Talk:memory stick

memory stick
Specifically referring to its use as a general term for flash cards. Memory Stick (Wikipedia link) is a specific brand and set of formats of flash memory card created by Sony and largely used on their cameras, camcorders etc, and other Sony devices such as the PSP (Wikipedia link). While there is no doubt that the term exists, I do not believe this to be a genericised trademark and is thus not synonymous with flash card (but rather a subset of it).

I am unsure of the rules regarding trademarks and capitalisation (and I couldn't find anything on the topic of trademarks beyond WT: Trademarks, which doesn't really go into detail), but judging by how things like German nouns are treated I would imagine that even if its inclusion as a specific sub-type of removable flash media card were permitted, it would have to be capitalised and thus belong in Memory Stick rather than memory stick. Also, the current translations (which include things like SD-Card (the Germanisation of SD card, see Secure Digital (Wikipedia link) ), a distinct flash media card format) would be invalid if used in that sense.

I did do a quick search for Memory Stick on Google Books, but it is difficult to sort through as it would appear that Google treat "memory card" as a positive match. Whether that indicates that it is treated synonymously, or that Google simply broadened the results, based on the match with "memory" as the first word of the term, I am unsure. A second search with Memory Stick in quotes narrowed the field significantly. A search for SD card didn't seem to have the same problem, quotes or otherwise.

Of the results I did get that matched "Memory Stick", the vast majority referred to either the specific type of Sony cards (including variants such as Memory Stick PRO Duo, Memory Stick Micro etc) or to the other sense as a colloquial term for USB flash drives. There was however one which was ambiguous as to whether they were referring to the specific type of card, or cards in general: this entry, which refers to memory sticks (uncapitalised) but to the reader as a "memory card reader"/"memory card slot", multiple times. This seems like a strange difference to employ if not referring to the Sony cards, but there doesn't seem to be any reason for them to use the specific version given the context. There were also a few other uses, such as this one, which was published almost a decade before either the Sony cards or USB drives came along; I think they are referring to RAM DIMMs (Wikipedia link), as RAM is often referred to simply as memory, and DIMMs are often referred to as sticks (in various constructions, e.g. RAM sticks, sticks of RAM, DIMMs of memory etc). My search was not exhaustive (I went up to the fifth page on the "quoted" search), but that was the closest I found to an attestation.

Alphathon (talk) 08:00, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

P.S. I don't know if this belongs here, but it is related: it seems dubious that the given etymology applies to the second definition (i.e. USB flash drive). How would that be rectified (referring to formatting, page structure etc)? Alphathon (talk) 08:03, 7 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Anyone? Alphathon (talk) 00:48, 16 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Having been about agree that this defines a flash card, I look at Memory Stick and find that Sony have a "flash drive/card" amongst their illustrations of a "memory stick" - so I guess since its their trade mark - they can define? &mdash; Saltmarshαπάντηση 04:37, 15 May 2013 (UTC)


 * I have modified this along the lines of entries for Hoover, biro, etc. I have remove rfv - hope this is OK! &mdash; Saltmarshαπάντηση 04:47, 15 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Closed, dealt with by . — Ungoliant (Falai) 11:26, 12 September 2013 (UTC)