#3 - Why "Flippin' English Club" is not a bad name
#3 - Why "Flippin' English Club" is not a bad name
I’m not J. K. Rowling or J. R. R. Tolkien. Good names don’t come easily to me. I’ve built small language-learning apps with crappy names like English Camp (boring), English Club (more boring), and Langapp (most boring). I’ve tried other more ridiculous names too, which I’m far too embarrassed to mention here to you, my non-existent reader.
So naming is hard, at least for me. But despite my lack of talent for coming up with good names, I do think “Flippin’ English Club” is not bad. “Not bad” is how a Brit like me says I think something is actually “quite good”.
It’s not as good as “Severus Snape” or “Albus Dumbledore”. Nor is it as good as “Gandalf” or “Shadowfax”. And of course it’s not as good as “The Beatles”. But then that is the greatest band name ever, full stop (or “period”, if you prefer your English to have an American flavour).
So why is Flippin’ English Club not a bad name? Well, in the context of a language-learning blog or app, it has several possible meanings. We’ll run through these meanings in a minute, but before we do, get into active learning mode and have a think what they might be.
Done that? Course you have!
So firstly, “flipping” is a euphemism for “fucking”. A euphemism is a softer term you can use to replace a stronger term in polite company. So you could say, “That Flippin’ English Club is just THE WORST! It’s flippin’ rubbish!”
That’s the kind of thing you might say. If you’re a flippin’ potty-mouth, that is.
Secondly, “flipping” can also mean turning something over. “Flipping pancakes” is a good example. In a language-learning context, it could refer to flipping a flashcard over. Flippin’ English Club will include some learning exercises where you “flip” words or sentences from hidden to showing and vice versa, so this meaning works quite well. You could think of “Flippin’ English Club” as a club where the members flip English words and sentences.
Thirdly, there’s the concept of the “flipped classroom”, where learning typically done in the classroom is done instead at home, and vice versa, so typical homework tasks are done in the classroom. This again is quite apposite, as I plan to use this technique on this site. More on that later.
Note that I’ve spelt it flippin’, not flipping. This is more informal and a common technique for representing spoken language, which is going to be the main focus of this blog.
You can find many more definitions here:
Flippin’ English Club abbreviates to “FEC”, which is very close to “feck” – a softer alternative to “fuck”. So this nicely mirrors how “flipping” is a softer version of that word I should probably stop writing now in case my mum reads this, as one more swear word might send her over the edge.
But “FEC” feels a bit shouty and self-important, plus I have caps lock disabled on my computer keyboard so it takes annoyingly long to type. So instead I’ll be using the softer “Fec” from now on.
So I felt I had a good name, and a good abbreviation for that name. Nice! Next I checked out domain names, and noticed that fec.rocks was free. That has a nice double meaning too. It can mean “Fec rocks!”, as in “Flippin’ English Club rocks!”, but it could also mean “Feck rocks!” if you find rocks particularly annoying and want to sound like Father Jack when you’re complaining about them.
And with that bunch of hard and soft swear words out the way, I’ll now leave you to enjoy the rest of your day in peace. Have a flippin’, feckin’ good one! And welcome to Flippin’ English Club!
Your turn
Question #1: I was reminded by a workmate that alongside Rowling and Tolkien, I could’ve mentioned another writer who came up with great names, in his case side-splittingly funny names. Can you guess who I’m thinking of?
Question #2: Did you notice I’ve abandoned my “no contractions” policy in this post? I’ve used “I’ve” rather than “I have”, and so on. I just naturally did this, without really thinking about it, so I decided to leave the post as it is. So which style do you prefer?
Question #3: Tough one this. Can you name a writer who permanently abandoned putting quotation marks around his characters’ speech in his fiction? (I will definitely be returning to this topic later!)
(Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash)