No Marin ..
The name of a product is determined by the users.
Sorry, but that's wrong. Someone didn't invent a device for heating and crisping up bread, put it on the market, and the buyers and users decided it was a "toaster."
While there are certainly exceptions, everything that comes to market has a name that was thought up by the creator of the product (or the people doing their marketing).
In fact, this is such a powerful process that sometimes products are brought to market under one name but previous similar products are so dominant that their name is applied to the new product. An example that comes to mind is the iPod, a name coined and trademarked by Apple. When Microsoft belatedly decided to get into that market and make their own Mp3 player they called it the Zune. Not many people bought them, but I know a few who did. And they all referred to their devices as "iPods" even though they weren't
Vacuum cleaners in England, no matter who makes them, are all referred to as "hoovers." In fact "hoover" has been a verb over there forever, as in "I'm going to hoover the bedroom this afternoon." Doesn't matter if what you bought is a Dyson, in the UK most people including the person who bought the Dyson, will call it a "hoover."
One reference I have here at my desk says that the word "trawl" probably originated from the obsolete Dutch word "tragelen" which was first used to describe this type of fishing net back in the 1560s. The same reference says the first use of the word "trawl" was in 1759. (I assume because that's the year attached to the first piece of writing the researchers found with the word "trawl" in it).
So we have no way of knowing how or who created the term "tragelen." Could have been a net maker guy for all we know.
The point is that the names of a new type of product or the name of a specific product are almost always created by the people who created the product, not by the people who buy the product. Because until it hits the market they don't even know it exists, let alone what it should be called.
The old stereotype of the inventor who comes with a new device and excitedly declares in his lab, "I just invented a machine to do X and I'm going to call it a _______ " is actually accurate.
In Hawaii I worked for the then-best commercial film/video production house in the state. Our customers were most of the major ad agencies as well as direct accounts with banks, department stores and whatnot. While I worked in the production side of the business we came to know most of the key players in the agency and marketing world very well and we were often present if not participants in meetings that involved what to call a new product or service.
All these naming discussions involved the client and the agency. The ultimate buyers and users of the product or service were never involved, although sometimes findings from surveys of focus groups of potential buyers was incorporated into the product name strategy sessions.
In the industry I work in now, all the product names with one exception I know of were hatched up by this company. Monomail, Clipper, Superfortress, Stratofortress, Stratoliner, Stratocruiser, Stratotanker, Stratocruiser, Dreamliner, Dreamlifter--- they're all names created by someone or a committee at Boeing or its ad agency.
The one exception I know of is Flying Fortress. At the first flight of the Boeing Model 299, the prototype for what became the B-17, in the crowd watching was a reporter from a local newspaper. The plane had been fitted with representations of turrets. I don't know if they had guns, fake guns, or no guns but when the reporter saw the plane he said, "It looks like a veritable flying fortress" or words to that effect and used the term "flying fortress" in his article. The name stuck.
The application of the word "trawler" to recreational cruising boats was not cooked up back in the 1970s by people who bought and used recreational cruising boats. It was conceived by some individual boat builders and boat manufacturing companies (or their marketing people) as a way of branding their boats in a more appealing, more rugged way.
A modern parallel is Ford. They used to brand their pickup trucks in a pretty generic way. Ford promoted comfort and convenience and various features. Pretty much like they did their cars.
Then Dodge changed the branding game. They took some design elements from semi-tractors, toughed-up the look of their pickups, hung the name Ram on them, and began aiming their marketing squarely at male egos and tough self-images.
Ford was caught flat-footed. As quickly as they could they changed their image, too, the most radical change being their animated truck logo. So today, when I turn the key in my new Ford pickup, the LCD screen in front of me lights up and the first thing that happens is a rugged, tough rendition of the Ford logo flies down past the camera to land on a piece of parched, cracked earth and a big cloud of dust comes up. Only after that happens do I get whatever operational display I've selected to be on the screen.
That's the automotive equivalent of the use of the word "trawler" to describe a recreational cruising boat. And in each case, it was dreamed up by the company that wanted to create this very specific image or their product, not by the people who buy or use the truck or boat.
Not sure how to relate this to the preference of gas or diesel but I suspect---- suspect, I've never read or seen anything to indicate that it's true---- that using diesel engines in recreational boats has an element of that same macho, ego-focused, tough-guy image attached to it. Sure, there are safety issues and fuel efficiency issues and longevity issues attached to the decision.
But how much cooler is it to say when asked about one's boat, "I have a diesel cruiser" or "I have a diesel trawler?"
The same thing happens I bet in a lot of people's minds if they are asked what kind of engines are in their boat. "We have diesels," sounds macho, sound's rugged and reliable and needs no further qualification. In comparison, "It's gas powered" puts it into the same ho-hum image category as a car.
It's significant perhaps that even on this forum, saying one's boat is diesel requires no further explanation. But saying one's boat is gas is very often followed by some qualifiers about how gas is a perfectly good, safe powerplant for a cruising boat and so on.
I don't disagree with that at all. But I think it highlights a difference in branding and perception by the cruising boat market between diesel and gas.
