Another new name, another new brand. NedRailways, fire sale owners since May of former National Express’ Travel London/Surrey, has renamed its bus operation Abellio.
With some 85 per cent of its operation in London, the Abellio name is unlikely to hit people in the face, subsumed as it is under the strong TfL bus brand. It nevertheless will appear on the sides of its 350-vehicle London bus fleet. The brand will, of course, be more transparent in Surrey.
Abellio joins the trend towards the establishment of UK transport brands with seemingly made up names such as Arriva, Veolia, Govia, Transdev and Rotala.
Abellio is a Northrhine-Westphalia, Germany, bus & rail operator that NedRail took over in 2008. Interestingly, the origins of German Abellio appear to have involved a majority investment by a British investment fund manager, Star Capital Partners. The name Abellio may be traced either to either a Gallic god or it may even be a derivative of the Greco-Roman god Apollo.
Saturday, 7 November 2009
Going Dutch—or Gallic
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3 comments:
I like "made up" names. There are only so many bus-related names (eg Stagecoach) before they start sounding contrived and awkward.
Yes, names that give a hint about the region are nice as well, but let's be honest, a name like "Harrogate & District" doesn't show a lot of imagination, and does limit the company if it wants to expand or shift its operations.
And if you're going to have made up names, a work that is completely made up, like Abellio, is better than one that tries to derive itself from a misspelling of an existing word, like Arriva or Connex.
Raymond Abellio - a French Nazi collaborator. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Abellio
Sort of fitting if we're progressively selling our culture out to foreign agencies.
A shame to reduce Raymond Abellio life to his collaborationist period -which did occur, whereas he's been an important essayist and philosopher whose works to mention few are major writing such as "la fosse de Babel", or "assomption de l'Europe" and so.
For a more complete and accurate reference please visit the french wiki page:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Abellio
(using web translate like google should do the job)
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