It's Not an Acronym

[kevin_standlee]

I wonder why so many places where I see references to the top honors in the SF/F field presented by the members of the World Science Fiction Convention, the writers of the articles feel compelled to style it "HUGO Award" as if "HUGO" was an acronym. The "Hugo" in "Hugo Award" isn't an acronym. As I hope everyone reading my journal regularly knows, the Award is named for Hugo Gernsback, sometimes called "the father of modern science fiction."

At this rate, I reckon we'll see people trying to back-form a "real" name for the Awards that somehow fits into the letters H-U-G-O.

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Hilariously Unusable Golfing Object.

Come on, someone else can do better than that.

[k6rfm.livejournal.com]

At least the New York Times got it right in this morning's obituary for Joanna Russ.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

I note with some amusement that the Official Hugo Award Logo (tm) Kevin uses as the icon for this post has the word "HUGO" in capitals.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

As does award...and yet I do not know what "AWARD" could be an acronym of.

[melchar.livejournal.com]

AWARD: Artists Whinging About Remorseful Distinctions?

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

"Hugo's Usually Gernsback, OK?"

[yourbob.livejournal.com]

Like that one.

[chocolatescifi.livejournal.com]

Love this one, but should the O stand for "OK" or "Okay"?

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Yes, and if the word AWARD in the logo were in lowercase, you'd have very good grounds for twitting me about it. But I don't think I've seen too many people put HUGO AWARD in all caps in the middle of a sentence. And if they were consistent about it &emdash; say, listing a group of awards as HUGO Award, NEBULA Award, ACADEMY Award, and so forth &emdash; I could grant them at least consistency if not much intelligence. I may be wrong, but it seems that the Hugo gets singled out for special treatment by people who aren't aware of why it's called that. That is, perhaps, a failure of our Hugo Award Marketing, although we do talk about it on the web site.

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

And, of course, "Hugo" is just a nickname in any case, for the World Science Fiction Achievement Award.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Actually, that's not true. The official name of the Hugo Award is "Hugo Award" and has been since the mid-1990s when we abandoned the nominal "Science Fiction Achievement Award" name. That name appears one last time in the Constitution as a sop to people who didn't want to face the reality (we couldn't get a service mark registration on SFAA because it was considered two generic), but all of the other references were removed, and the order inverted so that "Science Fiction Achievement Award" is, more or less, a nickname for the Hugo Award.

The Mark Protection Committee does not try to protect SFAA references and it's not in the list of declared service marks.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

It used to be true.

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

I personally say "OK" as "Okay" looks unatural. But maybe that is because I am British. Should anyone wish to nick this phrase and reuse it elsewhere "Okay" is fine by me ;-)

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

I think that we, people have heard of Hugo Gernsback, are in a minority. Most people could probably explain that the Academy Awards are given by some academy (whether or not they could name the AMPAS) but would be stumped by the Hugo Awards. This doesn't explain the appearance of "HUGO award" in fannish writing very well, though.