What's in a name?

When I was a kid we had a Frigidaire refrigerator. We always called it the "fridge". The name Frigidaire was always one word, and it was just a name. I think it was because of the way it was pronounced. It was pronounced frig-i-dare, not frig-id air. I recognized the Frigid part, but the dare part was just a fancy-schmancy suffix some marketing guy came up with. I mean, adults were always doing screwy stuff like that: tacking goofy sounding suffixes onto perfectly ordinary words to make some new-fangled term. It did not occur to me until many years later that the name Frigidaire was made by combining two separate words: "frigid" and "air".

Today after lunch at O'Connors, Jack & I made our regular stop at Post Hip where I came across a book with the title of "Ashen Den" by W. Somerset Maugham. At least that's what I thought the title was. It is a spy story, so the title seemed appropriate. The title was printed across the spine, not lengthwise as is common. The title was horizontal when the book was sitting on the shelf. What I did not notice was that the book jacket was slightly off center and so the hyphen that appears after Ashen was not visible when the book was on the shelf. Closer inspection revealed that the title was just one word "Ashenden", which is the main characters name. Somehow a den filled with ashes seems more appropriate to the spy game. I wonder if that is what the author intended.

Book is very old, 1940, hard cover, with dust jacket. Served as a bible for the British Espionage Corps for many years. Cost me $3. I'm looking forward to reading it. The cover is similar to the picture above, though not identical.

Update December 2016 replaced missing picture.