Accor? Do you mean the Olympic Stadium at Homebush?

If you call Twitter by the name Twitter you’ll get an instant smackdown. “It’s not called Twitter,” somebody will say. “It’s now called X. It’s not that difficult, why can’t you get it right?”

They are strangely angry as if part of an Elon Musk army tasked with policing breaches of his corporate lexicon. Personally, I like calling it Twitter – partly because “X” sounds so stupid, but also because it’s fun seeing how much I can annoy some people.

Here’s my view: maintaining an old name, when we’ve been instructed to use a new one, is a form of resistance. It’s one of the tiny ways in which humans try to resist the dominance of the corporate world. It’s our way of saying: “You can’t just reach into our heads, switch a button, and redesignate the words we’ve become used to using”.

Taylor Swift fans at....[insert naming rights] Stadium here.Credit: Phil Hillyard / Venues NSW

Football Australia decrees that I shall use the word “football” to describe what I’ve always known as “soccer”, and my answer is “When I’m good and ready. Give me 20 or 30 years.”

Similarly, we’ve all been instructed by our corporate overlords to describe the Olympic Stadium at Homebush as “Accor Stadium”, to which my response is “Yeah, nah”. Ditto the Homebush Arena, which has been named after various phone companies, banks and computer retailers, a dutiful populace expected to make the appropriate adjustment whenever asked.

So, why should we? Humans exist in this beautiful flux between the past, the present and the future. We carry our memories tenderly, keeping them alive by making use of them.

Are such directions an example of backwards-looking insanity, or could they be an assertion of local knowledge and identity, of the way we value our own history?

The corporations demand we jettison parts of ourselves, and to do so on command. I rather admire the way so many of us refuse to comply.

Sydneysiders still give directions using landmarks that haven’t been there for years. “It’s just past the blinking light,” someone might say when driving along the Wakehurst Parkway, nominating a device that hasn’t blinked since 1966. Remarkably, everyone knows the spot they mean.

Other directions might involve pointing out Centrepoint (not Sydney Tower), or the Peek Frean Factory on Parramatta Road (now a Bunnings, with not a biscuit baked since 1975.)

Are such directions an example of backward-looking insanity, or could they be an assertion of local knowledge and identity, of the way we value our own history?

Part of me still wants to refer to Westpac as the “Bank of NSW”, Qantas domestic as TAA, and Telstra as Telecom (or, for people even older than me, the PMG.) When I go to work, it’s to broadcast on a radio station that I still think of as 2BL, or at a pinch 702, whatever the constant name changes insisted upon by management.

And so we maintain our resistance. The Broadway Shopping Centre is still Grace Brothers, MarketPlace Leichhardt is still Leichhardt Market Town, and Coles is still “Coles New World”, however long ago they dropped the name.

The corporate world hates this, of course. If you want to get a Westfield executive riled up, try using the term “Penrith Plaza” or “Miranda Fair” or “Garden City”, instead of the designated terms Westfield Penrith, Westfield Miranda, or Westfield Kotara.

It’s the same with the roads. In 1968, when the Russians invaded Czechoslovakia, the people of Prague unscrewed all the street signs and put them back in random order. This totally confused those in charge of the Russian tanks, stalling the attacking forces for at least a couple of hours.

Australian governments have been doing the same thing, without requiring the inconvenience of a Russian invasion. The F3 and the F6 have become the M1, the Hume Highway has become the M31, and so on. I’m now so confused I can no longer risk driving anywhere. I’d be forced to fly, if only I could find TAA’s booking number.

Then there’s the department that maintains all these roads – variously going by the title DMR (1965–1989), RTA (1990–2011), RMS (2011–2019), and finally TfNSW. Oh, to be in the logo business.

Of course, people my age still call it the RTA, just to differentiate ourselves from our fathers, who always called it the DMR. Maybe every generation is two name-changes behind the one that first penetrated their awareness.

It’s not only buildings, companies and roads. Why should we use the chilly term “human resource management” when we know it’s just the old “personnel department”? Why can’t journalists insist on being called journalists, even if they are required to sit beneath a sign calling them “content providers”?

And don’t get me started on the word “meeting”, since meetings in most offices are now banned because everyone knows they’re a waste of time. So, instead, you are ordered to attend a “deep-dive”, a “stand-up”, a “bilateral” or a “hotwash”. They’re all meetings, of course, but remember the word itself is banned, used only by a few defiant old-timers – each of us a Che Guevara of the suburbs.

I know I’m being difficult. I know I should be more grateful to our corporate masters. But perhaps you are one of those who agree with my radical stance.

If so, I wonder if you’d like to post this piece on Twitter?