“I’m big on names.”
J.K. Rowling, British Author
Category Archives: Brand Naming Consultants
Nomenclature: Reviving The Lost Art Of Naming The World
A good article on the naturalness of naming systems:
Cecil Brown, an anthropologist at Northern Illinois University who has studied folk taxonomies in 188 languages, has found that people recognize the same basic categories repeatedly, including fish, birds, snakes, mammals, “wugs” (meaning worms and insects, or what we might call creepy-crawlies), trees, vines, herbs and bushes.
Naming Names | Lewis Carroll On Naming
“Must a name mean something?” Alice asked doubtfully.
“Of course it must,” Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh: “my name means the shape I am — and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost.”
Lewis Carroll (as Alice and Humpty Dumpty), English Author, in Through The Looking-Glass
Naming Names | Hesiod On Naming
“Do not get a name as overly lavish or too inhospitable.”
Hesiod, Greek Poet
Naming Names | Denzel Washinton On Naming
FRANK: “Brand names mean something, Jackie. Consumers rely on them to know what they’re getting. They know the company isn’t going to try to fool them with an inferior product. They buy a Ford, they know they’re gonna get a Ford. Not a fuckin’ Datsun. Blue Magic is a brand name; as much a brand name as Pepsi. I own it. I stand behind it. I guarantee it and people know that even if they don’t know me any more than they know the chairman of General Foods.”
JACKIE: “What the fuck are you talking about, Frank?”
FRANK: “What you’re doing, as far as I’m concerned, when you chop my dope down to five percent, is trademark infringement.”
Denzel Washington (as Frank Lucas), American Actor, in American Gangster
Naming Names | Milan Kundera On Naming
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
Milan Kundera, Franco-Czech Author
Naming Names | David Wine On Naming
“You need to be distinctive, and a good name can do that.”
David J. Wine, American Developer
Car Model Naming | Alphanumeric Automotive Names
Where are the Gremlins of yesteryear? Or the El Dorados, for that matter?
They are history. The industry is on an increasingly strict diet of alphabet soup with numerical garnish. Alphanumeric nameplates — which consist of nonsensical combinations of letters and numbers — were on 135 models in the 2007 model year, compared with 80 a decade ago, according to Kelley Blue Book.
Brand Naming | Is Your Brand A Noun Or A Verb?
A tip of the hat to UC Santa Cruz linguist Geoffrey K. Pullum, posting at Language Log:
“NEVER use a trademark as a verb”, said the International Trademark Association very firmly (in a web page that has now been removed, but they still publish very similar advice in a PDF brochure you can get here); “Trademarks are products or services, never actions.” As I remarked in this post, they barely know what they’re talking about when it comes to grammar (trademarks are never products or services; they are nouns denoting products or services), and most companies, despite paying lip service to the rules, don’t even follow the rules themselves. A spectacular example occurs in The New Yorker this week, on page 67. Under the face of a sheepish-looking young woman is the legend, “OK, so I Zappos at work.” And the advertisment adds, “Check out our outstanding service and massive selection of shoes and apparel and you’ll Zappos, too.” So they can use their trademark as a verb; it’s just you who shouldn’t. Just ignore the trademark prescriptivists; to hell with them. Zappos your shoes, xerox your copies, hoover the floor. Tell them all they can sue you.
When your marketing and legal departments are operating at cross-purposes, common sense should prevail. You want your customer to use your name as a verb; it means your brand owns your category. That’s what’s known as a great problem to have!