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ZILCH means something to me

I know the meaning of Antonym and Synonym, but I didn't learn the meaning of Eponym until I became one. This is the story of how I became a living Eponym of a word that means "nothing". This is a story that asks why, of the thousands of non-English words used in oral communication in jest or anger every day, this word ZILCH caught on and became used worldwide. There were certainly enough words meaning "nothing", such as: nil, zip, nada, zero, aught, naught and of course, nothing. Our story begins in the early 1960's in an industrial section of Newbury Park, California.

Technology Instrument Corporation, later to be Bowmar/TIC, was located in this Southern California industrial park with companies such as Packard-Bell, Northrop, Semtec, etc. TIC was a company that designed and manufactured precision rotary components such as potentiometers, switches, and commutators in addition to electro-mechanical packages with most of their products fulfilling special customer (generally military) specifications. I was Sales Manager from 1958 thru 1964 of this Company whose sales input was approximately five million annually. Unfortunately, the sales input was usually very uneven, making difficult management problems of too many people and not enough business, causing profit problems or too much business and not enough people making for late deliveries.

Every week the Managers of Sales, Engineering, Accounting and Manufacturing met with the President, Mr. Joseph Looney, and Vice President, Mr. Ivan Dornbush, to discuss, review and plan the Company's general plan of action. The weekly management meeting, a common business activity, is quite often opened with sales information; at least that was the procedure of the TIC President and Vice President. The most important announcement, not only the officers, but to all of us, was the response to the first question posed by the Pres, "What have you sold this week, Sielsch?” Alas, too often, I answered sadly "nothing". Of course I would usually speak up about some bidding activity which could result in business in the near future, but that didn't remove the frown from the President's face.

At one of those weekly gatherings, after too many weeks of "nothing" responses, Mr. Looney opened the meeting with a very sardonic rendition "What have you sold this week, (slight pause), ZILCH?" somewhat humorously predicting the expected "nothing" by playing with my name. My name is pronounced in two syllables, the first being like a window "sill", the second like telling someone to be quiet "shh". So together Sielsch sounds like "sillsh" which is not that easy to say. Try it. But Looney's Sielsch became ZILCH, much easier to pronounce and similar to Filch. And the Z was emphasized almost as in Zero. This opening became a regular practice, and even during good times (lots of sales and very few nothings), ZILCH was it. And then it started. When walking thru the halls of the TIC plant I'd get a humorous "ZILCH" from passersby, especially from those knowledgeable of the Sales situations of the Company. It wasn't long before it became a common greeting.

So, often during the past fourty years, when confronted with the word ZILCH, it would often take me back to the old days at TIC. Then one day I read the definition of ZILCH in Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. Of course it stated that the meaning was “nothing, zero”. But what caught my attention was that although it stated that the origin of the word ZILCH was unknown, it mentions CA. (about)1966. The lights came on! After seeing the word in print, hearing it in movies and on television, and even using it myself in conversations, I was thinking the unthinkable… the word ZILCH originated in the executive meeting room from those days at Bowmar/TIC.

Now I was motivated to research this word 'ZILCH on the Web. I Googled ZILCH., and to my surprise I got 1,570,000 hits. Wow! Now I had the task of reviewing those hits that would possibly contain origin information, such as World Wide Words which states it first appears in print in the mid 1960's and that the name appeared in the Ballyhoo magazine published in 1931. ZILCH was a family name in this cartoon/PLAYBOY type magazine. There was Oscar Zilch, the well known tenor (he was gay) and Evangeline Zilch, a zany astrologer who had a fictional planet called "ZILCHUS". There was Elmer Zilch, an idler, a very lazy family member. The family name disappeared upon the shutdown of the Ballyhoo magazine. But the years between the 1930’s and 1960’s are a complete blank as far as the development of the word is concerned. The Merriam-Webster Online states that while nothing is known about the origin of ZILCH, and lexicographers traced that term’s print to the mid 1960’s.

In addition to the puzzle of how this word ZILCH came to be accepted into the communications of everyday life in the media of print, TV, films, the web, and very surprising, to me, was the variety of companies who used it in some of their products. On the web site Visual Thesaurus.com Zilch is diagramed to be related to the words aught, cipher, cipher, gooses egg, nada, naught, nil, nix, nothing, null, zero, and zip. With all of these words existing and being used, why would ZILCH grow in popular usage and what is it with this word that various companies named products ZILCH. I never heard of many companies using the other nothings (aught, null, nada, zip, etc.) in their product nomenclature. ZPACKS manufactures and markets Ultralight Backpacking Gear and one of their backpacks is called “Zpacks ‘ZILCH’ Ultralight Backpack”. There is also available with Zero Carbs and Zero Calories a product named “ZILCH Sugar Free Margarita Mixer” which is manufactured by ZILCH Mixers. Then there is Jay Manufacturing who offers “ZILCH products…A ‘must have’ for tobacco users and pet owners”. They offer sprays entitled “ZILCH Odor Eliminator and Fabric Freshener” and “ZILCH Pet and Food Stain Remover”. I also found “Full-finger ZILCH Glove” offered by Pearl Izumi Company”.

If you go to Amazon.com you will be able to purchase “ZILCH” a party game using rolled dice to score points. And there is “ZILCH CD packaging “from CANTO 5 Design, Inc. Do you remember the Monkees singing group? Well, one of their songs written by David Jones, Mickey Dolenz, Michael Nesmith, and Peter Tork was titled “ZILCH”. ZILCH has also moved into the world of porn. There is an outfit called ‘Porn4ZILCH’. What else could there be? Well the topper for me was when I found one of my favorite foods, you guessed it, ice cream called ZILCH. It is available in NZN Parlous in Australia and New Zealand.

So I go back to my opening paragraph where I asked why oh why has ZILCH, an unnecessary word for which there are already many “nothing” words, came into such broad and popular usage? It is my feeling that the word came to be used as a somewhat humorous application in the places where most of the "nothing" words were too harsh. It is my hope that one of you readers of this article will be an Etymologist or Lexicographer of Linguistic who can shed some light onto this etymological puzzle. HELP!