Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, is growing fast. The information also gets more and more useful. Now there finally is a page about the Heavy metal umlaut. In the unlikely case you are not familiar with this phenomenon, it means an umlaut over one or more letters in the name of a heavy metal band. “Umlauts and other diacritics with a blackletter style typeface are a form of foreign branding intended to give a band’s logo a tough Germanic feel. They are also called röckdöts.” Well-known examples are Motörhead, Queensrÿche and Mötley Crüe. Of course there are also non-metal usages, like Hüsker Dü or The Crüxshadows. Many more examples can be found in the Wikipedia entry, complete with linguistic analysis. Did you know that Spinal Tap was quite original by using an umlaut over the consonant letter N? This is a construction otherwise only found in the Jacaltec language of Guatemala!

Author: HD. Published on: Saturday, January 22nd, 2005.
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