A couple of weeks ago, I was walking the DC Mall between the Washington Monument and the Capitol when I came upon these “porta potties” beside a special events tent. The company name, ‘gotügo,’ was clever and cool, what with the lower case first letter and the umlaut. So what’s with the umlaut (the two dots over the ‘u’)? My college German taught me that it was sort of a contraction, signaling that there was an ‘e’ following the vowel, something like putting an apostrophe in place of an ‘o’ in ‘isn’t.’ I know pronunciation varies from region to region, such as with nicht (“not”), pronounced “nikt” in one sector and “nisht” in another. As for the umlaut, we were taught to go with “er” for ö, as in danke schön (“Thank you very much”), and not the “ay” in the Wayne Newton version. Then ä (as in mädschen—“young girl”) came out “eh,” and ü (as in Übermensch—“superman”) sounded like a ‘u’ said through pursed lips, with sort of ‘e’ sound.

Anyway, it seems that the umlaut on the portable facility is there for effect, not clarity. You can leave it out and the name still works. But leave it in, and you join with a bunch of others who went for a sophisticated look. Häagen-Dazs is a totally made up word, coined by a Jewish couple in the Bronx who wanted something that sounded Danish, both to give it a Scandinavian aura and to honor the Danes, who were particularly helpful to Jews during WW II. The same sort of thing goes for Mötley Crüe, whose double umlaut may have been inspired by the Löwenbräu beer they were drinking. Of course, we still call them “Motley,” not “Mertly,” and who knows what we we’re supposed to do with the double ‘e’ (one invisible, one not) in the second word? Never mind that; it’s bogus.

Other groups, starting with Blue Öyster Cult, got into the act, trying to sound Gothic or Wagnerian, so much so that some speak of the “metal umlaut” or “röck döts.” It even inspired The Onion to headline an article, “Ünited Stätes Toughens Image With Umlauts.”

At their web site, gotügo says they’ve been at it since 1980. Incidentally, I read that Mötley Crüe began in 1981. Coincidence? Doubtful, but Rotten Tomatoes does say that their 2019 biopic, The Dirt, “celebrates the rude debauchery that Mötley Crüe’s fan’s enjoy.” Nasty business.