Fred is the New Black
by Fred Roed on 14/12/06 at 10:38 am
1 comment
You know there was a stage when I was a little weird about my name.
One day, when I was attending a summer school in Denmark, about 12 years old, I experienced what can only be described as a non-acid, acid-flashback. Sent there by my Danish parents to learn the mother-tongue, I was already in a permanent state of bad mood. I was travelling on a bus on a school outing, when, half-asleep, I looked out the window and noticed we were passing a cemetery. Nothing unusual about that, until I noticed that on every gravestone the name ‘Fred’ was inscribed on the top.
I was terrified, until a teacher told me that the word ‘Fred’ means ‘Peace’ in Danish. Turns out that Fred is the Scandinavian equivalent of ‘Rest in Peace’. Ever since then, I’ve not been a huge fan of my tombstone name. I even thought of a message for when I kick the bucket: ‘Fred: Fred!’
Anyhow, since I recently hit 30, I’ve become more comfortable with the name. Even in Afrikaans it’s pretty cool (Fred Roed = Frikkie Pad). And now, in the past couple of days, I’ve been experiencing a bit of a Fred renaissance… especially since it’s become big business. The coincidence of finding all these in 3 days is too much – I just had to blog about it. Check it out:
Fred Bottled Water
The Cool Hunter profiled this bottled water phenomenon, the epitome of cool. This stuff even has its own MySpace profile and a ‘trendzine‘.
Fred’s Inc
America’s favourite hometown store. You can get furniture and apple pie.
Draw and Colour with Uncle Fred
For the kids. You just know that this is a safe place.
The Fred Factor
The new best-selling business book; a true story about some guy called Fred.
Fred Roed is the marketing guy in the Ideate crew. Fred is the CEO of web marketing company World Wide Creative and the co-founder of online learning portal Heavy Chef. Fred loves writing about people out there doing marketing right. Follow Fred on Twitter here. View more articles by Fred Roed.
Karin
Dec 14th, 2006
The very first sat-nav (by Philips) was called Karin (over 15 years ago). My former partner was always fond to tell everyone he had a Karin in the car and never got lost
(until I send him packing, but that’s a different story)
ps just read The Fred Factor, you could do worse being compared to that, nice ’story’.