What’s in a name? Twitter, X, Liz Sarkissian, Iman

Paintings by Tarek Chemaly

I do know am not the primary particular person to jot down about Twitter changing into X. Lots of people tangled themselves in pretzels to clarify how X works/doesn’t work as a model, how X is a model/not a model, how X will turn into/is not going to turn into a brilliant app, how X can/can’t be patented and the checklist continues.

The excellent news? X is right here. The unhealthy information, everybody retains referring to X as “previously Twitter”. Nicely, if you’re going to change your identify, why trouble preserve calling you by your former identify (I do know the trans group may be very delicate about mentioning their “useless names”) however that is Elon Musk we communicate of, so any comparability to trans folks just isn’t actually appreciated.

So what does this should do with the actress Iman? Nicely, her unique identify is Liz Sarkissian – she very smart, polyglot (8 languages), studied pharmacy and what have you ever – so when she needed to launch her profession in Egypt, she modified her stage identify to Iman (which suggests religion). Till it seems everybody stored calling her Liz Sarkissian. So the anecdote (and sorry I’ve no unique reference to it) is {that a} pal of hers advised she’d simply put her identify as “Iman, previously Liz Sarkissian”. Which clearly jogs my memory of X (previously Twitter) on this case.

However fact be informed, previous names have a means of sticking round. After I used to go to work by bus, I used to move “Damascus highway” every day, particularly the stretch known as “Becahra El Khoury” (it is close to Sodeco if you wish to know). At one level I simply needed to ask the motive force as to why it was known as so. Apparently there was a statue of our former president there, which obtained dismantled through the battle, however finally the identify caught. One other instance? Cellphone carriers in Lebanon have modified names since a minimum of 20 years. From Libancell to MTCTouch (then simply contact), and from Cellis to Alfa. But, the foremost headquarters of the latter are nonetheless being known as “Cellis” regardless of the identify change. Nicely, nobody even bothers with “Alfa previously generally known as Cellis”, simply Cellis would do.

So my query is – if X goes to carry as identify, undecided why everybody retains calling it by its different identify.