WHAT’S IN A NAME?
Naming a company isn’t like picking out baby names. There are no books with titles like “A Treasury of 5,000 Favorite Company Names”. And then there’s that trademark thing…
So there was no getting around it… when it came time to pick a name for our little Shopping Mega-Site slash Online Community, we needed something truly unique.
So how did we settle on “Sonsi”?
Funny you should ask. The reactions haven’t always been what we expected.
One fashionable gal of our acquaintance opined that it sounds like the name of a spa. “A really elegant spa,” she quickly added. Perhaps she had seen the look on our faces.
While we all know Sonsi is a fine place for whiling away the hours, we’re not quite prepared to tout our site as a vacation spot — at least, not yet.
Another friend on whom we tried out the name said it made her think of “fancy.” She was getting warmer.
Where did the name come from?
People weren’t shy about speculating. Was it a fancy cocktail popular in the go-go ’80s? In an old black-and-white comedy, a pet name that millionaire with the heavy foreign accent calls his mink-wrapped girlfriend?
All good guesses. Wrong… but points awarded for imagination.
Ava Jones, designer of Pheline, had a nice take:
“When I hear the name, it evokes for me sensuality, beauty and sexiness and style… the name and the fluidity of the name, it just says beauty.”
Our thoughts exactly.
In truth, it’s an old Scots word meaning strong and healthy, a woman having pleasing curves-curvaceous. A woman thus described is one any Scotsman deserving of his kilt would hale as “a fine strapping lassie.”
Traditionally, the spelling is S-O-N-S-I-E (we dropped the final “e”). At a traditional Burns Supper, a popular event where true Scots celebrate their national poet on his birthday, the custom is to greet the arrival of the haggis, Scotland’s national pudding dish, with a long poetical address that begins, “Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o’ the puddin-race!”
And good enough for a national dish is good enough for us.
At 2010 Full Figured Fashion Week, we premiered our new name to a larger public. While the meaning may have been elusive, the sound was infectious. The conversation was soon buzzing with “Sonsi-riffic” and “Sonsi-licious”. That last one we had a hand in ourselves when we introduced the official cocktail of Sonsi-nistas everywhere — the Sonsi-tini And isn’t it about time full-figured gals had a drink all their own?
So, during these hottest days of summer, why not mix yourself a refreshing Sonsi-tini (recipe at the link above) and find a spot of shade where you can contemplate what Sonsi means to you.
We’d love to hear your thoughts below…
