., a branding agency based in Halifax. “From a branding perspective, this makes complete sense.”
Indeed, he notes, giving cars cute names starts before someone ever buys a vehicle. It starts in the manufacturers’ plant. “In an attempt to find names that form an immediate sense of connection, thousands will have been considered and discarded and hundreds of people in the target group were tested before a name [such as] Echo, Matrix or Escape was decided upon.”
The bonding phenomenon, Gascoigne says, is more likely to apply to mid- and lower-priced cars. “As you move into the luxury classes, where individuality takes a back seat to status, the names are replaced by numbers [such as] Mercedes’ E320 or [the] Lexus SC 430. You can bet that not many CEOs behind the wheel of a BMW 7 Series call their six-figure ride Zippy.”
Nova Scotia psychologist Brad McRae, author of Negotiating and Influencing Skills: The Art of Creating and Claiming Value, suspects that the art of car naming may be a youthful endeavour. “Once we have children and have given them names, there is much less of a tendency to name a car,” he surmises.
Until then, however, the name calling seems to be widespread. Indeed, there is even a Web site, www.carbirths.com, where car owners can register the name of their vehicle along with its “birth date,” photos and details of “momentous occasions.” The site, which does not charge for the registration or posting service, also sends a birthday e-mail reminder to owners and allows them to post stories of their well-named vehicles on the site for others to read. To date, there aren’t a lot of takers, but this may be conspicuous consumption working in reverse.
Naming a car also increases the odds that the car will be remembered years down the road for it now has an identity, a brand and a label all its own. For most drivers, cars are rites of passage and the memories are treasured: the first car they ever drove, the first car they ever bought, the first “nice” car they ever bought.
Indeed, says McRae, “I named my first car George. George was a ’63 green VW Bug that I kept through thick and thin for 10 years. He was very funky and very reliable.
“I still have a great deal of affection for that car.”
FROM CANADA.COM
