« previous post | next post »

Yesterday Google announced the open-source release of SyntaxNet,

an open-source neural network framework implemented in TensorFlow that provides a foundation for Natural Language Understanding (NLU) systems. Our release includes all the code needed to train new SyntaxNet models on your own data, as well as Parsey McParseface, an English parser that we have trained for you and that you can use to analyze English text.

I'll have more to say later about the framework, the English parser, and its results.

But for today I wanted to ask about the English parser's name, Parsey McParseface. This choice echoes Boaty McBoatface, the winner of the British government's online "Name Our Ship" campaign to choose the name for a new research vessel. The responsible Science Minister was Not Amused by the poll's result, and intervened to choose the fourth-place entry "RRS Sir David Attenborough" instead.

Perhaps the good people at Google meant their choice as a comment on this anti-democratic action. Or maybe they were just responding to the same memetic currents as the participants in the "Name Our Ship" poll.

But what interests me is when, where, and how the pattern Xy McXface emerged. I don't have time this morning to look into it, so I'm appealing to our readers to supply the answer.

Update — Apparently someone claiming the name of "Racist McShootface" has entered a bid of $65M for George Zimmerman's gun…

Update #2 — It's worth noting that the OED gives sense 2.f. of face:

With preceding nouns and adjectives designating types of faces; also applied to people regarded as having such faces (sometimes as terms of endearment, abuse, etc.): angel, baby, brass-, doll's, fat-, funny-, hatchet-face, etc.; (with the names of animals) dog's, fish-, frog-, hog's, kitten, monkey face, etc. Sometimes informally designating medical (esp. skin) conditions, as copper-, fiery-, frog-, moon-face, etc.; occasionally characterized by a day or month, as February, Friday-face.

Permalink