经典手表的名字是怎样取出来的？

Iconic Names for Iconic Watches

经典手表的名字是怎样取出来的?

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·温斯顿珍稀钟表公司(Harry Winston Rare Timepieces)的总经理马克西米兰·比塞尔(Maximilian Büsser)在从新加坡到日内瓦的航班上开始设计1号钟表机器的草图，这是块大胆的三维手表，他自己的颠覆性品牌即将诞生。

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.

当时比塞尔还没给自己的公司注册名字，但他知道钟面上要用什么名字：B&F，意思是比塞尔和朋友们，体现他为温斯顿著名的Opus系列工作时倡导的一个理念：聚集一群擅长钟表艺术的朋友，让他们精巧地制作打破常规的时计。

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.

通勤者经过伦敦金融区设定为不同时区的钟表。伦敦金融区在伦敦东部，是在多格斯岛上的西印度码头的旧址上建起来的。

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.

他的商标代理人劝他不要用B&F，因为那样他就得应付瑞士手表品牌Bell & Ross(经常用B&R这个缩写)的律师们。无奈之下，比塞尔只好同意把他名字的第一个字母加到商标里，变成了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”).

“但是我真的不想那样，”他说，为MB&F的不对称以及对自己贡献的过分强调(相对于“朋友们”的贡献)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.

这个名字的不同寻常也令人震惊。瑞士最著名的手表品牌大多是向制表业历史上的杰出人物致敬：帕特克(Patek)家族、菲利普(Philippe) 家族、布勒盖(Breguet)家族和皮盖(Piguet)家族，都是17至19世纪为瑞士钟表业奠定基础的人。去年瑞士钟表的全球出口额接近240亿美元。

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

一开始，比塞尔选择的带趣味性的名字遭到了一些批评，说它不够庄重。

“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.”

“跟我合作的第一个平面设计师跟我说它是个糟糕的名字，”比塞尔回忆说，“他说，‘你是在奢侈品行业——你很难把一个以朋友们命名的手表以20万美元的价格卖出去。’那是给米老鼠起的名字。我说，‘呃，这是我能表达自己的唯一方式。’我们就这么做了。很有意思——成功让你变得迷人。”

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.

主导消费品和服务行业历史的那些公司在为自己的产品起名字时都避开传统、逻辑和判断力。加州索萨利托市的起名与品牌推广机构Igor的创始人史蒂夫·曼宁(Steve Manning)把理查德·布兰森爵士(Sir Richard Branson)著名的赌博作为一个极佳的例子。“如果你够疯狂，在飞机的侧面写上Virgin，人们会认为它一定有什么特别之处，你因此而获益，”他说。

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，用名字让手表焕发新生命是常见的做法——不管是从功能性、体验或引起共鸣的角度命名——所以很难想象钟表曾经以没有商标注册的方式售卖。

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世纪才突然领悟到品牌的力量。一旦他们意识到了这一点，这个行业就出现了大量标志性的钟表，它们的名字也同样具有标志意义，对应着制表业历史中的诸多关键时刻。

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.

第一个打破传统、用生造词作为产品名字的瑞士品牌却是一个住在伦敦的巴伐利亚人创立的。汉斯·威尔斯多夫(Hans Wilsdorf)在回忆录中说自己在乘坐双层巴士时，“一个精灵”在他耳边说出了一个“短小而意味深长的单词”：Rolex(劳力士)。1908年，威尔斯多夫注册了这个商标。劳力士杂志(RolexMagazine.com)的编辑和出版人杰克·欧利希(Jake Ehrlich)说，这个品牌后来成了“世人皆知的成功的标志”。

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.

如果劳力士换成另一个名字能否爬到制表业的顶峰我们就不得而知了。“这是个先有鸡还是先有蛋的问题，”拉斯维加斯文华东方酒店的奢侈钟表礼宾员阿米特·德夫·汉达(Amit Dev Handa)说，“这些手表的名字都很好念，给了人们一个参照点。”以威尔斯多夫最伟大的创造——1927年面世的第一款防水手表劳力士牡蛎(Rolex Oyster)为例。通过把他的奢侈手表与海里的软体动物联系在一起，这位开拓性的市场营销员表达出这款产品的主要特点：它隐藏着某种罕见而珍贵的东西。 1931年威尔斯多夫把“Perpetual”(永恒)这个词加到品牌名中，表示它是第一款自动上发条的手表，他几乎借此确定了自己开创性的遗产。

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·卡地亚(Louis Cartier)跟威尔斯多夫是同一个时代的人，他和劳力士的创始人一样喜欢能呈献出清晰画面的直白的产品名称。

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.

第一款卡地亚坦克手表是1917年设计的，据说是模仿盟军坦克的俯视图：表带让人联想到坦克的履带，表壳则代表着驾驶舱。

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.

手表行业的第一批经久不衰的产品名字出现在第一次世界大战接近尾声的年代，这不是巧合。历史学家、瑞士品牌爱彼(Audemars Piguet)的开发总监迈克尔·弗里德曼(Michael Friedman)说，当时“美国大兵吸着烟，手腕上戴着庞大的手表的形象”开始出现。腕表时代就此到来，这个行业新生的市场营销人员抓住这个机会树立自己的品牌。

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，积家(Jaeger-LeCoultre)手表1931年的经典款翻转腕表(Reverso)源自于发生在印度的某场马球比赛场外的一番谈话。积家手表的艺术总监雅内克·戴勒斯基维茨(Janek Deleskiewicz)说，当时英国统治印度时期的一位军官向瑞士商人塞萨尔·德·特雷(César de Trey)挑衅，让他设计一款能经受这种激烈比赛的手表。

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是以拉丁词组“我转身”命名的，暗指这款手表独特的旋转表壳。它仍是积家品牌的一个支柱产品。但是第一个说出这个历久弥新名字的人已无迹可查。当被问及这个名字是谁起的时，戴勒斯基维茨说是“产品本身”，意思是Reverso和其他受尊敬的手表款式一样源自它们的制造者，它们本身就具有完整的市场营销信息，比如小小的、滴答作响的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.

这个行业中历史悠久的品牌名不仅是音节的奇妙组合，而且是一封封写给它们诞生时代的情书。

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年百年灵(Breitling)的Navitimer款是为飞行员设计的“航行计时器”;1955年万国(IWC)的Ingénieur是专门为工程师设计的;1957年欧米茄(Omega)的Speedmaster是一个计秒表，它曾被带上月球。万国的首席执行官乔治斯·科恩 (Georges Kern)说，在这几款手表诞生的年代，“人们认为科学能解决人类的所有问题。”他指的是这些名字所代表的进步和数字精准性的理念。

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世纪60年代，手表的名字反映了那个时代更合作的精神。例如，1969年，真力时(Zenith)推出了第一款自动上发条的计秒表El Primero。虽然这个词组在西班牙语中的意思是“第一”，但是真力时的首席执行官让-弗雷德里克·杜福尔(Jean-Frédéric Dufour)认为，这个名字实际上取自世界语。世界语是一种人造语言，那时的人们与60年代语言学家们的想法一致，仍然认为一种共同的语言能缓解世界矛盾。

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

从20世纪70年代起，瑞士制表业开始将视野转向审视自身。

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，爱彼推出了皇家橡树(Royal Oak)手表，这款开拓性的手表广受好评，它采用的是杰拉德·亨塔(Gérald Genta)设计的不锈钢表壳，这在当时可谓大胆之举。当时崛起的日本正在快速抢占瑞士的市场份额，这个名字让人联想到旧世界的皇室。这里提到的橡树是英格兰国王查尔斯二世在1651年的伍斯特战役中躲避奥利弗·克伦威尔(Oliver Cromwell)的军队追捕时躲藏的那棵树。

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“我时代”让位给“贪欲时代”后，名字的主旨再次发生了变化。1979年伯爵(Piaget)推出的马球(Polo)手表传达的是极富人群的消遣活动，引发了休闲优雅的概念：“马球是一项非常独特的运动，与伯爵针对的客户相匹配，”伯爵的首席执行官麦振杰(Philippe Léopold-Metzger)说。

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.

百达翡丽(Patek Philippe)被普遍认为是世界上最受欢迎的手表品牌，但是该公司直到20世纪80年代末才将自己的时计整编成正式的系列。圆形手表以该公司的标志十字星(Calatravas)命名。十字星起源于12世纪的西班牙西多会骑士团，它对该公司的创立者安东尼·帕特克(Antoni Patek)和弗朗齐歇克·恰佩克(Franciszek Czapek)有重要意义，因为他们都是波兰天主教徒的后裔。

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.

百达翡丽的长方形手表被称为Gondolos，它以巴西一位忠心耿耿的零售商克罗诺米特罗·贡多洛(Chronometro Gondolo)命名的。为了向贡多洛表示敬意，该表曾经推出一款长方形的装饰艺术风格的手表。

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，对该品牌的铁杆粉丝们来说，这些名字与另一种形式的命名法相比居次要地位。“你和一群百达翡丽收藏者一起吃饭时，他们用数字指代手表的款式，”佳士得拍卖行手表部的国际联合主管约翰·里尔登(John Reardon)说。他指的是收藏者们使用的通常为四位数的序列号，好像这些数字是私人银行账户的代码——从某种意义上讲还真是这样，因为它们代表的很多手表都非常罕见和珍贵。

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.

新千年一开始，机械手表制造出现了全面复兴，金融危机是八年之后的事情，所以这个时期起的名字与起这种名字的态度一样大胆，包括比塞尔给自己的品牌所起的朴素的名字——钟表机器(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)系列是该品牌的首席执行官让-克劳德·比弗(Jean-Claude Biver)的智慧结晶。他想找一个名字表现他的手表制造理念——“融合”，也就是将传统工艺和科技创新相结合。

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.

他指的是这个系列将金和橡胶结合起来的标志特征：“在正常情况下，这两个元素在本质上是不相容的，”比弗说，“大爆炸之后，金在地下，橡胶在树上，但是在大爆炸系列中，它们融为一体。”比弗说他没费太多脑筋就想出了这个名字。“那是2004年11月的一个晚上，我吃着晚饭、喝着红酒就想出这个名字，”他说。

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，手表公司在起名字时更加用心。1946年创立的帝舵(Tudor)是劳力士的姐妹品牌，是威尔斯多夫和巴黎起名公司Nomen一起想出来的，它把Grantour系列和Pelagos系列结合到了一起。帝舵的市场营销和产品开发主管达维德·塞拉托(Davide Cerrato)说，前者是意大利词组gran turismo(高级跑车)的缩合词，描述的是一款为汽车迷设计的运动手表;后者是一款潜水手表，名字来源于“一个希腊单词，意思是深海，准确的说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·鲍姆加特纳(Felix Baumgartner)和设计师马丁·弗雷(Martin Frei)在为1997年亮相的颠覆性的奢侈手表品牌Urwerk起名字时，更是煞费苦心地采用了“艺术设计”的方式。