'Googleganger' is word of the year
Carolyn Webb, February 3, 2011
HAVE you ever Googled your name and come up with a Canadian porn star, a Chilean accountant and a Scottish chicken farmer? And none of them was you?
These people are your googlegangers, a term named yesterday the Macquarie Dictionary word of the year.
It's a noun, meaning ''a person with the same name as oneself, whose online references are mixed with one's own among search results for one's name''.
Dictionary editor Susan Butler said it was a neat and witty blend of the words Google and doppelganger.
''People find it really tempting to put their names in and see what pops up,'' she said.
''Part of the fascination of the game is to find people who are so different to yourself that it's quite startling to imagine yourself as them.'' Ms Butler's googleganger is a Florida author who wrote East to the Dawn, a 1997 biography of pioneer aviator Amelia Earhart.
Cathy Freeman is a property consultant in the Perth suburb of Hamilton Hill as well as the name of an Australian Olympic gold medallist.
Channel Seven newsreader Jennifer Keyte's googleganger is an animal research academic at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada.
The honourable mention was given to vuvuzela, the horn popularised at the World Cup in South Africa last year. Category winners included tart noir (arts), black swan event (business), gym bunny (colloquial), fauxmance (communications), toad golf (environment) and brand slut (fashion).
Source: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/googleganger-is-word-of-the-year-20110202-1adug.html
It's a noun, meaning ''a person with the same name as oneself, whose online references are mixed with one's own among search results for one's name''.
Dictionary editor Susan Butler said it was a neat and witty blend of the words Google and doppelganger.
''People find it really tempting to put their names in and see what pops up,'' she said.
''Part of the fascination of the game is to find people who are so different to yourself that it's quite startling to imagine yourself as them.'' Ms Butler's googleganger is a Florida author who wrote East to the Dawn, a 1997 biography of pioneer aviator Amelia Earhart.
Cathy Freeman is a property consultant in the Perth suburb of Hamilton Hill as well as the name of an Australian Olympic gold medallist.
Channel Seven newsreader Jennifer Keyte's googleganger is an animal research academic at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada.
The honourable mention was given to vuvuzela, the horn popularised at the World Cup in South Africa last year. Category winners included tart noir (arts), black swan event (business), gym bunny (colloquial), fauxmance (communications), toad golf (environment) and brand slut (fashion).
Source: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/googleganger-is-word-of-the-year-20110202-1adug.html
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