Picture the scene: four long years of training and you're finally ready to open your very own hairdressing business. It's been a long and difficult ride – you've got repetitive strain injury from the blow-dryer, you've got wrinkled dish-pan hands from washing the scabby heads of old women, but it would seem that the hardest bit is yet to come – thinking up an appropriately witty name for your new salon. It has to be memorable. It has to be exciting. It needs to be "punny".
Hairdressers have been blessed with a profession rife with pun-worthy words, all equally irritating and unclever.
The word "hair", with so many close relatives and homophones, has spawned gems like: Hair Apparent; Hair today, gone tomorrow; Hair After; Hair Con; Hair Dinkum Cuts; Hair Dye Versity; Hair Fidelity; Hair for the hills; Hair Horizons; Hair I Am; Hair Loom; Hair of Elegance; Hair to Chat; Hair Tiz; Hair Trade; Hair We Come; Hair's Looking At You; and my personal favourite: Hairway to Heaven.
Other examples guaranteed to get you groaning include: Combing Attractions, Great Clips, It's a Curl Thing, Peroximity, and The Last Tangle.
Really, do the proprietors of hairdressing salons think these names are catchy? Do they lend an air of sophistication and professionalism to their work? Do they just scream high-quality, fashionable cuts to potential customers? Or are they simply stupid and annoying?
Puns have long been recognised as unfunny and yet, irritatingly, they persist – perhaps because the very old and small children seem to find them wildly amusing. Sure, the first time you hear a pun you may think you are quite clever for recognising that similar sounding words can have different meanings. You probably won't laugh out loud, but you may indulge in a little internal groan or grimace.
By the time you see the same pun painted on the front window, embroidered on the polo shirt, etched on the coffee mug and shouted down the telephone, any initial thrill will be long gone. One of the accepted rules of humour is that timing is everything – start plastering your pun everywhere and any opportunity for timing is lost and all your clever wordplay is going to do is agitate. And please don't try and make things better by telling me that the "pun is intended". Seriously, it's not that I needed you to point out to me that you are such a clever wordsmith, I'm not laughing because that joke isn't funny any more.
Freud labelled the pun the "cheapest" form of humour. The 19th century physician and poet, Oliver Wendell Holmes, was so offended by bad puns that he thought, in some cases, the only fit response was murder. In 1858 he said: "A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide."
While some may argue that slaughter is taking our irritation with hairdressing salon names a little too far, I still say enough is enough. It's time to stand up against these lowest common denominator wordplays, these intellectual affronts, and I'm calling for an embargo on punny hairdressers. Let no more lame names be allowed registration. If you frequent one of these establishments, beg the owner to rethink. Please, just do something before we all curl up and dye.
This article made me laugh as well as giving me some more ideas for the literary content of my publication. I think that if the quotes I decided to use were humorous in some way it would broaden the appeal of the publication itself and the posters.
The word "hair", with so many close relatives and homophones, has spawned gems like: Hair Apparent; Hair today, gone tomorrow; Hair After; Hair Con; Hair Dinkum Cuts; Hair Dye Versity; Hair Fidelity; Hair for the hills; Hair Horizons; Hair I Am; Hair Loom; Hair of Elegance; Hair to Chat; Hair Tiz; Hair Trade; Hair We Come; Hair's Looking At You; and my personal favourite: Hairway to Heaven.
Other examples guaranteed to get you groaning include: Combing Attractions, Great Clips, It's a Curl Thing, Peroximity, and The Last Tangle.
Really, do the proprietors of hairdressing salons think these names are catchy? Do they lend an air of sophistication and professionalism to their work? Do they just scream high-quality, fashionable cuts to potential customers? Or are they simply stupid and annoying?
Puns have long been recognised as unfunny and yet, irritatingly, they persist – perhaps because the very old and small children seem to find them wildly amusing. Sure, the first time you hear a pun you may think you are quite clever for recognising that similar sounding words can have different meanings. You probably won't laugh out loud, but you may indulge in a little internal groan or grimace.
By the time you see the same pun painted on the front window, embroidered on the polo shirt, etched on the coffee mug and shouted down the telephone, any initial thrill will be long gone. One of the accepted rules of humour is that timing is everything – start plastering your pun everywhere and any opportunity for timing is lost and all your clever wordplay is going to do is agitate. And please don't try and make things better by telling me that the "pun is intended". Seriously, it's not that I needed you to point out to me that you are such a clever wordsmith, I'm not laughing because that joke isn't funny any more.
Freud labelled the pun the "cheapest" form of humour. The 19th century physician and poet, Oliver Wendell Holmes, was so offended by bad puns that he thought, in some cases, the only fit response was murder. In 1858 he said: "A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide."
While some may argue that slaughter is taking our irritation with hairdressing salon names a little too far, I still say enough is enough. It's time to stand up against these lowest common denominator wordplays, these intellectual affronts, and I'm calling for an embargo on punny hairdressers. Let no more lame names be allowed registration. If you frequent one of these establishments, beg the owner to rethink. Please, just do something before we all curl up and dye.
This article made me laugh as well as giving me some more ideas for the literary content of my publication. I think that if the quotes I decided to use were humorous in some way it would broaden the appeal of the publication itself and the posters.
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