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How 10 Iconic Tech Products Got Their Names
lgmac writes "Think Windows Azure is a stupid name? Ever wonder how iPod, BlackBerry and Twitter got their names? Author Tom Wailgum goes inside the process of creating tech product names that are cool but not exclusionary, marketable, and most of all, free of copyright and trademark gotchas. Here's the scoop on ten iconic tech products and how they got their monikers, plus a chat with
the man responsible for naming Azure, BlackBerry, and more. (What's the one he wishes he'd named but didn't? Google.)"
He says before Google, all the search engines were engineering names like WebCrawler, Webfinder, Websearcher, etc.
Apparently he never heard of search engines like AltaVista, Yahoo!, Lycos, etc. Seriously? Names are his business and he doesn't remember any of those?
The second iteration was actually probably the better, branding-wise.
They were all set -- Firebird for web, Thunderbird for email, Sunbird for calendar -- even things like Songbird for music. I think there were even logos.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Naming is actually a really big business and is usually a pretty painful process. I know someone that was a professional namer that worked for a big branding house for a while. The time they spent coming up with names was pretty incredible.
F/OSS, in general, fails miserably here. "Linpus Lite" on the EEE PCs? WTF?
The name should not matter, but in reality, it does. Unfortunately, OSS projects seem to only accept a rebranding under threats of legal action.
Amen. And think about it... Micro-soft itself is a pretty ho-hum name, in fact it's downright lame. Today, if the company name would be still available, no one in their right mind would give their software firm a name like that, even freelancing consultants wouldn't be so silly as to pick that as their firm's name. But they rose to greatness (in influence and dollars if not reputation for quality), and thus the name lost its lameness and became associated with an extremely succesful tech company.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
And I'd add that some places actively test the names, as well. E.g., asking what people think in focus groups of different names. Or, more subtly, showing a new product to different people with different names on it, and getting stats about their reactions.
Depending too much on what executives personally think of names is dangerous, because executives are very rarely representative of the target market. That lesson applies to lots of other things, too, like features and pricing.