In a Word: Chyron: How a Centaur Got on Your Screen

Senior managing editor and logophile Andy Hollandbeck reveals the sometimes surprising roots of common English words and phrases. Remember: Etymology tells us where a word comes from, but not what it means today.

In practically every form of televised journalism — from cable news to local sports coverage — you’ll find a band across the bottom of the screen giving updates on other stories. As this digital ticker tape has become more widely used and recognized, so too has its name: chyron.

It’s a weird name, isn’t it? It doesn’t evoke the industry or purpose it serves: There’s no tele- or info- or journo-, no scroll or ticker or display in the name. So why is it called that?

The chyron’s story began in 1966, when Francis Mechner and Eugene Leonard founded a company called the System Resources Corporation, which was focused on the quickly growing digital industry. In the late 1960s, the SRC began developing a type of digital graphics generator that would allow controllers to insert text (and later images) over video on a TV screen.

SRC called this new technology Chiron, after the wisest and most just of the centaurs in Greek mythology. (Centaurs, if you don’t remember, are half-man, half-horse.) Why they chose Chiron over, say, Hermes (the messenger of the gods) or Hephaestus (who built clever technologies) I cannot deduce. Chiron is most associated with medicine.

Regardless, SRC continued to upgrade and innovate Chiron, making it the leading product for, among other things, running text along the bottom of the screen in a TV broadcast. The generic name for such technology is “character generator,” but people called it “the chiron,” because that brand was so ubiquitous.

In 1975, SRC merged with Computer Exchange, and they wanted to name their new company the Chiron Corporation, after their most successful product. However, there was already a Chiron Corporation registered in California, so to avoid trademark issues, they went with the Chyron Company, exchanging a y for an i. What people called the running text along the bottom of the screen changed with it.

Chyron, then, is another in a long line of genericized trademarks, or generonyms, words that start as company or brand names and then, through popularity and ubiquity, become generic names for things (though not always generic in the legal sense). Some people, in particular intellectual property lawyers, also refer to the loss of a trademark’s legal status as generocide.

If you’ve ever asked for a Kleenex, Band-Aid, or Crock-Pot, instead of a tissue, adhesive bandage, or slow cooker, you’ve used a generonym — capitalized here because they are still technically legally protected brand names. There are other words we use generically without realizing they are still trademarked. Here are a few:

• Bubble Wrap (generically bubble cushioning or bubble rolls)
• Frisbee, Hacky Sack, and Hula-Hoop (all owned by Wham-O)
• Jet Ski (generically personal watercraft)
• Mace (pepper spray)
• Musak (background music)
• Onesie (one-piece baby clothes)
• Popsicle (ice pop)
• Styrofoam (polystyrene)
• Tarmac (from a shortening of the generic tarmacadam, also used for asphalt, which largely superseded tarmacadam; some use the word for any paved roadway)
• Velcro (hook-and-loop fastener)

But there are plenty of common words that have become completely genericized — that is, the word is no longer “owned” as a trademark:

• Aspirin (owned by the Bayer company since 1899, though they’ve lost or sold the rights to the name in many countries)
• Cellophane
• Dry ice
• Dumpster (a trademark that expired only 2008)
• Escalator
• Granola
• Heroin
• Kerosene
• Laundromat
• Linoleum
• Teleprompter
• Trampoline
• Videotape
• Zipper (which, in 1925, began as the name of a type of boot that used what we think of as a zipper today)

The Chyron Corporation filed for bankruptcy and reorganization in 1991. In 2013, it merged with the Sweden-based Hego AB, becoming ChyronHego, but in 2021 announced a return to the original Chyron name. Many of the other graphics that appear on the screen during news or sportscasts were developed by the Chyron Corporation, too, but the name has only stuck to that one bottom-of-the-screen text-scrolling technology, and regardless of what happens to the company in the future, the generic chyron for “character generator” is probably here to stay.