Name Awards Professional Commentary on Company Names, Product Brands and Business Names

Putting DeCarta on the map

July 25, 2007 7:20 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

Now I am not saying that a name change guarantees you new funding, but you have todecartalogo.jpg admit that the investors who put up a C round funding of $15million for deCarta probably found the decision a little easier now that the company is called DeCarta. Especially because it comes on top of earlier rounds of $23million.. not bad for a company providing the mapping infrastructure for location based applications (as so many on the web are).

Congratulations to Bill Schwegler and his team for finally giving up on the old Telcontar name. I am sure it meant something to you.. but now this new name is so much more appropriate, even though it has enough uniqueness to protect properly. While the public might never understand what you do, I am sure the mapping geeks of the web really appreciate your services. Your name will stick in their mind (and code) forever. And now they know you have the financial might to be around long term too.

Posted in: Great Names

At last, shoppers get Lucky again.

July 18, 2007 11:45 am ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

First we had Lucky Stores, then they got taken over by Albertson’s and all of Northern California growned… but eventually we had to eat so many of us still shopped there. Then some of these stores became SaveMart.. and no one noticed or cared.. and we weren’t about to go into such a lower class chain with a very old style pedantic name.

Finally.. someone with money and branding brains shows up, and now new old lucky store signeight stores a week are going back to the future. And the Lucky store brand will be seen again. Welcome back.. a name and a brand we loved passionately returns. A brand that had grown to have some personality.

But does name recycling work? Yes, in particular if it fixes an error. NCR became a successful high tech company again after escaping the grips of the awful AT&T GIS systems moniker. Nation Wide bank took over Bank of American and wisely didn’t enforce the name of the conqueror. When the acquired company has a better name, why not capitalize on it?

P.S. Of course, the big name out here in supermarkets is Safeway and they are busy expanding into the restaurant business, with the awfully named Citrine bistros. Ouch. See the name critic’s review of this name.

Posted in: Name Origins

Nugarc and Enienay – Yuck

July 9, 2007 8:46 am ⋅ 3 Comments ⋅

Over the weekend I heard of two rotten new names that are not even worthy of a full analysis in my name critic column, but I offer them up here so you don’t make the same mistakes. In fact, can you even pronounce the names, let alone guess what field they might be in without reading further?

Firstly, Nugarc.com aspires to be the next Craig’s List, that magical internet village marketplace site. The business intentions may be great… but what do I tell my friends? Go to Nug Arc or Noo Garc or Nugar C … .. This name is trying too hard to be Craig Newton backwards – I think. Instead it deserves a four bombs award.

Now Enienay is shorthand for N.I.N.A. Wow. OK. May even work for this young designer clothing brand… but any nay is how I would have pronounced it. And is any nay as good as a definite nay, says the naysayer?

Posted in: Rotten Names

Alinghi is a lot more than a dinghy

July 4, 2007 9:30 am ⋅ 1 Comment ⋅

In the closest racing in decades, Alinghi successfully defended the biggest (and oldest) trophy in yacht racing during this past week. Their large sponsorship base and successful marketing helped raise significant funds of course, as did all the teams. But how much easier was it for them when they have such a powerful shorthand name and logo for their endeavor. Sure is a lot easier to call and represent Alinghi than Team Emirates New Zealand.

But what is an Alinghi? And where does the name come from? I instinctively love the name, but know it would have been a hard sell to management (at least this side of the pond). I can just imagine their criticism of the spelling and pronunciation.. as some wise cat also tells me it reminds them of a dinghy… and that is not the image they want to project.
logo_alinghi.jpgWhen I find out more, I will surely put on my name critic hat and do a full analysis.. but you already know it is going to get a great rating.

Meanwhile, if for no other reason than to see one of the finest international websites anywhere, visit www.alinghi.com. It is truly beautiful to see (and right up to date the day after the final race) even if you are not fond of water, waves, wind and sails.

Posted in: Great Names

Arsene coaches Arsenal

July 3, 2007 3:24 pm ⋅ 1 Comment ⋅

arsenallogo.jpgEvery time I watch “the gunners” play soccer, it fascinates me that Arsenal, one of the big major clubs of Europe, have a long time coach with the first name Arsene. Talk about being made for each other. Such naming coincidences are very rare in nature, yet very common in product and company naming.

Of course my software name checkers wouldn’t like any of these names, since they both have “arse” in them, the very English pronunciation for your rear-end! Luckily, we have humans running the asylym.. I hope.

Posted in: Language Fun

Historic iPhone arrives.. from the name bully

June 30, 2007 9:37 am ⋅ 2 Comments ⋅

First there was the Newton, then the Palm (after they were legally forced to drop Pilot from the name), then the Blackberry, Razr, Chocolate, UpStage, and finally the iPhone. Compared to normal naming sequences this is all backwards. Usually an industry first jumps on the direct and common names, then evolves into using real brand names.

iPhone named pictureIf you hadn’t heard of the biggest coming attraction since Windows 95, then you surely have today now that people actually can buy an iPhone. Of course, it is not just a phone, and it is a lot more than a PDA or wireless email. But then again, the iPod is not a pod (though Apple originally had the name for internet kiosks, which were pod-like).

This time, Apple managed to bully (OK, bribe, cajole, tease, entice) Cisco into letting them use the name iPhone, because its structure satisfied Apple’s naming architecture. But folks, please don’t try this bullying others in your home office, unless you have the power and charisma of Steve Jobs, and a big bank account to fund your takeover name actions.

Thank goodness we are not hearing those dreaded PDA initials anymore. Of course, it is a Personal Digital Assistant, (or Pretty Darn Awkward as I always called them), but Apple understands branding big time. So they use real names… just like the iPod beats the life out of all those other devices that have MP3 in their title. How do those names evolve to also be video players, web browsers, organizers and telephones?

Posted in: Language Fun

If it is not a Frisbee® it is a ???

June 26, 2007 9:17 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

For Father’s Day my college boys took me around Golden Gate Park in San Francisco on their favorite Frisbee Golf course. It was a lot cheaper than me taking them on a round of real golf (in fact, free, except for the sandwiches).. and very interesting. Of course, despite the name we all use, the course was properly marked as the Disk Golf course. Believe it or not, Frisbee has been the registered trademark of the Wham-O Corporation since 1959, and they have recently extended the mark to many other clothing and toy categories, in addition to flying disks.frisbee_classic_pink2.jpg

Then, right on cue, I read an article that reminded me Frisbees were named after the Frisbie Baking Bompany – which just happened to ship their cakes and cookies in round tins with nice lids that you could whiz across the room!

If you have any other interesting name origin tidbits, why not drop me a comment or an email? There are more in-depth name origin stories on our Brighter Naming website.

Posted in: Name Origins

Blu-ray looks like the bright leader

June 25, 2007 6:12 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

In a recent management leadership class at college, a student (on learning I once worked for Sony) asked me whether I thought the Blu-ray or HD DVD format would win the new DVD standards war. At the time, I didn’t have a ready answer, because personally I am tired of tracking all these standards, and don’t care which one wins.

bluraylogo.jpgBut after I considered it some more, I realized that the Blu-ray format would surely win. Just like Blue Tooth won the short range wireless standards battle. It is not so much about the technology as it is about the marketing. And the marketing team with the coolest product name usually wins.. if for no other reason than it gives the public a memorably hitching post handle to congregate around.. and to spread virally by word of mouth and word of mouse.

In the July 2nd issue of Business Week, Harry Maurer’s News you need to know points out how Blockbusters has already standardized on DVD, and others are surely following. Another major piece though says not to count out Toshiba yet.

Hmmm… now remind me again. When did Toshiba last win a marketing coup?

PS Blockbusters is such a simple and appropriate name. I wonder if all the children around the country call it Busters – or just those in my area?

Posted in: Name Winners

Go Daddy Go …but maybe not this time.

June 24, 2007 7:03 am ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

Bob Parsons, the daddy of famous domain registrar GoDaddy.com writes in his June blog about his continual outragegodaddy.gif about all the people doing domain “kiting” and why that is making it so much harder for many people to get the domains they want. Since my business often depends on getting domains for clients (as a final step in naming a company), my first reaction was to fire up the friends and family and start a concerted attack on ICANN. But then I realized I might not want to disturb the hornets nest anymore.

Sure they claim 5 million plus names a month, but they return 4 million or so a few days later when they discover Google won’t feed them enough money making ads. But some of these guys are now super well-funded. If they couldn’t return the names, they might just hold them all… or at least a high percentage of them. That would be the real tragedy: Names held for a year by people who can’t make money off them, yet the common man (and agency) can’t easily acquire them either! It would probably cause a sickness much worse than a bad case of Googlitis.

Posted in: Domain Names

Technorati – The real search engine for blogs

June 20, 2007 9:27 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

I am using this article to claim my status with Technorati, as well as to introduce any new bloggers to this service.
Technorati Profile.

Claim your technorati profile and your blogs are immediately registered with the most important search engine for anyone in the know about blogging.

And isn’t Technorati a cool name? A great example of language evolving, from digerati to technorati to .. namerati??

Posted in: Language Fun