Viking Manbags

It is amazing where spirals of procrastination lead to. Reading something blatantly non-work-related I came across the word "douchebaggery", which made me amused and bemused. To me the word sounds awkward, but I do see the need for an abstract noun for this fun American common noun which differs slightly from the British "wanker" and "wankiness". Having thought that something a bit smoother than "douchebaggery" must be possible, I checked the expanding universe of cyberspace, but found nothing.

The word sounds etymologically slightly weird, so I checked where "bag" came from. I assumed it would be French as the word baggage sounds it and as it is easy to picture the French inventing something so frivolous like a bag. But I was wrong and identity of the first bag-bearers blew my mind: the Vikings. Yes, bag comes from Old Norse, meaning it was not poncey Frenchmen that invaded England armed with handbags, but the fearsome Vikings did. Just to blow all stereotypes, the Vikings even gave the French the word baggage.
A manbag, therefore,being a gift from the manly Vikings, is the most manly accessory one could sport apart from a horned helmet, a claymore or double-axe.


Damn, that means that being a "douchebag" is a bit manly after all.
It means that if one wanted to go for etymological faux-authenticity "douchebaggery" would be out of the question. The two suffices of Norse origin that make adjectives, verbs or common nouns into abstract nouns are -lock (wedlock) and -red (kindred), but they both sound terrible with douchebag ("douchebaglock" and "douchebagred").
So the best bet is to go with good old Old English ones. Bagginess is a real word, but it is a bit too removed semantically from bag to make "douchebagginess" not awkward sounding. In a similar vein, "douchebagging" is also awkward as "to bag" means to gain possession and who would want to gain possession of a douche? 
The established suffix is ery, which is -er + y, and generally represents a place or an office (bakery), which when used on douchebag makes it sound the official role of a douchebag, so "douchebagship", "douchebaghood" and "douchebagdom" could be alternatives. On second thought, I think I quite like the word "douchebaggery" after all...

Would a Runx by any other name would drive as averagely?

Quo usque tandem abutere, Mitsubishisan, patientia nostra?

When the traffic is standing fast, while one's over-caffeinated mind is running fast, one may be unfortunate enough to get an instant revelation, while involuntarily reading the brand and model of the preceding car: most car names make no sense at all.

The problem is the more one notices it and asks why (the bastardised Shakespeare quote, say), the more one gets annoyed at the probably over-paid consultant that thought that Pajero would be a good car name (hence the bastardised Cicero quote).

This is in fact what happened to me.

To my despair nobody I know has noticed or cared, but to my delight many Internet-wrights (or whatever the term is) have compiled pages upon pages of worst named cars --- the aforementioned "Pajero", means wanker in Spanish, hence it is sold as a "shogun" in Europe. 

I greatly recommend wasting some time reading such sites: did you know that there is a car called a Capuccino?

My pet peeve is the pig Latin used for many car names. I can safely assume a direct Latin-Japanese dictionary must not exist. Toyota, in particular loves Lapanese (Japanese Latin). Caelica means heavenly, so the Celica is an “a” away from being heavenly? Latin and current romance languages have genders and cars are strictly feminine, for a reason unbeknown to me. In Italian the giant panda is masculine, while the fiat Panda is feminine, a full stop (punto) is masculine while a fiat punto is feminine. So dear Toyotasan, it is not a Camry sportivo, but a Camry sportiva. Ten points for the Celica not being a Celicus or Celicum; but minus ten for the prius (neuter, prior is what they were looking for) and minus twenty for declaring that the plural in English of prius is prii, instead of priora or priuses, as it is a loanword after all.

Bad grammar for one-word names apart, the meaning of the words make little sense. Supposedly, the manufactures explain by post-rationalising their choice. Why is a fiat punto is a full stop? Why is a Daihatsu Sirion a burner? Why is a Hyundai i3987654321 a boring series of numbers with a preceding “i”? What the hell is a runx?

I drive a Nissan Pulsar SRV and I can safely say it does not drive like a dead star.

I must admit that giving a name to an average car must be a nightmare, but is it really that hard??