Fred Bloggs

Yesterday, I posted about my favourite word, so I felt that I needed to post about my least favourite word. Even though I post almost daily to my weblog, I hate the word "blog." It has overtones of Joe Bloggs, Fred Bloggs, Joe Schmoe etc. Wikipedia has an interesting explanation of the use of these terms, as place names, or as names identifying the results of standardized testing.

Your Fred Bloggs score is the score of your average Joe... err Fred. Nothing special, still functioning, but not about to set the world on fire!! These common names change with the country of origin. John Smith is prevalent in Britain and Otto Normalverbraucher is a mainstay in Germany. Really, for a country that seems to have streamlined everything, you would think that they could have come up with something a little snappier :)

Although I dislike the "blog" sound, I do like the idea of keeping a log. I love references in literature to the "captain's log." Log books throughout history have taken on an almost sacred aura. They are the record of the journey on a daily basis and they have been the primary resource for many a thesis, novel, or historical documentary. I also love diaries and the people who keep/kept them. I know now that the future will look back on weblogs, as an incredible resource of how we are/were, at this time.

Lives Logged in Leather

Even now medical research is rubbing their hands at the vast store of information, which they will be able to mine, when bloggers die. Blogs will be a critical source of information in pinpointing the onset of various dementias and in cataloguing the speed of deterioration with certain rapid onset dementias.

Something this critical to history,  medical science, sociology etc. should have a more elevated moniker. I looked up famous diarists on-line, hoping to find a name that one could borrow to re-name the concept of "blogs." Here's the list. I'm sorry to say that there are few, who would improve the branding of the on-line diary. I'm sure I would hate equally something like -

An Arbuthnot, a Boswell, a Dodington, a Gag ( maybe :), a Hoby, a Pepys, a Sixx, a Waugh, or a Thrale, for example. Maybe personal records, like memoirs, are doomed to be the record of lives, that are at best "bloggsian." Perhaps the personality of a diarist, one who sits quietly and writes, is just not as exciting as those, who don't keep diaries, but rather just "do," like Richard Branson or Edmund Hillary.

What do you think?