Introduction

In a series of advertisements run on British TV early in 1993 by the breakfast cereal manufacturer Kellogg, people were asked what they thought Rice Krispies were made of, and expressed surprise at discovering that the answer was rice. Somehow they had internalized this household brand name without ever analyzing it into its component parts. It was as if the name of the product had taken on a life of its own, and required no more reference back to its ‘meaning’ than do words of foreign origin such as chop suey (‘mixed bits’) and spaghetti (‘little cords’). But how could this come about in the case of a name which, although oddly spelled, so transparently refers to crisp rice? In actual fact, overlooking the internal composition of names is a far more common phenomenon than we might at first think.