Bork
[bɔrk]Bork is three words at once. It is internet slang for the noise a dog makes; it is a verb meaning to destroy a political nominee, taken from the judge Robert Bork; and in computing, something that has been borked is broken.
Temperament
Three words are spelled bork
Bork has had an unusually busy life for four letters. The senses that matter to a dog owner arrived by a completely different route from the one the dictionaries record first, which is why the word feels like it belongs to two unrelated eras at once.
The oldest recorded sense is political. Robert H. Bork was a United States federal judge whose nomination to the Supreme Court in 1987 was rejected after an intense and organised campaign against his record. Within a year, "to bork" had entered the language as a verb meaning to destroy a nominee by attacking everything they have ever said or written. Etymonline dates the verb to 1987 and notes that Bork was not the first person to have his name turned into one.
The dog one, which came from somewhere else
The sense most people now meet first is the animal one, and it has nothing to do with the judge. "Bork" is a deliberate misspelling of "bark" — the vowel shifted, the word made ridiculous — and it is used online as the noise a dog makes. Wiktionary records it, in its own words, as internet slang, humorous, "of a dog, to bark". A bork is also the noise itself, which is why the word arrives in threes: bork bork bork.
That triple repetition is not a coincidence for anyone who grew up with a television. The Swedish Chef, the Muppet who speaks gibberish Scandinavian and throws his utensils over his shoulder, has been saying "Bork! Bork! Bork!" since the mid-1970s. It is part of why the word already sounded like a joke before the internet got to it.
From the same pile of slang comes "borked", meaning broken — usually of software, and usually in a way that was somebody's fault. That is the sense you are most likely to hear in an office.
What all this means for a dog name
It is a funny name, and it is funny for a reason worth understanding: it is a word that is already a joke about dogs, so using it as a dog's name is a joke inside a joke. Anyone under about thirty-five will get it immediately. Anyone older may hear the judge, or the chef, or nothing at all.
As a call sign it has one strength and one real problem. The strength is the opening /b/, a firm plosive that is easy to hear. The problem is the ending: bork finishes on the consonant cluster /rk/, which is exactly the shape that trails away when you try to hold it across a field. There is nothing to stretch. "Bork!" is a shout, not a call.
The other thing to weigh is that bork and bark are one vowel apart, and your dog will hear both constantly — in the park, on television, from other dogs. If you want a name your dog can pick out of ordinary conversation, this one has a harder job than most. If you want a name that makes people laugh, it does that every time.
Common questions
Is Bork a real name?
Not as a given name. It is a surname — the judge Robert Bork is the best-known bearer — and it has become a word in three separate ways since. As a dog's name it is a joke built on the internet sense.
Why do people say "bork" for a dog's bark?
It is a deliberate misspelling of "bark", popularised online as the sound a dog makes. It may also owe something to the Swedish Chef from the Muppets, who has said "Bork! Bork! Bork!" on television since the mid-1970s.
Sources
Page reviewed .