I am thrilled to read about RITMO in the latest Forskerforum, a magazine covering topics related to research, higher education, and academic policy in Norway. There, Ole Kristian Våge, a terminologist at the National Center for Health Terminology, comments on the titles of Centres of Excellence. His main complaint is that they all have CamelCase names with weird combinations of letters. However, he is positive about RITMO, here translated to English:
But if someone from an SFF (Centre of Excellence) is interviewed by the Norwegian press, they cannot introduce themselves with FAIR. A full-form name in Norwegian is much better. Otherwise, I must say that among the abbreviations here, I really have a liking for RITMO. Even though it is inspired by the Spanish word for rhythm, it does not conflict with the Norwegian linguistic structure and reflects much of the content – rhythm and motion. This name I will remember.
He is wrong about the Spanish, though. Or, not entirely, it is true that ritmo means rhythm in Spanish, but also in Italian. And the use of RITMO in our centre title does, indeed, come from Italy, or more specifically from Bruno Laeng, our Italian psychology professor. We like the name and I am happy to see others like it too!