Move over BARF dog food–there’s another unintentionally funny brand name out there.
Have you heard of Putzmeister?
This German company markets machines for pouring and placing concrete, but the name suggests something else. A quick peek in my beloved Joys of Yiddish book explains “putz” rhymes with nuts and is a vulgar slang term for “penis” and term of contempt for “fool, ass, jerk.” The book warns the term should not be used around women and children because it is considerably more offensive than “schmuck”.
Pair “Putz” with “Meister”, which my Langenscheidt’s German Dictionary says means “boss, champion, master,” and you end up with a brand that means “champion fool” or “ass boss”.
But wait–it turns out “Putz” is a German word (in German, “Putz” rhymes with “foots”). The German meaning is not so vulgar, but is still confusing. The German word means “ornament, finery, trimming.” Hmmm, “champion of frou-frou” doesn’t seem to fit with the image of heavy construction.
Putzmeister seems like a fine company, however, they are a victim of a truism of branding from Merriam’s Guide to Naming: not every name can travel. Take the time to check to see if your brand name means something else in foreign languages, or you might up being unintentionally funny.
What’s *really* amusing is the fact that your link to the PutMeister website has the wrong format.
This engineer found the Putzmeister site pretty interesting though and a couple of seconds work will get you a page which tells you that “Putzmeister” was adopted in 1963 and means “master plastering”; even the mighty Google translates “plaster master” into “Putz Meister”.
I imagine the alliterative “Plaster Master” would be more acceptable to the American ear, but here in the UK it could be slang for someone who drinks a lot, someone who is good at setting broken legs and so on
I assume you’ve seen the Urban Dictionary definition of “merriam”? That’s quite close to “ass” too…
Martin:
Thanks for the comment. I hadn’t seen the Urban Dictionary listing, but by way of defense, Merriam is my married name.
Regarding your German analysis, brands are consumed by the public in an instant. First associations, not dictionary definitions are what matter. Few people are linguists willing to dig through foreign dictionaries for arcane meanings. Ask most Americans what Putz means, and they will not envision a plaster craftsman. If they did look into the dictionary for plaster (though why they would go for plaster when the company is in the concrete business is anyone’s guess), they would find “plasterer” translated as “Gipser” or “Stukkateur”, and “plaster” translated as “pflaster”.
Long and short of it–Putzmeister is still a funny brand name. Plaster Master would also be a funny suggestion that I could drink to.
My mom used to work for them in southeastern Wisconsin. She (and everyone else I heard refer to the company) pronounced the company name with a short-u sound (PUHTZ-my-ster) instead of with the long-u sound, so I presume that’s the standard pronunciation even inside of the company in the US.
In spite of lots of German ancestry, to us in SE Wisconsin, putz (short-u sound again) was usually a verb, and almost always used with “around” to mean goofing off, dawdling, or as a way of describing taking time doing unimportant things. My dad would tell me and my siblings to “Quit putzing around!”, and yeah, I say that to my kids, too. (Oh well.) I suppose you could equate this literally to the phrase “dick around”.
I grew up in the Midwest, too, and have plenty of German ancestry. We, too, used to “putz around” and get yelled at for it. I know “putzen” is said like the word “put” as in “put that down” with “zen”. The company, despite its funny name, is extremely well regarded. Frankly, I think Bucyrus (also in your state) is a funny name.
In the same state? Bucyrus(-Erie, at the time) and Putzmeister were in the same *city*: Sturtevant, WI.
Hey “m”–
Could Sturtevant, Wisconsin be the funny name capital of the world? The town name is kinda funny, too. Thanks for pointing this out! Bravo.