“Daddy, what’s a ‘Verizon’? An ‘Exxon’? An ‘Accenture’?” We whiz by these made-up names without asking questions our children might.

Mellon Bank, Iron City Beer, Lorain Coal & Dock: Those were company names I grew up with fifty years ago. They answered who, what and where fairly clearly.

In a time that supposedly values “transparency,” we should look more closely at names and words than we do. Do they or their usage convey hidden messages, intentionally or unintentionally? Do they have a context that illuminates their meanings?

Name Play

Hedge funds and private equity funds lately in the news have had names that should prompt questions from investors.

Harbinger Capital Partners Funds took a run this spring at the New York Times Co. and is now pursuing Cleveland Cliffs. What’s a “harbinger”? The few who know the word means “a sign of things to come” will have rarely heard it when not followed by “of doom.”

Toscafund: the landing page of its password-protected website does not hint the fund is named for Puccini’s tragic heroine. But what else could it be?

The opera, Tosca, has one of those intricate, implausible plots; suffice it to say, Tosca murders her lover’s captor, Scarpia, who’d promised to fake her lover’s execution and let him escape if she’d sleep with him. After doing Scarpia in, Tosca rushes off to the prison, thinking she’d saved her lover and her honor. She makes beautiful music with her lover and then watches the fake execution. Only, it wasn’t fake….

What’s the message, then, in Toscafund’s name? The mind reels.

Cerberus Capital Management bought Chrysler from Daimler Benz. Cerberus is the two-headed dog in Greek myth that guards the gates of Hades, keeping the dead in and the living out. Let your imagination run on the messages “Cerberus” might convey to employees, local government officials, investors….

And then, The Children’s Investment Funds: Its name reflects its commitment to give some of its profits to charities aiding children. Its recent, successful battle for board seats at the American freight railroad CSX showed not a hint of children’s games. The issue appeared to be whether current management is putting too much into capital improvements and too little into its shareholders’ pockets.

Over the coming months, we’ll learn whether maximizing CSX’s value to shareholders, and the resulting charitable donations, will outweigh the consequences for those depending on rail service in America’s southeast – and the children of CSX’s stakeholders.

“Activist Shareholders”

Many articles refer to The Children’s Investment Funds and their share value-maximizing peers as “activist shareholders.”

How long ago it seems when that phrase applied only to environmentalists, Ralph Nader organizations and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. Twenty years ago “activists” were shareholders who used the proxy process to raise issues such as South Africa and global warming. Those shareholders continue to play leading roles in corporate accountability.

Twenty years ago, funds engaging in hostile efforts to replace directors were called “corporate raiders.” But yesterday’s raiders are today’s activists.

This eerie substitution echoes the appropriation of “militants” to describe rebels or guerillas. In my youth, “militant” modified “civil rights” or “antiwar” activists. This rhetorical softening of “raider” and “rebel” baffles me, but I know it is significant. So what should we now call yesterday’s activists? Are they “shareholder advocates”? That term seems too limited given the scope of their activities.

We need new words to tell the world who we are. We need words that mean something.