Brand names spring from the practice of branding animals — and human beings — to indicate ownership. A product that is “brand new” is as fresh as a newly branded calf.

I don’t spark forth a lot of logology (letter play) in this space because mucking around with letters isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and you might accuse me of having too much time on my hands. But I thought you might enjoy seeing how a shelf full of trademarked items lend themselves to making the alphabet dance:

• Wal-Mart spoonerized (reversal of initial letters) becomes a Mall Wart.
• Tylenol, Pepsi, and Yamaha are among the product names that cry out to become palindromes — phrases or sentences that read the same forwards and backwards: lonely Tylenol, Pepsi is pep, and Aha, May, a Yamaha.
• Reversing another brand name, we wonder are the purveyors of Evian bottled water trying to put something over on us? No? Then why is the Evian brand name naive when spelled backwards?
• Even more infelicitous are the reversals of the products Tums, Dial, and Tulsa (gasoline).
• In a pair of Adidas sneakers, each one is a palindromic Adida.
• If you chew a Tic Tac, switching the two halves of the pellet could be a wise social TacTic.
• If you tack on an s to the end of Saltines, you get
• Dunkin Doughnuts recently vaporized the Donuts from its name. Personally, I believe that decision was a branding disaster and unkind to the public. In fact, if you simply move the initial letter in the word Dunkin to the end of that word, you end up with the adjective unkind
• An anagram is a rearrangement of all the letters in a word to form another word. Advil anagrams into valid and Spandex into expands. Siemens becomes Nemesis, American Airlines real cinemas in air, and Delta Airlines “I land earliest,” Dreamworks mad workers, and Time Warner mean writer.
• How sweet it is: Rearrange every letter in Episcopal, and you end up with a Popsicle and Pepsi-Cola. That’s not as accidental as you might think. Pepsi-Cola was invented in 1893 in New Bern, North Carolina, by a pharmacist named Caleb Bradham, who owned a drugstore just across the street from the town’s Episcopal church. According to town lore, the concoction went by the name “Brad’s Drink” for several years, but the inventor wasn’t completely happy with that. One day, according to the story, he glanced across the street and looked at the sign in front of the Episcopal church in a whole new way.
• Camry yields, with letters in order, my and then, from what’s left, car. The name of the manufacturer of the Camry is Toyota. Capitalized, A TOYOTA is not just a palindrome; every letter therein features left-right symmetry and is itself palindromic. Manufactured by Honda, the Civic automobile is a palindrome composed entirely of Roman numerals.
• Here are a dozen more palindromic brand names: Aviva (insurance), Aziza (cosmetics), Elle (magazine), Eve (cigarettes), Kayak (travel tool), Mum (deodorant), Noxon (silver polish), Pep (cereal), See’s (candies; I love their dark chocolate covered almonds), O.S. (scouring pads), Tat (insect repellant). TNT (TV channel), and Xanax (sedative).
• Up until 1970, if you had been driving on West Miner Street in Yreka, California, you would have come upon the palindromic Yreka Bakery. Weep weep, sob sob, honk honk! After a full century. the bakery closed, but its palindromic spirit remains aquiver. The premises are now occupied by the Yrella Gallery.
• And there’s also Zoonooz, the magazine published by the Zoological Society of San Diego 1926-2020. Zoonoz was an extraordinary title because it was palindromic rightside up and upside down. A few years ago the title of the magazine became Wildlife Alliance Journal, more descriptive of our Zoological Society’s mission, but far less logologically pyrotechnic.

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DEAR RICHARD: What 9-letter word in the English language remains a word when eight letters are removed one by one? –Herb Kelsey, El Cajon

Here are at least two 9-letter words that can be deleted anywhere while keeping the order of the letters intact:

SPARKLING SPARKING SPARING SPRING SPRIG PRIG PIG PI I

STARTLING STARTING STARING STRING STING SING SIN IN I

But wait! There’s more! From the 12-letter word reactivation we can extract any letter, one at a time, and then form successively smaller anagrams, until but a single letter remains:

REACTIVATION RATIOCINATE RECITATION INTRICATE

INTERACT TAINTER ATTIRE IRATE RATE ART AT A