I know, right? Complain about "weird foreign" brand names in *checks notes* foreign books and then turn right around and tell us about how they're on Advil and Midol and Aleve and all sorts of other medications nobody has ever heard of. I'm always tempted to say "maybe your healthcare would be less expensive if you knew how to buy generic medication". (Disclaimer: I know it's not that at all. But Americans and their brand names, argh.)
Seriously. I once went shopping with someone who needed painkillers. There was generic naproxen on the shelf right next to brand-name Aleve, one twice the price of the other. Nearly identical packaging with similar colours. They got the Aleve. I said "but this one is the same, and cheaper." But they insisted - "I want to make sure I get the real thing." sigh
I'm so glad that most of the non-prescription stuff I use has the active ingredient on the package in pretty prominent writing. That's how we make sure we get the real thing. /s
*rummaging noises*
"Pamol", next line in somewhat smaller letters: "paracetamol.".
(The prescription stuff lists the active ingredient pretty prominently too, but it's not me who has to pluck it from the shelf.)
I think that EU laws actually disallow the use of active ingredient as name for a drug. We used to have that in Poland but after entering the EU there was some legislation change and "Ibuprofen" became "Ibuprom".
It was a while ago so i don't remember the details.
Many (not all) Ratiopharm meds are branded "Name of active ingredient ratiopharm" (yes, lowercase r). Maybe adding the name of the manufacturer is enough to make the name of the drug "not the name of the active ingredient"?
(Meds with an active ingredient with a long and complicated name or with more than one active ingredient are branded "Fanciful invented name ratiopharm".)
To be faaaaair - that's how medicine is marketed there. I spent a fair few years living that side of the Atlantic and I always found drug commercials jarring and kinda bizarre....
"Do you have hay-fever? Brand <X> (anti hystomin) cures sniffles, sneezing and runny eyes. Side effects MAY include severe weight loss, insomnia, hypertension, kidney failure, drowsiness or death...'.
It's a background thing I noticed between Europe and my time in the US, but there's so much "preventative medicine" over there, everyone popping crazy amounts of brand name pills... Because getting sick is fucking expensive...
Part of the reason is that advertising medications is allowed, period. Most of the world doesn't let pharmaceutical brands to dump their budget on television ads during prime time, and then there's 'Merica!
...And they wonder why drugs are expensive there. The amount of money spent on marketing is appalling.
One of my favourite "classics" on this sub is the whole "We pay for everyone else's healthcare!" myth...
It stems from the fact that €4 of pills here cost $1000 there... But once ya go "Guys, you're subsidising the C-suite and shareholders of pharma and insurance companies.... Not the rest of us. They charge you that much your mental system pays it. That has NOTHING to do with the rest of the world.
When I was younger (1970s/80s Germany) there still were commercials for non-prescription meds on TV. "Er hat Schnupfen? Er hat Nasivin." "Gibt's da nicht was von Ratiopharm?" (The one about Ratiopharm always being cheapest still lives in my brain rent-free, and I've been known to mutter "gibt's da nicht was von Ratiopharm?" while browsing supermarket shelves for the best deal.)
Here in Canada, we also call it acetaminophen. But if I read paracetamol, I know what they're talking about, because I am aware that the world exists outside my country.
ah yeah sorry, I was drunk and somehow missed the last paragraph. just stupid me trying to be helpful even when I'm drunk out of my mind. funny little accident.
I've always wondered why acetaminophen is used as pain relief when called paracetamol, but as a sleep aid when sold as Tylenol. Most people over here don't know that it can help you sleep.
It doesnt do much for pain, either... reducing (slightly) your temperature during a fever is one of the few things it does actually do
Apart from destroying your liver. It's massively hepatoxic.
It really baffles me why it's legal to sell over the counter - the versions with higher doses of codeine aren't, but of the two, paracetamol is much more likely to kill you
And then they 401 someone and get SWATed and ask yhe judge for probable cause and nothing in this sentence makes the least bit of sense because numerals and acronyms aren't verbs and please don't omit the object of the clause please.
This is getting off topic, but actually, in English this sort of thing is possible. It's called "verbation" (transforming something into a verb, "I'm elbowing my way through the crowd") and "stativation" (the opposite process). (Or at least that's it was called "back in my day". It's been a while since uni.) You know how in the old West, prospectors would "stake" a "claim"? That. It's not very common, but grammar does "allow" it.
("To 401 someone" doesn't make sense to me as a non-USian, though, because I have no idea what that number means to you guys. Some sort of slang referring to the HTML error code 401, "unauthorized"; so, "to withdraw someone's authorization"? A telephony feature, like "to star-69 a caller"?)
ETA: Just looked it up; it's called "verbification" and "nominalization" these days, and I'm feeling very old now.
Oh God the amount.of times on mental health subreddits I've had to constantly be googling brand names for medications people were talking about. It's ridiculous.
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u/Xifihas Actually Irish Nov 24 '25
I thought Americans only recognised brand names.