15 Things Nigerians Have Been Calling Wrongly

15 THINGS NIGERIANS HAVE BEEN CALLING THE WRONG NAME

People get away with different kinds of oral blunders everyday in Nigeria. Making a blunder of course is not a sin, in fact people would assume you are culturally alienated if you speak too much “correct grammar”. Few weeks ago I was at the reception of a popular radio station in the heart of Lagos island, and I heard an on-air personality (OAP) refer to a baby diaper as “pampers”. As awkward as this sounds it is a normal trend in this part of the world to mistaken a brand for a product. Over the years these oral blunders have become acceptable in our society, so much so that different generations have adopted the same vocabulary when describing these ‘products’. So consider that many terms we use every day like zippers, escalators, were in fact brand names even Heroin and kerosene believe it or not!

Apparently some brands have become generic nomenclatures for some product lines. So I have put together a list of products that Nigerians and to some extent the global village call wrongly…

·         MAGGI: looking for something to season your food? For most Nigerians food seasoning is synonymous with Maggi! Yet it is in fact the brand name for a stock cube which is just one product line that the company sells globally. There are other brands in this line Knorr, Royco, Ajinomoto, Vedan, Hunga etc.

·          Almost every child and mother is familiar with INDOMIE in fact most are probably oblivious of the fact that it is a brand of noodles made by Indofood originally from Indonesia. Yes it’s not made in Nigeria.

·         Even though you are more likely referring to a sausage roll, the first thing you ask for in traffic when you peep through your car window is GALA. The brand has been aggressively enforced to be the leading name in its line of products to the extent that it eclipsed all other.

·          Strangely enough PAMPERS is not only a brand name but like its other counterparts it is also not remotely Nigerian. It is from the stables of P&G who have many products in the marketplace. Indigenous diaper producers and manufacturers include Wemy Dr.Browns (the very first manufacturers of diapers in Nigeria), Bino baby choice etc

·         When Maclean toothpaste was originally released into Nigeria by GlaxoSmithKline plc in the 90s it was a best seller, since we didn’t have a standard brand of tooth-paste.

·         We all buy disinfectants for a variety of reasons but do we call it that? No, we are all used to asking for DETTOL which is a trade name for a line of hygiene products manufactured by Reckitt Benckiser.

·         Have you ever heard of anyone asking for hook and loop fasteners? No, they are more likely to ask for VELCRO. George de Mastreal is the little known inventor who used matted dog hair in creating a globally used product.

·            VASELINE a registered brand of unilever, a brand of petroleum jelly originally produced in the USA.

·         The portable audio cassette player is internationally known as a WALKMAN. This is the trademark of Sony and is just another thing that perhaps most people don’t realize.

·         The DISCMAN , like the WALKMAN, is another Sony trademark that slipped into our lingua franca, because some would consider ‘portable compact disc’ a mouthful

·         There are some trademarks which are commonly used as generic terms. Jacuzzi would be one. JACUZZI is a brand of hot tubs and bath tubs; they also make mattresses and toilets, so you should be clearer the next time you ask someone to “join you in the Jacuzzi”.

·         PING PONG is also another mistaken brand name. It is a brand of table tennis products yet the word is used interchangeably to describe a game of table tennis. Creatively the brand was named ‘Ping Pong’ due to the sounds the ball makes when it hits the table

·         BIKINI. At one time this was a trademark.  This form of swim wear was first banned in many areas in Africa, North America and Asia for being too revealing…of late this two piece swim female swimsuit is now everywhere and the word ‘bikini’ is now generic.

·         GOOGLE does not entirely belong to this line of products, still it is worthy of mention. We do not just use the brand as a generic name for search engines, we have also verbalized it. So we say things like “I will Google your name” or “Google it”.

·         Am sure once or twice during our trips to a boutique or the clothes section of a shopping mall, we have asked for ‘POLO’ which is a brand of easy wear shirts with collar. Apparently, the proper nomenclature for that range of product is “Collar T-shirts”. Yes a mouthful!

What’s interesting is that the marketing of these products has been done phenomenally such that the brand becomes a functional part of everyday language. The trademarked brands, new and old, have taken on generic usage of their own. When the language becomes so deeply engrained into the minds of the people the product actually becomes indigenous, subconsciously.

So remember, not all Diapers are pampers and not all tooth pastes are ‘MacLean’, also there is no such thing as, “baby wipers” they are baby wipes.