This law, which is mine, is derived solely from watching the NBC Evening News, which is interrupted by a lot of ads for drugs aimed at older people (for COPD, cancer, dry eyes, heart problems, etc.). That alone tells you who the target demographic is, and also that young people don’t watch the t.v. news (they get it, of course, from social media). Here’s my rule:
It’s coming now. . . .
Here it is:
At least half of new medicines advertised on t.v. have the letters “x”, “y”, or “z” in them.
Here’s a table from Cornell University of the frequency of letters in the English language, based on a sample of 40,000 words. The total frequency with which x, y, or z appear among letters is 1.35%. Calculating the frequency of, say, random six-letter names that don’t contain such a letter would be about (0.987) to the sixth power, or about 0.95, or 95%. But of course that is an underestimate, as a drug name is unlikely to have two or more of those three letters, and it has to have a vowel. I don’t know how to do the proper math, which is impossible given that the names are made up, but I have to conclude that drug manufacturers think their wares will sell better if they have one of the Three Letters.
(There may be some miscalculations here, or other sites may give slightly different )
There was a study that showed people believed medications which had letters from the end of the alphabet were more powerful.
Clearly drug companies have latched onto the concept.
Certainly agree about the demographic for the evening news. And certainly interesting about the perceived power of the end of the alphabet. Because of the rarity of X, Y, and Z?
But which came first, the study or the marketing? Maybe the marketing, but then the public became convinced that XYZ was the mark of effectiveness, and it snowballed. My favorite pills have the letters G E N E R I C.
Cancer chemotherapy protocols often use multiple drugs, the acronyms for which themselves also have to have the right “something”….I think the kids these days call it “riz”. (CHOP for Hodgkin disease is a long-standing favourite.)
A parody published in a medical journal about 40 years ago described a new regimen for cancer of the belly button whose acronym was MZRXCL. (The authors of the article invented five imaginary but credible-sounding drugs that obeyed Coyne’s New Law!)
Unfortunately the results of the clinical trial were disappointing, with very low cure rates. So the Pharma marketing researchers went back to work. Their focus groups told them that “MZRXCL” just didn’t go with that swing, you know? So they got the FDA to let them relicense two of the drugs with different names — that’s two more credible names the authors invented — causing the acronym to now read “MIRACL” The “new” protocol was a smashing success with belly button cancer now chalked up as curable disease.
Said the authors, (I’m quoting from memory).” . . which proves that nothing is so salutary for the health as a good vowel movement.”
Is the 50% number something that you found out by methodically sampling from the advertisements, or just a ballpark guess based on experience? I am guessing it’s the latter, which would be totally cool as an observation anyway.
The reason I asked is because one time I did something similar with the letters on car license plates when I was in Colorado since I noticed some letters such as Q, X, Z occurring at much higher frequencies than purely random chance. To verify if this is my observation bias or a real phenomenon, I wrote down license plate numbers of many cars and then compared these frequencies with what they would have been if all letters were equally likely (kind of like you did). Those letters were indeed more frequent. I still use that data sometimes when teaching probability. There must be a policy that tries to avoid real words on license plates which led to this. But it lead to some interesting abbreviations occurring frequently. I have seen QED on at least 10 cars within a very short timespan.
As you note, it’s new drugs that follow this trend. Didn’t apply to aspirin, or paracetamol (although Tylenol – the North American brand name for acetaminophen – does have a Y). But here is my question – all drugs have two names – I assume you are referring to the brand name (e.g. Humira – fails the test) vs it’s generic name (adalimumab – also fails, but it’s over 20 years old)
But many newer examples Skyrizi, Taltz, Rituxan etc do seem to be on the bandwagon.
Maybe they’re running out of possible words and have to resort to x, y and z to get something not already in use.
I seem to recall that these names are not language specific. They have to make sure the name doesn’t mean something obnoxious in Swedish.
Personally, I think drug companies should turn to Welsh village names for their next round of drugs: “Ask your doctor if Cwmystwyth is right for you.”
LOL!
Also, I looked up and found this: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35706463/
Xyzal hits all the right notes! Vraylar is an also-ran, as it only has the “y.” Jardiance misses the mark entirely, even though (sing it with me) “Jardiance is really swell, the little pill with the big story to tell.” And don’t get me started on Xeljanz (which misses the “y”). Celebrex (neither “y” or “z”) underperforms badly, but I do like having the “x” at the end of the word better than at the beginning.
Good law! Aren’t there some other Coynian laws currently in force? What about the law that every newly introduced “healthy” food eventually turns into a dessert. (I noted that this was the case with yogurt many years ago, before you declared it a law.) We need some sort of numbering system for Coynian laws, don’t we? In lieu of a numbering system, maybe you could provide a reprise of all the laws that remain in force.
Not all medication names are arbitrary. For example, I asked about the etymology of TEVA-FUROSEMIDE and got the AI response below. To the extent chemical composition contributes to names, might need a different database than language. Any database of chemical names to find frequency of later letters? And of course, English isn’t the only language in the world.
Names for generic drugs might differ from brand names. Lasix is one brand name for Furosemide that fits the Coyne rule. But it too is not arbitrary according to google. Lasix is “derived from a functional abbreviation meaning that the drug “lasts six” hours.” Interestingly, number words in English contain may contain later letters more often than non-number words: two, four, five, six, seven, eleven, ….
Here’s the AI response for Teva-Furosemide.
“a brand name for the generic drug furosemide, produced by Teva Pharmaceutical Industries. The etymology of the name breaks down into the manufacturer’s name and the chemical structure of the drug.
Teva: Refers to Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., an Israeli multinational pharmaceutical company. The name “Teva” is the Hebrew word for “nature” (טבע).
Furosemide: The drug name is derived from its chemical structure:
Fur-: Refers to the furfuryl group (
-furfuryl) contained in the molecule.
-o-: A linking vowel.
-semide: An alteration of sulfonamide, indicating it is a sulfamoylanthranilic acid derivative.”
And then there’s the drug for erectile dysfunction called Coxaflagin.