The Corporate Lame Name Game

daniel-san writes "I've always wondered where names like Lucent, Aptiva, Infiniti, Agilent, Aquent, Naviant get invented. Not just pertaining to e-commerce companies, the article at Salon describes some of the silliness and the willingness to pay for these names. With companies like NameLab, NameBase, Name/It, NameTrade, Namestormers and TrueNames behind the scenes, I now understand the source of my comedic relief (and sometimes utter horror.) " What are your choices for lamest names for companies or products?

Comments

Funny Internet Names

[MaufTarkie]

At my previous job, we were bought out by a bigger company who thought they could do the ISP business. In the process of "finding" their name, they hired some outfit from California (IIRC), which spent weeks and weeks discovering *the* name that would revolutionize the ISP business. The contractor met with the companies representatives and suggested... Syndic (and the slogan was "The biggest thing on the Internet"). Yes, the only ISP name that could double as a pr0n site. :-D

Needless to say, they said *thank you* and went somewhere else.

Where have all the names gone

[Star Traveller]

The Problem is that most of the good English real names are taken.
You either have to make up a word, pull something out of another language or Norse Mythology, buy it from someone else for the price of a small country, or choose to go for a meaningless acronym.
Ask the people at BZET, they'll tell you

They're not *that* bad.

[Skinka]

I remember when I first heard the name Pentium, I though fuck, why not just call it 586. To me, Pentium seemed really silly at the, but I don't think anyone can seriously claim that Intel went wrong with that choice.. I had similar feeling with the name Athlon, but it too has grown on me. Itanium? I still don't like it very much, but I expect that it will start to sound better as more people use it, and everyone will totally forget the name Merced in a year.

mmmm...coffee

[BenHmm]

last time I was in Seattle someone told me how Starbucks got their name...much cash and hand-wringing, then someone read Moby Dick. Starbuck was the ships mate who loved coffee.
ay wah-lar

that's why they have the mermaid.

not relevent really, but at least they had brought in some literature.

On another point...any company that is an iBar or an eFoo, gets immediately filed under c for clueless IMHO

Amazon.com - the ultimate in name engineering

[P_Simm]

This one doesn't sound silly, but it's a prime example of what big fatcat corporate name designers will come up with.

I mean, why would someone type in 'Amazon' into their web browser? To search for 'sexy amazon babes', of course.

Amazon.com obviously grew into the commercial giant they are today solely because they engineered their name to grab the most 'net pr0n boys possible without offending the others. ;)

Re:Lamest Name for a Company/Organisation

[Verde]

About 10 years ago Enron Corporation, which was then called Houston Natural Gas (I believe) paid a bunch of bucks for a new name. The name-guru came up with Enteron. Unfortunately, as they were about to go public with the new moniker they discovered that enteron means alimentary canal! But after spending all that money they had to make do, so they shortened it to Enron.

Globalization ...

[EisPick]

... is to blame for a lot of these names. If you plan on doing business worldwide, your name needs to be pronounceable by people with many different native languages, and needs to lack bad connotations in those languages.

For example, Federal Express officially changed its name to FedEx in part because people in many countries had trouble pronouncing Federal.

So we get the worst of decision by committee -- only names that have no chance of offending or confusing any one among the world's 6 billion people will survive.

Itanium

[moonboy]

One name immediately comes to mind. Itanium. I guess they wanted to recapture the glory of the Pentium name. They failed. It just doesn't have the same...oh, I don't know, it just sucks.

----------------

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein

Bad service model, business plan

[humphrm]

A few comments about the remarks in the article:

• "We're not really interested in what the client wants," he says. "What we do reflects what the client needs. We have our own analytic system for looking at what the structure of a name should be, and actually, tend to ignore the client's wishes"
  Ooh, sign me up for this service! That's just what I want, someone who not only doesn't give a hoot about my wishes, but is willing to tell the press so much.
  
• Funniest quote: "I'm not suggesting that a company couldn't get it right with a stroke of insight or genius or luck. But if it's your own brand, how can you possibly be objective? I mean, would you name your own baby?" Redhill thinks for a minute, then backpedals. "I mean, of course you would name your own baby."
  
• I do like Lu Cordova's comment, pretty much sums up these bunch of "naming service" wankers: "Let's face it," she says. "We know who's in these big naming companies. We went to college with some of them. They say they're experts at this and experts at that. But they're really just our peers. They don't have any special mystical powers."
  
• It's clear from these remarks from insiders that are two types of people in this business: a bunch of overcharging snobs that just replicate their process for every customer and charge each one as if they were doing it for the first time, and a bunch of snobs who think that their linguistics skills are just so much better than the average person.
  
• Good points about car names too; all decided by a bunch of snobby wankers who think too much of themselves and end up creating soulless names nobody cares about.
  

Sadly, I participated in one of these "naming" focus groups once; it was when I was doing about weekly "focus groups" for a market research company that paid me about $75 for 2 hours work a week. You get into these groups, they've just handed you (or are about to hand you) a good lump of cash, and then ask you how you feel about this-or-that. Frankly, I would have dis'd all the names I heard - that was my first thought - but I wanted to get invited back so I could keep making the bucks. So, I chose the least stupid name, sounded really excited about it, told them it conjured up all these images of [insert adjective or verb here], got my $75 bucks cash, and forgot about it. Yeah, and I can't even remember what names I picked! That's how effective those focus groups are.

Eventually, this self-aggrandizing attitude will catch up with them, I hope. There's just no room in this economy for more self-aggrandizing holier-than-thou business models. Once the fame and money wears thin, this crowd will be back doing real work somewhere.

My $0.02.

Of course we won't like the names

[nohat]

Slashdotters and their technically-minded ilk will often hate these "clever" names because they don't appear to mean anything and "sound lame." But that's not the point: techno-geeks don't buy a product based on its name. If Dell were to sell PIII-500 systems called the Dell Piece-of-Sh*t for $49 we would buy them up real fast despite the name. Computer product names (and product names in general) are created for people whose purchase decisions are based at least partially on name. Names that just describe the product don't work very well for the general public either. Think about it: are you going to buy a "Chocolate, Peanut and Caramel Candy Bar" or are you going to buy a "Snickers"? These companies know that you're going to buy their technical product (if it's good) no matter what the name is. They want to inspire confidence in your mom when she's picking it out by giving it a name like "Performa" or whatever because she gets a feeling, if not the thought, that it's going to Perform.

These names aren't just chosen randomly. Their parts and their meanings and the feelings associated with them are taken into careful account. Copious market research is done. So I guess the point is all these comments about how much we hate this name or that name aren't really an indicator of anything besides individual taste: they don't really matter very much. The names are not designed for us. They're designed for PHBs and airhead shoppers. And they work.

My candidate for the lamest names:

[1010011010]

"Itanium"
"Inprise"
"TurboLinux"
"Netlojix"
"Equinix"
"SmartForce"
"Metacreations"
"Metalink"

Itanium -- what the hell is that? Can I make a boat hull out of it?

Inprise -- sounds like a combo on "internet" and "surprise", which I suppose is pretty meaningful

TurboLinux -- come on. Like they'd name it "supercharger linux" or "carburator linux" or "really slow linux" or "nitrous oxide linux"

Netlojix -- corporations have ruined my scrabble game. Now all the words I know either aren't real or or spelled wrong

Equinix -- maybe some kind of equal-opportunity gelding service for horses?

SmartForce -- you know, like "military intelligence"

Metacreations -- what the hell does that mean? I suppose paint and canvas are both metacreations, in the way this company uses that "word," but they are called "paint" and "canvas," not "metaart"

Metalink -- sheesh.

Re:My candidate for the lamest names:

[1010011010]

Here I was thinking "Andover, Michigan" ... but I like your explanation better!

"Made money and over fist, they did, in that IPO!"

Car Names, Especially Toyota

[YeOldeGnurd]

Camre? Previa? They read like a misprint! Toyota has not used a real word in naming a car since the Corona, have they? Okay, I guess Tundra is a real word.

How about Kia? They make the Sportage, Retona, Clarus, and Pregio?!?

Here's some cars that should have been introduced during the nineties:

Geo Scrotum

Geo Speculum (would compete with Ford Probe for "Car most likely to make women squeamish"

Infiniti Q45 Explosive Space Demodulator

Cadillac Coupe de Soixante-neuf

Solaris Java, a solar-powered "smart car"

Ford Excessive, an SUV bigger than the Excursion

and, of course, the Isuzu Hemos

Bravery, Kindness, Clarity, Honesty, Compassion, Generosity

Enjoy the new name, cause that is your bonus!

[bluGill]

Last year my company spent 25 million on a new logo. A couple days before the big announcement of what the logo was they told all emploiees that we won't get a bonus because we were missed the target by 10 million. Conincidence? We think not. (Managment will disagree, but stock prices few several bucks just after the anouncement)

Ask anyone around here though, the surest sign of a big lay off is a company moving to a new building, changing their name, or changing their logo. The old timers hold that as true.

Car names

[craw]

Some ppl have commented about car names. Here's some tidbits from the book, "Eastern Standard Time."

The founder of Toyota is name Toyoda. A fortune teller told him that a name with eight brush strokes (Toyota) would be luckier than one with ten (Toyoda). He was also told that cars with names starting with C would sell better. Camry, Celica, Corolla, Cressida...Tercel?

Nissan (Datsun) was going to sell a car with the name Fairlady. The US division didn't like it so the name was changed to the production code name, 240Z.

Mazda had a van that they didn't import to the US. It would have been extremely popular with a certain group of people. The van's name was, Bongo Friendee.

Nissan came up with the name Leopard J. Ferie, but later changed it to J30.

On a slightly different plane: I always thought that Microsoft was not a particularly "macho" name (if you get my drift).

How to name a TV channel

[Mawbid]

Guess what the second Icelandic TV station was named. Go on, guess!

"Channel 2"

The next time somebody started another channel, they had a public naming competition. Guess who won the big prize. Yeah, you guessed it: the guy who suggested

"Channel 3"

--

My candidate for the lamest names:

[Chemical]

Andover?

What the hell is that?

Sounds like I'm getting mugged by some Londoner:
"Oy! 'And over yer dosh, else I box yer ears"