While descriptive names say exactly what your product or company is, they reveal nothing about the personality of your brand (other than exposing your lack of creativity). And when you draw from a limited pool of descriptive words, you sound like everyone else, making your name indistinguishable from competitors. Nowhere is this more relevant today than cloud services. Here are a handful of some of the hundreds of names in the cloud crowd.
Cloud2b
Cloud Bus
Cloud Pad
Cloud 2.0
Cloud Net
Cloud Set
Cloud 365
Cloud Now
Cloud Tek
Cloud 9
Cloud One
Cloud Web
Other than Cloud 9, which is easy to remember because it’s a familiar phrase, the above names fall flat because they don’t stand out in a sea of sameness. The word cloud has become so overused that San Francisco’s techie hivemind is trying to brand their mid-Market neighborhood as Cloud Corridor. Apparently human resource directors are very excited about this. SFist reported, “If Cloud Corridor sounds insufferable, it’s because the The Cloud is just a trendy marketing term to begin with—one that has suddenly become so ubiquitous it hardly means anything.” I wish locals would just go back to calling the area Twittertown. I seriously love that name.
When Descriptive Names Make sense
If your customers are trying to find information quickly, and you are offering multiple choices, descriptive names can be very helpful, such as FedEx Priority Overnight, FedEx International Next Flight and FedEx Ground.
MORE EXAMPLES OF TAME NAMES
DocuSign (electronic signatures)
AcuPOLL (research)
Enfagrow (toddler formula)
Network Solutions (domain names)
Kmart (mass merchandiser)
Curse of Knowledge —
Only Insiders Get It
No one is more of an expert on the company or product you are naming than you. But when communicating with potential customers who are unfamiliar with your world, insider knowledge can become a curse. We can’t unlearn what we know, so we find it extremely difficult to think like a newbie. We talk in acronyms, internal shorthand, code words, and industry jargon—all of which sounds like a foreign language to outsiders. Don’t alienate potential customers.
According to Wikipedia, the curse of knowledge is described as “a cognitive bias to which better-informed people find it extremely difficult to think about problems from the perspective of lesser-informed people.” This essentially means that when we know something, it becomes hard for us to imagine not knowing it. As a result, we become bad communicators of our own ideas. Coined by TV music composer Robin Hogarth, the term curse of knowledge got on my radar thanks to my favorite business book, New York Times bestseller Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, by Dan and Chip Heath. Just as ideas with the curse of knowledge aren’t sticky, neither are names.
If you have a television and don’t fast-forward through the commercials, chances are you’ve seen an ad for the pain relief patch Salonpas. The first time I heard it, I thought Salonpas was an unattractive amalgamation of two pretty French words, salon and pas. That didn’t make much sense to me, but I couldn’t imagine what else it could mean. According to the Salonpas website, the name is derived from its active ingredient, methyl salicylate. It goes on to explain: “Methyl Salicylate passes through the skin and goes directly to the site of your pain, right where it hurts. Therefore, Salonpas represents Salicylate + Pass.” Seriously? I need a Salonpas for my brain.
Avoid Alphanumeric Brain-benders
Jumbled words and letters, especially in consumer electronics, may signify something to the employees at Best Buy, but for shoppers, they are annoying and meaningless. A few years back, Eat My Words renamed some products for consumer audio company Altec Lansing. While I don’t remember the alphabet soup of all of the original names, these are pretty close: M202, HX8020, VS63. Any idea what those are? What type of emotional connection are you feeling? They make my head hurt. Here’s the before and after transformation:
Altec Lansing Product
Original Alpha-numeric Name
New Consumer-Friendly Name
iPod docking station for the bedroom
M202
Moondance
Sleek in-home speakers
HX8020
Expressionist
Hipster headphones
VS63
Backbeat
Make Sure Your Name Is Not Cursed in a Foreign Language
Of all of the anxieties people have about their new name, “What if it means something dirty in a foreign language?” has the highest fear factor and the lowest chance of actually happening. That legendary story you learned in business school about the Chevy Nova selling poorly in Spanish-speaking countries because its name translated as “doesn’t go”? Total bunk. The myth is clearly dispelled at Snopes.com.
Mistakes occasionally happen, such as when Colgate introduced toothpaste in France named Cue, the same name as a notorious French porn magazine.
If you are planning on having a global brand, I do recommend you have a professional linguistic study done by a firm that specializes in this (not just your friend who speaks French). You can find some of these companies listed in the Resources section.
MORE EXAMPLES OF NAMES WITH THE CURSE OF KNOWLEDGE
Name
Meaning
Starbucks “Tall” (small coffee size)
When Starbucks started, Tall was a large. Now it’s considered a small.
Eukanuba (pet food)
During the Jazz Era, it meant “the tops” or “something supreme.”
Mzinga (social software)
From mzinga, Zulu for “ring” and the Swahili word for “beehive”
SPQR (San Francisco restaurant)
Latin for “The Senate and the Roman People”
Umpqua (national bank)
River in Oregon
Is Your Name in Urban Dictionary?
If your brand is targeted at teens or young adults, be sure to look up your name in Urban Dictionary (urbandictionary.com) before you give it the green light. While at one time a fun place to poke around, Urban Dictionary appears to have been taken over by hormonal teenage boys and is now a hotbed of more than seven million definitions of street slang words and phrases, most of them sexually explicit, homophobic, misogynistic, moronic, and intentionally disgusting. It has killed many great names for our clients, including Pearl Diver and Saltminer. (I’ll let you look up the definitions.)
Don’t panic if there is one untoward definition with a few thumbs-up votes from users of the site. But if your name has a lot of unfortunate definitions and more than a handful of thumbs-up votes, you may want to reconsider as it’s likely already part of the teen lexicon (or sexicon, so to speak).
Hard to Pronounce —
Not Obvious, Unapproachable
After more than twenty years and just as many shameful attempts, I have finally mastered the pronunciation of one of my favorite French dishes, Salad Niçoise. When I recently ordered it in front of my new client, I was thrilled that I didn’t embarrass myself. Lunch was très magnifique. Then I saw the dessert menu. The object of my desire was described as “delicate layers of flakey golden puff pastry, whipped cream, and homemade strawberry jam, dusted with confectioner’s sugar.” It was called a mille-feuille. I didn’t have a clue how to say it. The other choices, clafoutis, kouign amann, and “La Côte Basque’s Dacquoise,” were equally intimidating. I ordered a cup of decaf and a slice of humble pie.
I imagine a lot of us have encountered a similar situation stumbling over the pronunciation of foreign food. Equally challenging are European fashion brands such as Hermès, Louis Vuitton, and Givenchy. Recently I was at a Bulgari jewelry exhibit and was mortified when I pronounced it “BULL gary” in front of my two friends who corrected me and simultaneously said, “BULL guh ree.” Of course, t
hese names are fine because they are easy to pronounce in their countries of origin. But haute couture aside, many names derived from foreign languages are unapproachable simply because most Americans (myself included) don’t know how to pronounce them and don’t want to make fools of themselves trying.
Also problematic are made-up names that are not intuitive to pronounce. I recently saw a catering service with an unappetizing name: Chewes. I had no idea if it’s pronounced “chews,” or “chewies.” I instructed Siri, “Find chews catering.” She replied, “I found fifteen shoe stores. Eleven of them are close to you.” She also couldn’t find “chewies catering,” but instead gave me Chili Lemon Garlic restaurant, which sounded delicious. I made a reservation and still don’t know how to pronounce Chewes.
Capital Punishment
Do not spell or design your name with all capital letters because people will be confused by the pronunciation. Here are a few examples:
Name
Pronunciation Problem
OPI (nail polish)
Mistakenly pronounced “O pee,” like Opie, the kid from The Andy Griffith Show
SAP (software)
Can be pronounced “sap,” as in “sad and pathetic.” Employees of SAP’s chief competitor, Oracle, love using the “sap” pronunciation, dripping with sarcastic ooze.
THX (audio company)
Mistakenly pronounced “thanks,” because it looks like the common abbreviation for that word.
TCBY (frozen yogurt)
Doesn’t roll off the tongue, and it’s just as annoying as the chest-pounding name it stands for: “The Country’s Best Yogurt”
TCHO (gourmet chocolate)
The uppercase letters of this name on their packaging make it look like an acronym, but it’s just a word no one can pronounce. Is it supposed to be short for “Techno” or is the “T” silent? Or is it the sound people make when they sneeze? We’ll never Tknow.
Avoid Acronyms
Speaking of capital letters, FYI, people have ADD. You can expect them to remember only one name, not two. Brand your product with a name (e.g., World of Warcraft) and let the acronym (WOW) be something you use internally.
Corporations are notorious for having endless acronyms. Cathy Bennett, Chief Launch Officer of Start The Startup, told me a funny story: “While I was at Ford Motor Company, some executives decided we had too many acronyms. They set up a team to compile a reference book for employees. Quite logically, they named the team the Ford Acronym Review Team, aka FART.”
Two Pronunciations Is Double Trouble
Words that can be pronounced two different ways are also pronunciation pitfalls. With the proliferation of eco-friendly products and companies that have sprouted up in the last ten years, the prefix eco- has been terribly overused. Unfortunately, eco-rarely works in a name because there are two ways to pronounce it—“ee-co” and “echo”—which can cause consumer confusion and weaken the brand. For instance, is the name Ecover pronounced “EE cover,” “ECK over,” or “ee KO ver”? Don’t make your customers guess. No one wants to say it wrong and be embarrassed. There are exceptions—food company Alter Eco (a play on alter ego), is clearly pronounced as “Alter EE co,” as opposed to “Alter ECK o,” since we know it rhymes with ego.
Punctuation Is a Crutch
Lastly, if your name needs the visual crutch of punctuation (güd), or a lowercase first letter (uSamp) to aid in pronunciation, it’s not a good name. Also, you can’t rely on letters in different colors to show people how to pronounce it. Your name will not appear in color in the press or in search engine results. Your name needs to be able to appear in black and white as a proper noun in the Wall Street Journal.
Backward Is the Wrong way to Go
Like Xobni, most names spelled backward are unpronounceable. Tennis superstar Serena Williams’s clothing line is named Aneres. How do you say that? A backward name that does work well is Harpo, the name of Oprah Winfrey’s production company. It sounds like a real word, has memorable imagery (Harpo Marx), and makes us smile in either direction it’s written.
MORE EXAMPLES OF NAMES THAT ARE HARD TO PRONOUNCE
Name
Incorrect Pronunciation
Correct Pronunciation
Giro (bike gear)
as if it rhymed with hero
As in gyroscope
Fage (yogurt)
Fahj, or as if it rhymed with page
FAH yay
Saucony (running shoes & apparel)
saw KOHnee, or SAUCE uh nee
Sock uh nee
Sur La Table (kitchenware)
Sir lah TAY bull
Sir lah TAHB (Don’t say “TAH bleu” unless you are French.)
Pardot (marketing automation)
Par DOUGH, as if it were French
PAR dot
CHAPTER 3
Strategies, Secrets, and Silliness
The desperation to find an available domain name has gotten so extreme that a grammar-checking and proofreading company is calling itself Grammarly. Even more cringe-worthy is its ridiculous domain name: www.grammar.ly. In case you missed the memo, -.ly is the country-specific domain extension for Libya. Serious.ly. I’ve been to Libya and even I didn’t know that.
Using common sense rather than blindly following trends, especially those started by fashion-challenged engineers, is critical when it comes to domain names, also known as URLs. (To refresh your memory, URL is the abbreviation for universal resource locator. This is another example of what happens when engineers are allowed to name things.)
It Didn’t Stop facebook …
Many successful online businesses, including Dropbox (get dropbox.com), Square (squareup.com), Basecamp (basecamp hq.com), Box (box.net), and SlideShare (slideshare.net), started off with an imperfect domain name before hitting it big. They then spent undisclosed sums to purchase the exact match domain. Facebook, which started out as thefacebook.com, reportedly paid $200,000 in 1995 for facebook.com. SlideShare and Square continue to use their original domain names as their official URL. Ironically, Flickr, whom I curse for starting the looks-like-a-typo trend, eventually broke down and purchased flicker.com.
Google Eliminates the Problem
Think about what you do when you accidentally type the wrong URL into your web browser. For instance, if you want to go to the website for Delta Faucets, you type in “delta.com.” But you accidentally end up at Delta Airlines. Whoa! What do you do? Book a plane ticket to Poughkeepsie? Have a meltdown because Delta Faucets doesn’t own delta.com? Refuse to do business with them because they greatly inconvenienced you? No. You simply search for “Delta Faucets,” and instantly find them. And you probably don’t even notice what their domain name is. You don’t care. No one does.
Put Yourself Out of Your Misery
Most people believe that the first thing they must do when naming a business is to go to a domain registrar (e.g., GoDaddy) to make sure the domain name isn’t taken. And if an exact match isn’t available (and they don’t have thousands of dollars to buy one that’s parked), they think they have to dismiss the name entirely. Countless great names have been killed that way. Worse, countless bad names have been conceived for the same reason. I know that many terrible names are the result of the URL being available for $9.95. (Note: I use the amount of $9.95 throughout the book as an average price of any available domain.) Here are some likely suspects:
Squrl
Kyte
Shyp
Birst
Scanja
Fiverr
Takkle
Gliffy
Kwiry
Ipiit
SmolkSignal
Oqo
Piczo
Innotas
iShryk
Mogad
Zippii
Qunify
Loud3r
Inboxq
Clixter
3 Strategies to Get a Good Domain Name for $9.95
Here are three simple strategies that will help
you nab a domain name that people can spell, pronounce, and understand.
Strategy #1: Add Another Word or Two
Bliss, the wildly popular brand of skin care and spas, couldn’t get Bliss.com, which is in use by Glam Media, so they got Bliss-World.com. Pure happiness.
If you’re a scrappy startup, self-funded, or simply don’t want to fork over big bucks for a domain, a second word is the way to go. Adding a modifier to your name in the form of an extra word or two is now a common and perfectly acceptable way to get an available domain name and help your customers find you through search engines.
Imagine that you have come up with a clever name for your new candle company: Fireworks. You are devastated to see that a fireworks company is using www.sells.Fireworks.com. Do not extinguish your brand name! If someone trying to find you ends up at Fireworks.com by mistake they will not give up. It takes seconds to go to Google, type in “Fireworks candles,” and find your website.
Hello, My Name is Awesome Page 4
