Thursday, January 31, 2008

New Rule: stop staying "Googlegänger", start saying "Doppelgoogler"

It has come to my attention that people are using the word "Googlegänger" to mean another person who comes up when you google yourself.

Good, well-intentioned coinage, but unfortunately it's wrong.

Googlegänger is a blend of "Google" and the German "Dopplegänger", meaning an exact double of a person. "Dopplegänger" itself is a blend of "dopple" meaning double, and "gänger" meaning literally "goer".

So as you can see, whoever coined "Googlegänger" inadvertently chose the wrong part of Dopplegänger to retain. A more accurate word would be "Doppelgoogler".

As a special incentive program, I have been authorized to permit anyone who switches from Googlegänger" to "Doppelgoogler" to use an umlaut on the O of their choice for purely aesthetic reasons, even though it is lexically incorrect.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

... except, of course, that 'Googler', from its form, should mean someone who googles (i.e. searches on Google), not someone who is googled (i.e. the result of a Google search). How about 'Doppelgooglee' ?