What's in a name?

Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 1, Issue 1, 31 May 1983, Page 4

What's in a name?

We chose the title of this newspaper — the Waimarino Bulletin — for several reasons and we thought it might interest some of our readers to learn what we discovered in the course of our research into alternative titles. Firstly we discovered that there were no fewer than 28 publications in New Zealand that included the word 'News' in their titles. The next most popular title was 'Times' (15), followed by 'Herald' (11), 'Star' (8), 'Gazette' (8), 'Chronicle' (7), 'Courier' (7), 'Press' (7), 'Mad' (6), 'Leader' (5), 'Post' (4), 'Guardian' (3), 'Weekly' (2), 'Record' (2), 'Observer' (2) and 'Age' (2). Of other titles under con-

sideration those of 'Advocate', 'Sentinel', 'Standard', 'Messenger', and 'Scene' appear only once. The title 'Bulletin' does not appear at all in the New Zealand context though there is a publication of that name in Australia. But since it is a full colour magazine in the 'Time' and 'Newsweek' format it was unlikely to be confused with the Waimarino Bulletin. Of the titles that we particularly wanted to avoid — because of possible duplication and confusion when used in their abbreviated forms — were those of other papers which appear in the Waimarino and the central North Island. These included Herald, Chronicle, Guardian,

News, Gazette, Times, Courier and Weekly. This consideration, combined with the fact that 'Bulletin' was unique in the New Zealand context, made it the obvious choice and we were pleased to find that three of the definitions extracted from Websters New World Dictionary coincided with our aims and objectives: "... brief official statement about a matter of public concern". "... brief statement of the latest news as in a newspaper or on radio or television". ". . . a regular publication as for the members of some society".