Ever since we opened in 1993, we are asked over & over again how we came up with the name. As some may recall The Waygoose was opened with 3 owners, JoAnn Shimizu Sweet, Nan Rael & myself (Deborah). You would think that with all of the decisions to be made when trying to start a new enterprise finding a name wouldn't be one of the most difficult. Since there were 3 of us, using one of our names or some compilation of them just seemed awkward. Zyzyx had just opened in Wildwood Shopping Center (Nan had assisted with the opening) & we were intrigued by the use of such an unusual name. At the same time we were aware that many people had difficulty locating the business in the yellow pages or through the operator (internet, what internet?). We decided that we wanted a name that was unusual or catchy enough to stick in your head, but not be difficult to spell or pronounce.

So, we asked friends for suggestions, looked through books, played with words for quite some time. Anyone for "Handmaiden" -- get it "Handmade In", you can imagine the list! However, none really seemed to stick. Nan had started to read through the thesaurus & found "Waygoose" under street fair. That appealed to us because we wanted to create that atmosphere for our customers. A place to go to find beautiful & unique handmade crafts even if there wasn't a craft show in the area. So we researched it even further & found the above definition in the Oxford English Dictionary & that sealed the deal. We loved the connection to the guild system, after all, that's who we were representing, masters of their crafts. It wasn't hard to spell, remember & we didn't think we'd get sick of it after a few years!

Over the years a few people have recognized the word & a couple of customers have found it used in other places: one recalls it from Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales", another "Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe", although we have not been able to track down the actual usage. UC Irvine hosts a student run Wayzgoose every year (http://www.celebrate.uci.edu/wayzgoose/index.php). There is a Wayzgoose Cafe in NSW Australia (http://www.wayzgoosecafe.com.au/) found by one of our fabulous customers!
And we just missed the 11th Annual Wayzgoose Letterpress Steamroller & Smackdown held by Seattle's School of Visual Concepts. (http://wayzgoose.svcseattle.com/about/). And of course there is WayGoose, a management recruitment company in England specializing in the print & graphical markets (http://www.waygoose.com/). This we discovered when trying to set up our website & couldn't register "waygoose.com". For a pretty obscure word it's pretty cool to find it used by others. If you find it somewhere, please share!

 Deborah