Messrs Hoover, Biro, Sandwich, and associates

Every so often, when I say I'll do the hoovering, someone - we could call them a wit or a pedant, depending on my mood that day - will say, "Actually, it's not a Hoover: it's a Henry." Fine! Yes, it's a vacuum cleaner. I could say I'll do the vacuuming, but that feels more 1950s housewife than I am comfortable with. Hoover really won the brand war. They were actually invented by a chap called Spangler but Mr Hoover developed and sold them. So there's an alternate universe not too many branches away where I say I'll do the spangling. László Bíró didn't even invent the ballpoint pen. There are patents fifty years older than his. But he did it better and his is the name that stuck. I know it's a ballpoint pen but I would never call it that. It's just a biro. I try not to use google as a verb because I don't actually google. The problem is 'search' could be any kind of searching, not necessarily online. And if I said 'web-search' I'd sound like a newsreader trying to explain the internet…

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