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Retronym

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A retronym is a new name for an object or concept to differentiate the original form or version of it from a more recent form or version. The original name is most often augmented with an adjective (rather than being completely displaced) to account for later developments of the object or concept itself. Much retronymy is driven by advances in technology.

Examples of retronyms are "acoustic guitar" (coined when electric guitars appeared), World War I (called the "Great War" or just the "World War" until World War II) and analog watch to distinguish from a digital watch.

The word retronym also refers to an acronym constructed after the fact (a backronym), such as Perl. It is also used to refer to a word formed by reversing the spelling of another word, e.g., mho from ohm.

Typically, the original use of an adjective to describe a particular variant of an object is purely compositional, as in "acoustic guitar", but gradually over time it becomes a collocation, a name or technical term in its own right with additional nuances, greater specificity and general but implicit agreement on it as the appropriate term versus alternate descriptions of the original type. The main exceptions to this have to do with ownership, such as a trademark owner adding words to an existing product name or brand to create differentiated names for new variants of a product, which thus enjoy the status of a name immediately upon release of the product range.

Word history

The term retronym was coined by Frank Mankiewicz in 1980 and popularized by William Safire in The New York Times.

In 2000, The American Heritage Dictionary (4th edition) became the first major dictionary to include the word retronym.

Examples in various fields

Consumer products

• The usage of "Classic" may be derived from a famous retronym: the relaunch of Coca-Cola as "Coca-Cola Classic" after the failure of what is now called the New Coke recipe change. When Apple began selling new touch-screen variants of its iPod music player in 2007, the original form-factor iPod was renamed iPod Classic to be more easily distinguished from other iPod product lines.
• In the early 2000s, liquid dish detergent became available as a concentrate, allowing a bottle of the same size to be used to wash more (or dirtier) dishes. The common nomenclature for such products was "ultra" strength (e.g., Ultra-Dawn). Some consumers prefer the original (and generally cheaper) formulas, which in some cases are still available in a re-labeled "non-ultra" form.

Art and literature

The designation of a period or of an artistic or literary style as "classical" is invariably a retronym; such a designation is given only retroactively, when the heritage of the period in question has been judged and found worthy by a later culture.

Careless use of retronyms in historical fiction can cause anachronisms. For example, referring to the "First World War" in a piece set in 1935 would be incorrect — "The Great War" or "14-18 War" were commonly employed descriptions prior to World War II. Anachronistic use of a retronym could also betray a modern document forgery (such as a description of the First Battle of Bull Run before the second had taken place).

Politics and government

• U.S. President George H.W. Bush was ubiquitously known, both during and following his administration, as "George Bush" and "President Bush". However, when his son George W. Bush was elected president in 2000, the elder Bush became retroactively known as "George H.W. Bush". The need to distinguish between the two presidents also spawned colloquialisms such as "Bush Senior" and "Bush 41" for George H.W. Bush.
• Posthumous names awarded in East Asian cultures to royalty after their death can be considered retronyms too, although their birth names will remain unambiguous.

Technology

• The invention of smokeless powder caused the original gunpowder formulation to be renamed black powder.
• The name "Ordinary" was devised to distinguish penny-farthing bicycles from emerging safety bicycles.
• The advent of e-mail led to new terms for answering machine messages (voicemail) and traditional mail (postal mail, land mail, and the derogatory snail mail).
• The advent of the all-big gun battleship HMS Dreadnought and other vessels built along the same lines resulted in all previous battleships being categorized as pre-dreadnoughts.

Audio

• The original amplitude-modulated consumer radio broadcast system was termed "AM" (or "standard broadcast") when frequency-modulated ("FM") broadcasting began.
• Single-channel audio was the norm until stereo equipment became available, prompting the retronyms "monophonic" and "monaural" (sometimes simply "mono").
• The advent of satellite radio has prompted the term terrestrial radio.
• Compact Discs, originally developed as a high-fidelity digital audio media, were later adopted for use as a general data medium. Thus, "CD-ROM" (for data) prompted the retronym "CD Audio", "CDDA", or "Red Book CD" (because of its Rainbow Book standard).

Motion pictures

The first mass-distributed films were monochrome and silent. As the technology developed:

• "Short film" to differentiate from feature-length films
• "Silent" films were retronymed to differentiate from "talkies" (films with sound)
• "Black-and-white" films gave way to color movies
• "Live action" to distinguish from animation
• "Traditional animation" to distinguish from stop motion, computer animation, etc.

Television

Television has prompted several retronyms:

• Like films before them, the original monochrome standard became known as "black-and-white" (also known as "black & white" or "B&W") television after color television was introduced
• "Broadcast television" (to differentiate from cable television)
• "Terrestrial television" (to differentiate broadcast and cable TV from satellite television)
• "Standard-definition television" (as compared to enhanced-definition or high-definition television)
• "Analog television" (to differentiate from digital television)
• While not a retronym, the term pan and scan was not well known outside of the entertainment industry until "letterbox" releases of films began to be released on video in the 1980s. However, as letterbox (or "widescreen") releases became more prevalent (especially on DVD), "pan and scan" was determined to be a relatively esoteric (and sometimes inaccurate) term for consumers, so the retronyms "full screen" and "full frame" were coined as alternatives.

Telephone

Telephone calls were originally completed through the assistance of an operator at a switchboard. When self-dialing service became available, the older service was referred to as "operator assisted" dialing. Later, tone-based dialing prompted the older service to be retronymed "pulse" dialing. The older phones were also referred to as "rotary dial" phones, to differentiate from the newer phones with a keypad.

The advent of digital telephony services such as ISDN and ADSL led to analog services being described as "plain old telephone service" (or simply "POTS"), primarily within the telephone industry. As mobile telephones have become prevalent, many consumers have come to refer to POTS as "land line" phone service – although calls placed on such a line may traverse wireless links such as microwave and satellite.

Computers

• "Mainframe" is a retronym developed to differentiate the large, enterprise-class computer systems developed in the 1950s and 1960s from the minicomputers and microcomputers that came later. "Mainframe" is still in use, even though the terms it was coined to contrast with have fallen into disuse.
• "Hard disks" were retronymed to differentiate from floppy disks.
• Video-based computer terminals were originally command-line-based, to allow simple replacement of teletype print terminals. Later, improvements in technology allowed the development of full-screen textual interfaces. Eventually, the advent of graphical user interfaces prompted the retronyms "text user interface" and "command line interface" to be developed.
• Web 1.0 is a retronym that came into use once the neologism Web 2.0 was coined to describe the development of websites following the dot-com collapse of 2001.
• Parallel ATA is now used to refer to the old ATA standard after the introduction of the new Serial ATA.

Geography

• India and Indonesia were known by Europeans as "the Indies", until their discovery of the Caribbean (which they called the West Indies) led to the necessity of the retronym East Indies.
• During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Mexico was sometimes referred to (particularly in the U.S.) as "Old Mexico", to differentiate it from the territory and later state of New Mexico. "Old Mexico" is an example of a retronym that gradually fell into disuse, and is rarely heard today outside of Westerns.
• Simón Bolívar united Venezuela, New Granada, and Ecuador under the name Colombia. After the union was later dissolved, New Granada changed its name to Colombia. Historians coined the term Gran Colombia (Great Colombia) to refer to Bolivar's union.

Entertainment

• In entertainment media, a retronym can be applied to a property that becomes a franchise and requires the source property to be differentiated from others in the franchise.
  • The original 1960s Star Trek television series, which is now referred to as Star Trek: The Original Series to distinguish it from the many film and television sequels that Star Trek has spawned.
  • The Indiana Jones film Raiders of the Lost Ark is now referred to as Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark to match the title of its prequel and two sequels.
  • Both of the above titles remain unchanged on their onscreen title cards.
  • The first Star Wars movie to be filmed and released was originally titled simply Star Wars; after the film became a success and sequels were assured, the film was subtitled Episode IV: A New Hope for all subsequent releases.
  • CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which is set in Las Vegas, Nevada, has spawned two spin-off series, CSI: Miami and CSI: New York. The original series' title has not changed, but it is syndicated in some markets with the new title CSI: Las Vegas.
• A similar set of relabellings is used to refer to Japanese anime series, which are given non-sequential additions to their titles.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam, the original show from 1979, is either called First Gundam or Gundam 0079.
• "Classic" is often applied to the first computer game in a franchise, especially if the sequels are numerically titled. This is often necessary to access references to the original game on the internet by means of a search engine, which would catch all the subsequently numbered games as well. Examples include:
  • Doom (Doom and Doom II are often collectively referred to as Classic Doom to distinguish them from Doom 3, which uses a different game engine)
  • Quake
  • Unreal Tournament
• Counter-Strike was more commonly known among gamers as Counter-Strike 1.6 or CS 1.6 after the release of Counter-Strike: Source.
• Command & Conquer was frequently referred to as Tiberian Dawn after its sequel Tiberian Sun was confirmed, and also because it lent its name to the series.
• Left 4 Dead is starting to become more commonly known as "Left 4 Dead 1" with the announcement of Left 4 Dead 2.
• The term "Scramz" is applied to Screamo bands due to contemporary usage of the word "Screamo".

See also

• Contrastive focus reduplication
• List of retronyms
• -onym
• Retroactive continuity
• Retroactive nomenclature

References