Image via Troll.me
When I tell people my company name, there's typically one of two reactions:
- Ha! That's so cute!
- What does Nomster Chef mean?
And I've come to realize that if you understand the play on words in Nomster Chef, you've probably spent a considerable amount of time reading the memes of the internet. And if you haven't, you probably think I'm a poor speller. :)
So for those who aren't familiar, "Nom" is the onomatopoeia word a lot of people use to write out the sound of eating. It's also turned into a verb (i.e. "nomming"). I knew that I wanted the main character to be a monster, because monsters eat everything. And one day it came to me- if I flipped the first three letters of monster, it was... nom! So to me, a Nomster is a monster that likes to eat (or a kid that likes to eat!).
But, even I had no idea how "nom" became a word... until now! I would like to thank the journalistic heroes at Eater who investigated the etymology in their article The Origins of the Annoyingly Trendy Word 'Nom', Explained. (Though, I think it's "adorably awesome" instead of "annoyingly trendy," ha!).
The origin of the word "nom" is actually Cookie Monster! Here's a video where he talks about his famous phrase:
And then some people (around 2007) started using "Om Nom Nom" on the popular meme site I Can Haz Cheezburger as a caption on top of cute animals eating. It was even added to the dictionary. Now, in 2017, it's common to see people hashtag #nomnom on social media posts related to delicious food (and we do it all the time, obviously)!
So there you have it! The original article on Eater is worth the read too. I was tickled to find out that I can thank Cookie Monster for the name of my company, because we go way back (see below).
