經(jīng)典手表的名字是怎樣取出來的？

Iconic Names for Iconic Watches

經(jīng)典手表的名字是怎樣取出來的?

In October 2003, Maximilian Büsser, managing director of Harry Winston Rare Timepieces, was on a flight from Singapore to Geneva when he began to sketch the outlines of Horological Machine No. 1, a daring three-dimensional watch that would soon herald the birth of his own radical brand.

2003年10月，海瑞·溫斯頓珍稀鐘表公司(Harry Winston Rare Timepieces)的總經(jīng)理馬克西米蘭·比塞爾(Maximilian Büsser)在從新加坡到日內(nèi)瓦的航班上開始設(shè)計1號鐘表機(jī)器的草圖，這是塊大膽的三維手表，他自己的顛覆性品牌即將誕生。

Mr. Büsser had not registered a name for his company but he knew how it would appear on the dial: B&F, for Büsser & Friends, reflecting a concept he had pioneered while working on Winston’s celebrated Opus series: Assemble a group of friends skilled in the horological arts and put them to work crafting an iconoclastic timepiece.

當(dāng)時比塞爾還沒給自己的公司注冊名字，但他知道鐘面上要用什么名字：B&F，意思是比塞爾和朋友們，體現(xiàn)他為溫斯頓著名的Opus系列工作時倡導(dǎo)的一個理念：聚集一群擅長鐘表藝術(shù)的朋友，讓他們精巧地制作打破常規(guī)的時計。

Commuters traveling past clocks set to different time zones at Canary Wharf, the business district in East London built on the former site of the West India Docks on the Isle of Dogs.

通勤者經(jīng)過倫敦金融區(qū)設(shè)定為不同時區(qū)的鐘表。倫敦金融區(qū)在倫敦東部，是在多格斯島上的西印度碼頭的舊址上建起來的。

Dissuaded from using B&F by his trademark attorney, who argued that he would have to contend with lawyers from Bell & Ross — a Swiss watch brand that often goes by the initials B&R — Mr. Büsser reluctantly agreed to add his first initial to the moniker, making it MB&F.

他的商標(biāo)代理人勸他不要用B&F，因為那樣他就得應(yīng)付瑞士手表品牌Bell & Ross(經(jīng)常用B&R這個縮寫)的律師們。無奈之下，比塞爾只好同意把他名字的第一個字母加到商標(biāo)里，變成了MB&F。

“But I really didn’t want to,” he said, lamenting MB&F’s asymmetry and over-emphasis on his contribution (as opposed to that of his “friends”).

“但是我真的不想那樣，”他說，為MB&F的不對稱以及對自己貢獻(xiàn)的過分強(qiáng)調(diào)(相對于“朋友們”的貢獻(xiàn))而惋惜。

There was also the name’s glaring unconventionality. Switzerland’s best known watch names tend to pay homage to the luminaries of watchmaking past: the Pateks, Philippes, Breguets and Piguets of the world, men of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries who laid the foundation for a Swiss cottage industry that last year exported roughly $24 billion in watches around the globe.

這個名字的不同尋常也令人震驚。瑞士最著名的手表品牌大多是向制表業(yè)歷史上的杰出人物致敬：帕特克(Patek)家族、菲利普(Philippe) 家族、布勒蓋(Breguet)家族和皮蓋(Piguet)家族，都是17至19世紀(jì)為瑞士鐘表業(yè)奠定基礎(chǔ)的人。去年瑞士鐘表的全球出口額接近240億美元。

To some early critics, Mr. Büsser’s playful choice lacked gravitas.

一開始，比塞爾選擇的帶趣味性的名字遭到了一些批評，說它不夠莊重。

“The first graphic designer I worked with told me it was a crappy name,” Mr. Büsser recalled. “He said, ‘You’re in luxury — you can’t sell a $200,000 watch with friends in the name. That’s for Mickey Mouse.’ I said, ‘Well, it’s the only way I can convey what I want to convey.’ And that’s what we did. It’s funny — success makes you sexy.”

“跟我合作的第一個平面設(shè)計師跟我說它是個糟糕的名字，”比塞爾回憶說，“他說，‘你是在奢侈品行業(yè)——你很難把一個以朋友們命名的手表以20萬美元的價格賣出去。’那是給米老鼠起的名字。我說，‘呃，這是我能表達(dá)自己的唯一方式。’我們就這么做了。很有意思——成功讓你變得迷人。”

The history of consumer goods and services is dominated by companies that eschewed tradition, logic, and good sense when choosing names for their products. As a prime example, Steve Manning, founder of Igor, a naming and branding agency based in Sausalito, Calif., cited Sir Richard Branson’s famous gamble. “If you’re crazy enough to paint Virgin on the side of an airline, people are going to give you the benefit of the doubt that something different is going on here,” he said.

主導(dǎo)消費品和服務(wù)行業(yè)歷史的那些公司在為自己的產(chǎn)品起名字時都避開傳統(tǒng)、邏輯和判斷力。加州索薩利托市的起名與品牌推廣機(jī)構(gòu)Igor的創(chuàng)始人史蒂夫·曼寧(Steve Manning)把理查德·布蘭森爵士(Sir Richard Branson)著名的賭博作為一個極佳的例子。“如果你夠瘋狂，在飛機(jī)的側(cè)面寫上Virgin，人們會認(rèn)為它一定有什么特別之處，你因此而獲益，”他說。

Today, the practice of baptizing watches with names — be they functional, experiential or evocative — is so common that it hardly seems possible timepieces once were sold generically.

如今，用名字讓手表煥發(fā)新生命是常見的做法——不管是從功能性、體驗或引起共鳴的角度命名——所以很難想象鐘表曾經(jīng)以沒有商標(biāo)注冊的方式售賣。

But it took the Swiss until the 20th century to catch on to the power of a brand name. Once they did, the industry spawned a bevy of iconic timepieces whose equally iconic names hold the keys to a parallel reading of watchmaking history.

但是瑞士直到20世紀(jì)才突然領(lǐng)悟到品牌的力量。一旦他們意識到了這一點，這個行業(yè)就出現(xiàn)了大量標(biāo)志性的鐘表，它們的名字也同樣具有標(biāo)志意義，對應(yīng)著制表業(yè)歷史中的諸多關(guān)鍵時刻。

The first Swiss brand to break with tradition by choosing a made-up word for its products was, paradoxically, founded by a Bavarian living in London. According to his memoir, Hans Wilsdorf was riding atop a double-decker bus when “a good genie whispered” in his ear a “short yet significant word”: Rolex. In 1908, Mr. Wilsdorf registered the trademark that would establish his brand “as the international mark of success,” said Jake Ehrlich, editor and publisher of RolexMagazine.com.

第一個打破傳統(tǒng)、用生造詞作為產(chǎn)品名字的瑞士品牌卻是一個住在倫敦的巴伐利亞人創(chuàng)立的。漢斯·威爾斯多夫(Hans Wilsdorf)在回憶錄中說自己在乘坐雙層巴士時，“一個精靈”在他耳邊說出了一個“短小而意味深長的單詞”：Rolex(勞力士)。1908年，威爾斯多夫注冊了這個商標(biāo)。勞力士雜志(RolexMagazine.com)的編輯和出版人杰克·歐利希(Jake Ehrlich)說，這個品牌后來成了“世人皆知的成功的標(biāo)志”。

Whether Rolex would have climbed to the top of the watchmaking heap with a different name is impossible to know. “It’s a chicken or egg scenario,” said Amit Dev Handa, the luxury timepiece concierge of the Mandarin Oriental in Las Vegas. “The names of these watches are all very easy to pronounce and they give people a point of reference.” Take what many consider to be Mr. Wilsdorf’s greatest creation, the Rolex Oyster, the first water-resistant watch, unveiled in 1927. Associating his luxury timepiece with the image of a sea-dwelling mollusk, the pioneering marketer conveyed an essential point about his product: It concealed something rare and valuable. When Mr. Wilsdorf added the word Perpetual to the name in 1931, denoting the model’s first-of-its-kind self-winding wristwatch movement, he all but sealed its groundbreaking legacy.

如果勞力士換成另一個名字能否爬到制表業(yè)的頂峰我們就不得而知了。“這是個先有雞還是先有蛋的問題，”拉斯維加斯文華東方酒店的奢侈鐘表禮賓員阿米特·德夫·漢達(dá)(Amit Dev Handa)說，“這些手表的名字都很好念，給了人們一個參照點。”以威爾斯多夫最偉大的創(chuàng)造——1927年面世的第一款防水手表勞力士牡蠣(Rolex Oyster)為例。通過把他的奢侈手表與海里的軟體動物聯(lián)系在一起，這位開拓性的市場營銷員表達(dá)出這款產(chǎn)品的主要特點：它隱藏著某種罕見而珍貴的東西。 1931年威爾斯多夫把“Perpetual”(永恒)這個詞加到品牌名中，表示它是第一款自動上發(fā)條的手表，他幾乎借此確定了自己開創(chuàng)性的遺產(chǎn)。

Louis Cartier, a contemporary of Mr. Wilsdorf, shared the Rolex founder’s preference for straightforward product names that conjured a clear image.

路易斯·卡地亞(Louis Cartier)跟威爾斯多夫是同一個時代的人，他和勞力士的創(chuàng)始人一樣喜歡能呈獻(xiàn)出清晰畫面的直白的產(chǎn)品名稱。

The first Cartier Tank watch, designed in 1917, was purportedly modeled on the overhead view of an Allied tank: the brancards evoked the treads of the vehicle, while the case represented the cockpit.

第一款卡地亞坦克手表是1917年設(shè)計的，據(jù)說是模仿盟軍坦克的俯視圖：表帶讓人聯(lián)想到坦克的履帶，表殼則代表著駕駛艙。

That the watch industry’s first enduring product names emerged in the years bookending the Great War is no coincidence. At the time, “images of American soldiers smoking cigarettes, with these enormous strap watches on their wrists” began to appear, said Michael Friedman, historian and development director for the Swiss brand Audemars Piguet. It was the advent of the wristwatch era and the industry’s budding marketers seized the opportunity to make a name for their brands — literally.

手表行業(yè)的第一批經(jīng)久不衰的產(chǎn)品名字出現(xiàn)在第一次世界大戰(zhàn)接近尾聲的年代，這不是巧合。歷史學(xué)家、瑞士品牌愛彼(Audemars Piguet)的開發(fā)總監(jiān)邁克爾·弗里德曼(Michael Friedman)說，當(dāng)時“美國大兵吸著煙，手腕上戴著龐大的手表的形象”開始出現(xiàn)。腕表時代就此到來，這個行業(yè)新生的市場營銷人員抓住這個機(jī)會樹立自己的品牌。

At Jaeger-LeCoultre, for example, the legendary 1931 Reverso had its roots in a conversation that took place on the sidelines of a polo match in India. An officer of the British Raj is said to have challenged the Swiss businessman César de Trey to devise a timepiece that could withstand the rigors of the game, said Jaeger-LeCoultre’s artistic director Janek Deleskiewicz.

例如，積家(Jaeger-LeCoultre)手表1931年的經(jīng)典款翻轉(zhuǎn)腕表(Reverso)源自于發(fā)生在印度的某場馬球比賽場外的一番談話。積家手表的藝術(shù)總監(jiān)雅內(nèi)克·戴勒斯基維茨(Janek Deleskiewicz)說，當(dāng)時英國統(tǒng)治印度時期的一位軍官向瑞士商人塞薩爾·德·特雷(César de Trey)挑釁，讓他設(shè)計一款能經(jīng)受這種激烈比賽的手表。

Named for the Latin phrase “I turn around,” a reference to its unique swiveling case design, the Reverso remains a pillar of the Jaeger-LeCoultre brand. But the name of the person who first uttered the by-now timeless moniker has been lost to history. When asked who coined the name, Mr. Deleskiewicz said, simply, “the product itself” — the implication being that the Reverso and other revered watch models emerged from their makers with their marketing messages wholly intact, like tiny, ticking Aphrodites.

Reverso是以拉丁詞組“我轉(zhuǎn)身”命名的，暗指這款手表獨特的旋轉(zhuǎn)表殼。它仍是積家品牌的一個支柱產(chǎn)品。但是第一個說出這個歷久彌新名字的人已無跡可查。當(dāng)被問及這個名字是誰起的時，戴勒斯基維茨說是“產(chǎn)品本身”，意思是Reverso和其他受尊敬的手表款式一樣源自它們的制造者，它們本身就具有完整的市場營銷信息，比如小小的、滴答作響的Aphrodites。

More than just magical combinations of syllables, however, the industry’s lasting names are love letters to the decades in which they were conceived.

這個行業(yè)中歷史悠久的品牌名不僅是音節(jié)的奇妙組合，而且是一封封寫給它們誕生時代的情書。

The 1952 Breitling Navitimer, a “navigational timer” for pilots; the 1955 IWC Ingénieur, designed explicitly for engineers; and the 1957 Omega Speedmaster, a chronograph that went to the moon and back, were introduced at a time when “science was considered to solve all human problems,” said Georges Kern, chief executive of IWC, referring to the notions of progress and mathematical precision embodied within their monikers.

1952年百年靈(Breitling)的Navitimer款是為飛行員設(shè)計的“航行計時器”;1955年萬國(IWC)的Ingénieur是專門為工程師設(shè)計的;1957年歐米茄(Omega)的Speedmaster是一個計秒表，它曾被帶上月球。萬國的首席執(zhí)行官喬治斯·科恩 (Georges Kern)說，在這幾款手表誕生的年代，“人們認(rèn)為科學(xué)能解決人類的所有問題。”他指的是這些名字所代表的進(jìn)步和數(shù)字精準(zhǔn)性的理念。

By the 1960s, watch names reflected the era’s more cooperative spirit. In 1969, for instance, Zenith unveiled El Primero, the first self-winding chronograph. While the words translate from the Spanish as “the first,” Zenith’s chief executive, Jean-Frédéric Dufour, maintains that the name is actually taken from Esperanto, a constructed language that resonated with linguists of the 1960s, when it still seemed possible that a common language could stave off world conflict.

到20世紀(jì)60年代，手表的名字反映了那個時代更合作的精神。例如，1969年，真力時(Zenith)推出了第一款自動上發(fā)條的計秒表El Primero。雖然這個詞組在西班牙語中的意思是“第一”，但是真力時的首席執(zhí)行官讓-弗雷德里克·杜福爾(Jean-Frédéric Dufour)認(rèn)為，這個名字實際上取自世界語。世界語是一種人造語言，那時的人們與60年代語言學(xué)家們的想法一致，仍然認(rèn)為一種共同的語言能緩解世界矛盾。

The outlook in Switzerland turned inward with the onset of the ’70s.

從20世紀(jì)70年代起，瑞士制表業(yè)開始將視野轉(zhuǎn)向?qū)徱曌陨怼?/p>

The 1972 Royal Oak by Audemars Piguet — a groundbreaking timepiece lauded for what was then considered an audaciously designed stainless steel case by Gérald Genta — evoked a regal, old world association at a time when the Swiss were rapidly losing market share to the upstart Japanese. The oak in question was the tree in which King Charles II of England supposedly hid during the battle of Worcester in 1651, when he evaded capture by Oliver Cromwell’s army.

1972年，愛彼推出了皇家橡樹(Royal Oak)手表，這款開拓性的手表廣受好評，它采用的是杰拉德·亨塔(Gérald Genta)設(shè)計的不銹鋼表殼，這在當(dāng)時可謂大膽之舉。當(dāng)時崛起的日本正在快速搶占瑞士的市場份額，這個名字讓人聯(lián)想到舊世界的皇室。這里提到的橡樹是英格蘭國王查爾斯二世在1651年的伍斯特戰(zhàn)役中躲避奧利弗·克倫威爾(Oliver Cromwell)的軍隊追捕時躲藏的那棵樹。

As the “Me Decade” gave way to the “Greed Decade,” the tenor of the names shifted again. The Polo, a 1979 introduction from Piaget, channeled the ultimate rich person’s pastime to invoke the notion of casual elegance: “Polo was a very exclusive game matching the sort of clientele Piaget was aiming at,” said its chief executive, Philippe Léopold-Metzger.

在“我時代”讓位給“貪欲時代”后，名字的主旨再次發(fā)生了變化。1979年伯爵(Piaget)推出的馬球(Polo)手表傳達(dá)的是極富人群的消遣活動，引發(fā)了休閑優(yōu)雅的概念：“馬球是一項非常獨特的運動，與伯爵針對的客戶相匹配，”伯爵的首席執(zhí)行官麥振杰(Philippe Léopold-Metzger)說。

At Patek Philippe, widely considered the world’s most sought after watch brand, it took until the late 1980s for the company to codify its timepieces into formal collections. The round watches were labeled Calatravas, after the company’s symbol, the Calatrava Cross, named for a 12th century Spanish order of Cistercian knights that was meaningful to the founders, Antoni Patek and Franciszek Czapek, both of whom were of Polish Catholic origin.

百達(dá)翡麗(Patek Philippe)被普遍認(rèn)為是世界上最受歡迎的手表品牌，但是該公司直到20世紀(jì)80年代末才將自己的時計整編成正式的系列。圓形手表以該公司的標(biāo)志十字星(Calatravas)命名。十字星起源于12世紀(jì)的西班牙西多會騎士團(tuán)，它對該公司的創(chuàng)立者安東尼·帕特克(Antoni Patek)和弗朗齊歇克·恰佩克(Franciszek Czapek)有重要意義，因為他們都是波蘭天主教徒的后裔。

Patek Philippe’s rectangular-shaped watches were called Gondolos, after a loyal Brazilian retailer, Chronometro Gondolo, in whose honor the watchmaker once manufactured a rectangular Art Deco-style timepiece.

百達(dá)翡麗的長方形手表被稱為Gondolos，它以巴西一位忠心耿耿的零售商克羅諾米特羅·貢多洛(Chronometro Gondolo)命名的。為了向貢多洛表示敬意，該表曾經(jīng)推出一款長方形的裝飾藝術(shù)風(fēng)格的手表。

Among hardcore fans of the brand, however, names play second fiddle to another form of nomenclature. “When you go to dinner with a group of Patek collectors, they speak in numbers,” said John Reardon, international co-head of Christie’s watch department, alluding to the mostly four-digit reference numbers that collectors wield as if they were codes to a private bank account — which, in a sense, they could be, so rare and valuable are many of the timepieces they identify.

然而，對該品牌的鐵桿粉絲們來說，這些名字與另一種形式的命名法相比居次要地位。“你和一群百達(dá)翡麗收藏者一起吃飯時，他們用數(shù)字指代手表的款式，”佳士得拍賣行手表部的國際聯(lián)合主管約翰·里爾登(John Reardon)說。他指的是收藏者們使用的通常為四位數(shù)的序列號，好像這些數(shù)字是私人銀行賬戶的代碼——從某種意義上講還真是這樣，因為它們代表的很多手表都非常罕見和珍貴。

Once the new millennium began, the mechanical watchmaking renaissance was in full swing and the financial crisis was still eight years away, which helps explain why the names conceived during this period — including the independent Mr. Büsser’s clinically titled Horological Machines — were as bold as the attitudes that created them.

新千年一開始，機(jī)械手表制造出現(xiàn)了全面復(fù)興，金融危機(jī)是八年之后的事情，所以這個時期起的名字與起這種名字的態(tài)度一樣大膽，包括比塞爾給自己的品牌所起的樸素的名字——鐘表機(jī)器(Horological Machines)。

Hublot’s Big Bang collection was the brainchild of its chief executive, Jean-Claude Biver, who was searching for a name that captured his watchmaking philosophy of “fusion,” in which traditional techniques meet technical innovation.

宇舶(Hublot)的大爆炸(Big Bang)系列是該品牌的首席執(zhí)行官讓-克勞德·比弗(Jean-Claude Biver)的智慧結(jié)晶。他想找一個名字表現(xiàn)他的手表制造理念——“融合”，也就是將傳統(tǒng)工藝和科技創(chuàng)新相結(jié)合。

He referred to the collection’s signature combination of gold and rubber: “Normally, those two elements in nature don’t belong together,” Mr. Biver said. “After the Big Bang, gold was under the earth and rubber was in the tree, but in the Big Bang, they were one.” Mr. Biver said he did not struggle with the name. On the contrary: “It was one night, in November 2004, and it took me a dinner with some red wine,” he noted.

他指的是這個系列將金和橡膠結(jié)合起來的標(biāo)志特征：“在正常情況下，這兩個元素在本質(zhì)上是不相容的，”比弗說，“大爆炸之后，金在地下，橡膠在樹上，但是在大爆炸系列中，它們?nèi)跒橐惑w。”比弗說他沒費太多腦筋就想出了這個名字。“那是2004年11月的一個晚上，我吃著晚飯、喝著紅酒就想出這個名字，”他說。

Today, watch companies are much more deliberate about how they choose their names. Tudor, founded in 1946 by Mr. Wilsdorf as a sister brand to Rolex, worked with Nomen, a Paris-based naming company, to coin the names of its Grantour and Pelagos collections. The former is a synthesis of the Italian words gran turismo and describes a sports watch designed to appeal to car enthusiasts, while the latter is a dive watch named after “a Greek word defining the deeper part of the sea and, in particular, the kind of creatures that live there,” said Davide Cerrato, head of marketing and product development.

如今，手表公司在起名字時更加用心。1946年創(chuàng)立的帝舵(Tudor)是勞力士的姐妹品牌，是威爾斯多夫和巴黎起名公司Nomen一起想出來的，它把Grantour系列和Pelagos系列結(jié)合到了一起。帝舵的市場營銷和產(chǎn)品開發(fā)主管達(dá)維德·塞拉托(Davide Cerrato)說，前者是意大利詞組gran turismo(高級跑車)的縮合詞，描述的是一款為汽車迷設(shè)計的運動手表;后者是一款潛水手表，名字來源于“一個希臘單詞，意思是深海，準(zhǔn)確的說是生活在深海里的生物”。

Even more painstaking was the “art project” approach watchmaker Felix Baumgartner and designer Martin Frei employed when brainstorming the name for Urwerk, the subversive luxury watch brand they debuted in 1997.

手表制造商菲利克斯·鮑姆加特納(Felix Baumgartner)和設(shè)計師馬丁·弗雷(Martin Frei)在為1997年亮相的顛覆性的奢侈手表品牌Urwerk起名字時，更是煞費苦心地采用了“藝術(shù)設(shè)計”的方式。