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

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.

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

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.

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

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"