Is it time to ditch the word "Orienteering" from our sport?

[AndyC]

Along the lines of AndyC.

"Orienteering" in people's minds = the skill of map reading/compass work, often practised by teenagers on DofE trips, or scouts, sometimes by walkers, always done slowly with head scratching and walking boots.

"Orienteering event" - in people's minds: as above, probably with lessons from serious mapreading guru types

"Orienteering race" - in people's minds: as above, but done quickly as possible, probably with running.

So rather than time to ditch the word "Orienteering", it might be time to ditch the word "event" and replace with "race"? Not a perfect brand image .. but a big improvement.

Or "speed orienteering".

I'll just say that "speed" wouldn't reflect some aspects of the sport where endurance and technical ability are the most important factors

[Scott]

So rather than time to ditch the word "Orienteering", it might be time to ditch the word "event" and replace with "race"?

Yes, I think this is definitely worth considering. Personally I always refer to them as "races" when telling non-orienteers what I did last weekend. It makes it sound like it's actually a competitive sport...

[Miner]

My sedentary colleagues don't have a problem getting their heads round the concept of orienteering being a race rather than a ramble with map and compass. They just can't quite understand why doing the activity in the pouring rain and waist high in brambles could be pleasurable in any way

[ryeland of doom]

Mand waist high in brambles could be pleasurable in any way

Nor me!

I am still haunted by experiences in Herefordshire forests, and then there is Great Breech Wood, Somerset.

[Adrian]

As you'll've noticed if you've had a look, the leaflet I do for the WMOA has "map racing" at the top and "orienteering" at the bottom of the front page. That's not because I find a lot of people think that orienteering is the same as wayfaring, but because the word is a bit hifalutin.

I agree that jargon terms like "event", "course" and "control" are just as problematic. I sometimes use "competition"/"race" and "route" for the first two, but I'm never quite sure what the easy-to-understand word for "control" would be.

[SeanC]

I can see that some may argue that replacing "orienteering event" with "orienteering race" might deter those who are less competitive/more recreational.

An easier change to make to improve the brand image might be to use more competitive event/race names eg.

League
Competition
Cup
Trophy


Names that don't imply competition (to non-orienteers)
Series
Gallopen


I agree with Big Jon though, we can still get growth without the drastic step of renaming our sport. Even with an un-cooperative local commercial press we've had a very modest growth in membership numbers.

[Red Adder]

I don't think the way the scout movement uses the word helps us. 20 years ago it was quite common for troops to attend our events - now my experience is often the opposite. The scouts regularly camp at one of our newly acquired areas and claim to offer "orienteering". However when offered our map for free were not interested, even giving the impression that what we do is not really orienteering. Its almost a pity that BOF couldn't have actually taken legal ownership of the word years ago.

[ifititches]

Similar experience with scouts to Red Adder, but I think it could soon be dispelled if
I 'd had time to go along and work with them.

In every secondary school in which I've done bits of orienteering work, the children (certainly up to age 13/14) have greeted the news of "orienteering" as an activity with huge enthusiasm, because most of them have had good experiences of it through W.Mids outdoor centres, so I haven't found it a problem. The problem lies much more in the fact that I can only *do bits" rather than deliver a sustained programme.

However, at a 100 year celebration/reunion of a very well known W.Mids running club last weekend, I was told emphatically that the biggest put-off about orienteering for the individual in question was not its title, but its "middle-class" image.

I'm indisputably middle-class now, but I certainly wasn't when I took up orienteering in 1969-71. I couldn't have done it then without a non-family member with access to a minibus,and my parents had no involvement in my orienteering. I'm sure the same would still apply for a majority of children in this bit of Birmingham today. One solution is to work with the organisations with minibusses and I can see that some bits of the country have done this very successfully in the short-term, but how much of that is still being sustained by just one or two key individuals?

[SYO Member]

Even now when by chance on TV or in a local paper you come across a group of people, normally youngsters, doing 'orienteering', it is usually more like what used to be called wayfaring and if the group are scouts, maybe this is the intention as Red Adder alludes to. They're doing what they think orienteering is.

Unless there is assistance from a local o-club, there never appears to be a competitive or timing aspect let alone the use of a proper o-map and we're never told whether the control descriptions were correctly described and if permissions were sought, i.e the sort of things that are fundamental to any format of proper orienteering.

When this subject has been discussed here in the past, the favoured alternative name I think was Map Running which I'd go along with although there might be problems with the IOF if BOF became BMRF!

The only sport I can think of that comes anywhere near the image/naming problem we have is table tennis, aka ping pong which I associate with slow high bouncing balls in youth clubs as opposed to what we've seen in Delhi this week at the Commonwealth Games. But the table tennis is on TV in a terrestrial sports programme rather than a digital channel like Sky Sports 3 which has shown WOC, and this is one of the reasons for our continual problem. Our races (not events) are never on mainstream telly and are certainly not yet in the Olympics.

Does anyone know what the situation is in non-Scandinavian countries regarding the public's perception of orienteering? For example France, USA, Canada, Italy, Australia?

[The Loofa]

many moons ago (1980s) I was on BOF's - long defunct - General Purposes and Finance committee. I recall being told then that BOF had registered the copywright of the word "orienteering". So what happened to that?
found to be not worth the paper it was written on?
lost behind a cupboard?
nobody could be bothered to use it?
(4th option - my memory is failing)

[mappingmum]

How bizarre. Surely you cannot copyright a word from the dictionary. Copyright is an exclusive right granted to the author or creator of an original work. Orienteering existed before BOF . . . . .

[The Loofa]

maybe it was option 4 - memory failure then
or maybe I meant trademark

[mharky]

How bizarre. Surely you cannot copyright a word from the dictionary. Copyright is an exclusive right granted to the author or creator of an original work. Orienteering existed before BOF . . . . .

How about...

Olympic, Olympics, Olympian, Olympiad, Paralympic, Paralympics, Paralympian, Paralympiad

Or perhaps any two of these words together...

Games, Two-Thousand and Twelve, Twenty Twelve, 2012

Or inlcuding any of these words...

London, medals, sponsors, summer, gold, silver, bronze

[seabird]

Was it not Victoria Beckham who just a few years ago was in dispute with Peterborough United over "ownership" of the word "posh" - a word that pre-dated both of them?

I really can't see us getting into litigation with the various groups and individuals who misuse, in our view, the term orienteering.

I go along with those who suggest appending the word "race(s)" to orienteering - and dropping "event".

Model railway enthusiasts and the like have events. When we ask to stage an "event" on their land, our local council send us enormous forms asking questions about alcohol sales, music volumes and the like - but few, if any, questions that seem to address matters relating to sport. The word "event" does not automatically create an image of sport and if the word "orienteering" also fails to give an image of sport to the general public, we are on a double whammy of creating the wrong image using these two words together.

[mikey]

Was it not Victoria Beckham who just a few years ago was in dispute with Peterborough United over "ownership" of the word "posh" - a word that pre-dated both of them?

But there has only ever been one The Posh.