Why so much French? (2)
The sources of product names tell you a lot about status. Or do they?

In autos, Chrysler and GM had different geographical centers for their status names. Ford didn't really play the game, since Ford held onto some of Henry's original Populist flavor during the years when GM and Chrysler were pushing status.

Chrysler favored NYC and northeast. New Yorker, Fifth Avenue, Concord, Plaza, Newport, Saratoga, Meadowbrook. The last isn't exactly a place, but it sounds more like Vermont than California.

GM favored California and Florida. Delray, Malibu, Catalina, Ventura, Biscayne, Bel Air.

Language choices are more restrictive. Cadillac has always favored French or French-sounding names. Calais, Seville, Biarritz, Coupe de Ville, Allante, Escalade. GM also used LeMans and Monte Carlo and Riviera, all pretty much the same place.

Oddly, nobody has ever used British or Irish places, even though US aristocrats have always tried to be British, and American pop culture since 1960 is exclusively British. No Dublin or London or Liverpool, nor even Torquay, which is a fashionable beach resort with a French-sounding name.

Chrysler used Royal and Windsor in an unspecified way. Windsor is the surname of the king and queen, but it's also a rich suburb of NYC (fitting the overall pattern) and the location of Chrysler's Canadian factory.

Even odder: Among those French-sounding names, two are Basque and one is Arabic. Biarritz is a Basque name, Biscayne means Basque, and Seville (which is actually in Spain) comes from Arabic.

German and Russian are totally blank. Some custom bodies in the '30s were berlines, but the name was felt to be French.

GM used one Italian racetrack: Monza. No Italian culture or food or wine names, even though those are traditionally high-status.

Classical Latin and Greek used to be status symbols. Only four examples. Buick used Invicta and Electra in 1959, and Olds used Delta and Omega for a while. The first three are probably accidental, but Olds formed the badge for Ωmega with the real Greek letter.

In the modern era when MANY of the richest and most powerful Americans are from China and India, we don't have any status names from those countries.

Why is French so dominant? Very few Americans actually came from France, and French was never the language of aristocrats here. Our auto industry began by imitating and plagiarizing French inventions, not British or German. Is that the connection? Seems unlikely.

Maybe French is dominant because France was NOT dominant? We don't like to be reminded of our oppressors. Britain and Germany and Russia and China have been viewed as oppressors, accurately or not.
  ¶ 6:39 AM