Fritinancy

Names in the News: Summly

Congratulations to Nick D’Aloisio, the 17-year-old British programmer who this week sold his news-reader app for iPhone, Summly, to Yahoo for a reported $30 million. He invented the app when he was just 15.

 

 

It’s quite a business coup, and no surprise that the story made the front page of the New York Times.

Alas, the “Summly” name breaks no new ground at all. It may have been coined to suggest “summarize,” but it has an ambiguous sound (some? sum?) and a trite construction. Summly is the 147th pseudo-adverbial -ly name I’ve pinned on my Names That End in -ly Pinterest board.

Endlessly Namifying

There’s just no stopifying the relentless namifying juggernaut, is there? At least Trotify, a wooden device that makes your bike clop like a horse, “Monty Python-style” (according to Laughing Squid), doesn’t ask you to take name or product too seriously.

 

£19.99 + shipping (does not include coconut halves)

 

Also just for fun: a whole family of -ify apps from Appt.ly – yes, -ly names are also ubiquitous – that transform, or transformify, your iPhone photos: Oldify, Baldify, Fatify, Stache-ify, Browify, and Vampify.

(Hat tip: Dawn McIlvain Stahl.)

 

I don’t get the appeal of My Little Pony even on a meta-meta-ironic level, but I am not you, and you, for all I know, may be a brony. In that case, knock yourself out with Ponify, a browser extension “which uses intelligent case-adaptive technologies to replace non-pony related words with ones that are pony-related” – hand into hoof, for example.

 

Then there’s Nüdifier, which is a twofer name: nominalized -ify suffix and gratuitous umlaut! The app lets you select an area of a photo for pixelated fake-nudity censorship.

 

 

See many, many more -ify names on The Name Inspector’s Pinterest Wall of Namifying. While you’re over there, check out my own stuff, including my Brand Names with Gratuitous Umlauts board and Names That End in -ly (132 133 of them!).

Brand Names of the Year: 2012

My new column for the Visual Thesaurus is an end-of-the-year review of the notable brand names of 2012. My top-ten list includes food brands, consumer-technology brands, a numerical brand, one of those ubiquitous -ly brands, and a back-from-the-nearly-dead toy brand. Access to this column is unrestricted, so go forth and read freely!*

Tomorrow on the blog: my words of the year for 2012. I’ll report my (non-brand) names of the year sometime next week.

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* But wouldn’t a Visual Thesaurus subscription make a swell holiday gift for your favorite linguaphile?

I Am Totally Over “-ly”

When I last documented another startup name ending in -ly—that would be Swipely, which I wrote about almost six months ago—I noted that by my count, there were 50 -ly names cluttering the Web and confusing customers. “Enoughly,” I declared.

But I declared too soon, or soonly. Since March, I’ve discovered at least nine additional -ly names attached to new companies or apps. It’s no longer a trend: it’s a plague.

The latest repetitive offenders:

Cofounderly: A couples app for startup founders, according to TechCrunch. “A simple, entertaining, and insightful way for busy cofounders to stay connected....and avoid a nasty startup divorce,” according to the iTunes Store listing.

Contently: “Empowering and connecting quality journalists and brands.” Also: “Anyone can be a publisher!” The emphasis is, presumably, on the first syllable. Instead of a mission statement Contently has a manifesto. Instead of a slogan it has a mantra: “Be awesome.” I may have to take up drinking again.

Diagram.ly: “Draw diagrams online.” Uses the Libya country code, .ly.

Dorkly: “Dorkly is videogame comedy. Like TV, but dorkier.”

Livingly: The new name of Zimbio, a celebrity-news website that’s been around since 2006. According to the TechCrunch story, “Livingly” is “a cross between ‘living’ and ‘lovingly’.” Seriously.

Mural.ly: Not for wall paintings: nope, they’ve redefined “mural” as “a flexible content format that aggregates media and files, ideal for group ideation and visual sharing.”

The company is based in Buenos Aires, which may explain the need for a pronunciation key. But it doesn’t explain why they didn’t go with the Spanish equivalent, “Muralmente,” which is not only an adverb but also incorporates mente, which translates to “mind.”

Refer.ly: Calls itself “a community of people endorsing things they love” in hopes that other people will buy those things, earning the endorsers a cash commission. I’m guessing it’s re-FER-ly and not REE-fer-ly. Warning: vertigo-inducing website.

Rexly: A music-sharing app for iPhone that—it says here—is “powered by magic.” The name may have something to do with the founders’ fondness for dinosaurs.

Swarmly: An iPhone app that helps users “discover the places where people are swarming to have a great time, right now.” Tagline: “Be part of the buzz.”

I also chanced upon one honorable claim to an -ly name. Gravely is not, as you might wearily suppose, a cemetery app but rather a lawn-mower company established in 1916 and headquartered in Brillion, Wisconsin (population 2,937 at the 2000 census). It’s named for its founder, Benjamin Franklin Gravely.

Gravely gets a pass. The rest of you clones need to hire a verbal-branding professional to push you out of your rut.

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Previously in the -ly files: Truly, Madly, Domainly; More -ly; The Unbearable Redunancy of -ly; Further Adventures in Namifying Trendily.

Names in the News: Recce

Recce is a new iOS app that provides a 3D, animated, aerial view of a city (just London for now; San Francisco and New York soon). The name mystified me at first: When I read the TechCrunch headline—“A Rich, Interactive Map That’s Also a Gaming Platform”—I took in “rich,” applied it to Recce, and concluded it was an Italian word, pronounced, like “bocce,” with a /ch/ in the middle. Retchie? Hmm.

Then I read reporter Ingrid Lunden’s lede, which explains for stoopid Yanks like me that recce is “pronounced ‘wreckie’, British slang for ‘reconnaissance’ (only English people would make slang out of a word like that).”

News flash! Americans also make slang out of “a word like that”: our version is “recon,” pronounced REE-con. Both abbreviations were originally military slang, but American “recon” is older by one whole war: It was first documented in 1918; “recce” surfaced (as “reccy”) in 1941.

One other item in the story caught my attention: Lunden writes that Recce was originally called Mapply “until a French company called Mappy called to say ‘Non!’” That’s one less faux-adverbial -ly name, one more sign that the British are coming, the British are coming.

What Makes a Bad Name Bad?

I write about all kinds of names, including the bad ones. I believe every company and product deserves a distinctive, memorable name—and no company deserves a name that’s embarrassing or awkward.

But what makes a bad name bad? Well, unlike Tolstoy’s unhappy families, each bad name is not bad in its own unique way. Here are the badness patterns I see most frequently:

Counterintuitive spelling. A coined name like Nyoombl needs to be pronounced phonetically (if at all), but it isn’t—not by a long shot. Reasonable assumptions about English pronunciation dictate that Virgance be pronounced with a hard G, but it isn’t. We look at Brayola and mentally rhyme it with Crayola, but that’s not what the company wants us to do. Moral: Don’t make us work this hard. It’s a name, not a cryptography test.

Inappropriate connotation. If you know nothing about what Infegy actually does, you might deduce that it had something to do with “infamy,” “effigy,” or “infect.” When I look at Reniquity, all I see is “iniquity”—over and over again. FlubIt suggests failure, GloSmart evokes furniture polish … and those interpretations have nothing to do with the companies in question. (Don’t even get me started on Analtech.) Moral: Consult several dictionaries, not just one. Make one of them a slang dictionary. Then get some advice from someone who understands language.

Awkwardness. These are the names that put the em-PHA-sis on the wrong syl-LA-ble or force incompatible sounds to cohabit. They’re a frequent consequence of machine-generated names, most of which simply fuse word parts into artificial blends without considering logic or ease of pronunciation. But humans can create awkward names, too: consider Herdict, Mathnasium, and AbbVie. (And see The Name Inspector for more examples.) Moral: If the name flunks the telephone test, it’s not going to inspire positive word-of-mouth.

The bandwagon effect. So many names end in -ly. So many names end in -ify. Remember, a name needs to be distinctive and memorable, and you won’t achieve those goals by doing what all the other kids are doing. Moral: Do some research into naming trends. And get a professional opinion.

What about cross-cultural naming gaffes, you may be wondering. Contrary to widespread belief, they are relatively rare. (That story about the Chevy Nova doing poorly in Spanish-speaking countries? It’s a myth.) If you’re taking your company or product global, you should certainly invest in a linguistic screen to rule out a major blunder. But, as we’ve seen, people can accept a brand name that means “cease and desist” in Swahili (Hulu) or one that suggests “oral sex” in Russian (Mondelez). The bad names I see—and I do see a lot of them—are making mischief in English, not Swahili or Thai or Malay.

Bloggiversary 6

Today is this blog’s sixth birthday! Help yourself to a cupcake.

And please remain seated while we review the last 12 months in bloggage.

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June 2011: Why do so many startups’ names end in -IO?

July 2011: Campus Crusade for Christ changed its name to the peppy, preppy Cru.

August 2011: What’s in cheez?

September 2011: Netflix tried to introduce a new service called Qwikster. Then it changed its mind.

October 2011: “Siri, tell me what your name means.”

November 2011: Why do so many startups’ names end in -LY?

December 2011: The security contractor formerly known as Xe, and before that as Blackwater, changed its name to Academi.

January 2012: Why do so many companies’ names include gratuitous umlauts?

February 2012: Why are so many companies’ names spelled wth no vwls and in ALL CAPS?

March 2012: How to build a better tagline: Part 1 and Part 2.

April 2012: What does “tribal” mean in fashionspeak?

May 2012: How pleasant it would be if people in power cared about using language correctly. Alas, they don’t.

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And for scholars of paleo-blogging, here’s my first post, about naming a new nanoparticle.

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Cupcake photo from Crazy for Crust.

Names in Brief

Speaking of “mister” names—as we were only yesterday—I’ve learned about another one from reader Licia, who’s a translator in Italy. Mister Baby, writes Licia, “has been on the Italian market since 1964 and it is a household name; it now belongs to British multinational Reckitt Benckiser (which, incidentally, also produce Mr Sheen).” Mister Baby sells products for babies (of both sexes, it seems) and for nursing mothers.

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Friends don’t let friends drink and text, but that hasn’t deterred TXT Cellars from creating “a line of wines dedicated to celebrating the ordinary and not so ordinary moments in life when you just need to LOL!!!” (Via @ahundredmonkeys.)

Screwtops, of course. Because it’s RLY HRD to operate a corkscrew while you’re texting, amirite?

 

Just for kicks, click “No, I am not 21” on the opening screen.

Read the Washington Post’s guest columnist Jason Wilson on the wine-drinking habits of millennials. And check out The Hairpin’s list of hypothetical rejected names for TXT wines.

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Take the quiz: Condom or Android phone? (Via Lance Knobel.) Congratulations to The Intercom Blog for sticking with tradition and using “What’s in a Name?” for the title of that post. Fifty thousand other headline writers can’t be wrong!

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Speaking of unoriginality, here’s another startup with an -ly name: Swipely. According to TechCrunch, “The company first launched as a way to share your credit card purchases with your friends, but when that idea (as deployed by Swipely and others) failed to take off, Swipely shifted its focus to helping merchants with their loyalty programs.” By my count, that brings us to 50 -ly startups, and let us say: Enoughly.

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In my February post about the bra-fitting service Brayola, I traced the commercial use of the -ola suffix back to Pianola (1895), Crayola (1903), and Victrola (1905). But it turns out there’s an even earlier example. Granola, now a generic term for a crunchy oat-based breakfast cereal, was originally a trademark. According to “Who Made That Granola?” in last week’s New York Times Magazine, John Harvey Kellogg—whose name lives on in the Kellogg’s brand—came up with “granola” in the late 1870s or early 1880s after he was sued by a rival who made “granula” and objected to Kellogg’s use of that spelling. By 1889, according to the article, Kellogg was selling two tons of Granola a week. (Tangentially, Grano.la is the name of a power-management software product. Dot-la is the country code for Laos.)

Further Adventures in Namifying Trendily

Oh, those -ify and -ly names. So appealing! So verby (the former) and adverby (the latter)! So overdone!

The latest example arrived in my inbox last week.

Brandify is a new service from Microsoft that’s “designed to deliver—in about 70 seconds—crystal-clear insight and startlingly simple guidance to our users about their businesses’ online and social media reputations.”

I’m guessing Reputationify was on the short list.

In a February 2011 post, “A Disturbifying Trend in Namifying,” The Name Inspector identified (see what I did there?) 16 coined names with the -ify suffix, from Adify to Zensify. I left a comment with eight additional names, including Abilify (the antidepressant/bipolar drug), Brickify (which turns images into Lego statues), and Yotify (no idea what it does). And I later wrote about “freshification,” the theme of an ad campaign from Pier 1 Imports. There’s also snackify and drinkify, unbranded coinages popularized by PepsiCo’s chairman and CEO, Indra Nooyi.

Meanwhile, -ly names continue their relentless redundifying. On Valentine’s Day (fittingly!), TechCrunch published news of Lover.ly, “an inspiration engine and Pinterest-like startup for weddings,” which had recently raised $500,000 from a group of investors. The About Us page defines “lover.ly” as an adjective and adverb: “having those qualities that inspire love, affection, or admiration.” What—no one’s humming along to Julie Andrews in My Fair Lady?

TechCrunch also brought Valentine’s Day news of Snatchly, “a Pinterest for porn.” So you snatch images of … heh.

In a somewhat more high-minded vein we have Fundly, which calls itself “the largest online social fundraising platform in the United States.” Fundly is used by universities, clubs, nonprofit organizations, and politicians—including, in this presidential-campaign season, Rick Santorum.

By my count, that brings us to 48* startups with -ly names. I’d love to bring them together in a small room and force them to listen to my speech about distinctiveness in naming.

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* I’m not counting, or linking to, the vilest example I’ve seen of an -ly name. Instead, I’ll turn over the podium to journalist Steve Silberman.

Names That End in -ly: Not Just for Startups

I’ve written several times this year about the proliferation of startup names that end in -ly: Chirply, Erply, Forkly, Womply, Grammarly, et al. (You can read all of my -ly posts here.) Just last week I just learned of a new entrant in this dubious sweepstakes: Burstly, “the leading app monetization platform.”

Now it turns out that there’s been a parallel trend in baby naming. The Nameberry baby-names blog included it among its “Baby Trends 2012: 12 Hottest Trends” roundup:

Name Trend Ready to Jump the Shark**: The -ley names

We liked Hadley, name of Hemingway's sympathetic first wife. And Huxley, Ridley, and Radley, as in Aldous, Scott and Boo, were all intriguing. But the trend toward tacking an -ley onto the end of a wide range of first syllables and calling it a name --- Brinley, Kinley, Finley, endlessly --- became so pandemic so quickly that we are ready to declare it over already.

These names are spelled with -ley, not –ly, but sonically there’s no distinction. Throw in Lily, Riley/Ryleigh, Hayley, Carly, and Emily—all of which have surged within the last five years, according to Name Voyager—and the trend becomes even more evident.

Trends in company names and baby names don’t always track this closely, so when they do it’s worth paying attention. The last confluence I can recall occurred back in 2007, when “K” names were popular across the board; a year or two earlier, when the first generation of Web 2.0 startups had names like Meebo and DimDim, we also saw a spate of reduplicative or near-reduplicative baby names like Coco (born to actress Courteney Cox in 2004), Lola (which spiked in the Name Voyager graph in the early 2000s), Emma, Fifi, and Lulu.

In 2010 and 2011 the torch was passed to the -ly/-ley crowd. Overnight, it seemed, adverbial-style names sounded fresh, modern, and unique: in a word, nameworthy. Of course, they aren’t unique at all—I’ve tallied almost 50 newish company names that end in -ly—and in a few years they’ll all sound fusty and dated. Right now they just sound like clones.

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*If you don’t understand “jump the shark,” read this.

Nameberry post via this tweet from @Nameflash.