How Asus Got Its Name

Lately I've been looking covetously at netbooks—the lightweight mini-laptops designed for email and web browsing and not much else. You can get one for as little as $300 or so, which on good days, when the DJIA drops only a percentage point or two, seems like a bargain.

The first netbook I ever saw, about eight months ago, was an Asus Eee. I liked the machine but was perplexed by the name, which I couldn't figure out how to pronounce (AY-suss? az-OOSE?). Not only that: "Asus" struck me as slightly smutty, like a blend of "ass" and "anus." And "Eee"? A bra size, maybe. Or a squeal of fear.

Well, a few days ago Karen of Verbatim forwarded a link to this Mental Floss article about the origins of some technology names. And whaddya know, #7 on the list is Asus Computers.¹

Here's the official story: Asus (officially AsusTek; it sometimes appears as ASUS) takes its name from Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology. The name was truncated to improve its position in alphabetical lists. Mental Floss concludes: "It was an unusual strategy, but it apparently worked."

That depends on how you define "unusual" and "worked." Truncated names aren't as common as, say, blends, but they exist. (Pict and Dex, truncations of Picture and Index, respectively, are two relatively new Web 2.0 companies; you could also argue that Mac, for Macintosh, is a successful truncation.) As for the name's effectiveness, Asus's ambiguous pronunciation works against its success, not for it; besides, alphabetical positioning is largely irrelevant in a non-Yellow Pages universe.

I discovered some discussion forums devoted to the pronunciation of Asus and to its spelling and meaning. Apparently some people think it's an acronym or a blend of "Asia" and "U.S." The back-and-forth is amusing, but I'll cut to the chase: the approved pronunciation is ah-SOOSE. (UPDATE: In December 2010 the company changed the approved pronunciation to eh-SUS.)

And the Eee? The company says it stands for Easy to learn, Easy to work, Easy to play. And it's pronounced "eee," not "e, e, e."

Here's a video with a pronunciation lesson.

That's their story. Here's my hypothesis.

Asus was founded in Taiwan in 1989—13 years after the birth of another Taiwanese computer company, Acer. Acer, which is about seven times bigger than Asus, uses the "e" in its logo as its brand symbol. Acer is aggressively marketing its own netbook, the Aspire, at prices lower than the Asus Eee.

By the way, I couldn't determine what Acer is supposed to mean. Acer is the Latin word for the genus of maple trees; it also means "one who aces something"—does it well. On the other hand, "Acer" could just sound good in Mandarin. Possibly "ah-SOOSE" does, too. I've been told by well-placed sources that that's the reasoning behind the English names of many China-based multinational companies. According to this Wikipedia entry, the first word of the company's Chinese name transliterates as Huáshuo, which may sound close enough to ah-SOOSE for the home-country market.

Acer, Asus. Eee, "e." Coincidence or cunning strategy? You tell me. I do know that the Asus Eee owners I've talked to are happy with their choice. At least until they have to utter its name.²

UPDATE, December 2010: Asus has changed the pronunciation of its name to EH-soos. Listen to the video and ignore the written phonetics on the board, which suggest a stress on the second syllable.

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¹ The list includes a few names I've written about here: Hulu, Prius, and Wii.

² Personally, I'm not crazy about that wordmark, either.

Comments

[Jessica]

Hmm . . . I see Asus and Acer, particularly from a pronunciation standpoint, as a likelihood of confusion problem. It's all well and good for the company to dictate a pronunciation, but the USPTO at least lives by the precept that "there is no correct pronunciation of a trademark because it is impossible to predict how the public will pronounce a particular mark." I wholeheartedly concur with your assessment of the name's scatological implications as well.

But what troubled me even more in looking at the Acer product online is that its Linux OS is supplied by a company called Linpus. That's right, they took the "Lin-" prefix from Linux and presumably after some study, chose to add "-pus" to it. All I can think of is that they were thinking about the dexterity of an octopus, but I'm afraid that doesn't work linguistically when the suffix is preceded by "n." Sorry for the frolic and detour, but I thought you'd want to know!

[Nancy Friedman]

Jessica: Thanks for enlightening me on two counts--USPTO's "impossible to predict" rule (which I've always assumed was just common sense) and the hilarious Linpus, which is so wrong in so many ways, at least to Anglophonic ears. But I suppose we'd better get used to Chinglish; some people predict it will be the next global language.

[mike]

One thing about Asus is that the Eee is really their first really big success in popular consumer electronics. (They've had laptops in the past, but not with much market share.) The company has been around a long time, but has been primarily in the market of things like computer motherboards and PC components, where a goofy company name is perhaps less of a liability.

I agree that both company and product name sort of discourage you from saying them out loud, on the chance that you might be saying it wrong. Tricky for me, since I actually own one of these things. :-)

BTW, "Dex" is also the name used for Yellow Pages around here, possibly everywhere. (Looks like it's a (tm) for R.H. Donnelley Publishing & Advertising.) That likewise seems like it derives from "index."

PS Yay for the USPTO! Linguistic pragmatists.

[Jen]

I wonder if Scott Hamilton is familiar with this product as on last Sunday's episode of "Celebrity Apprentice", he insisted the Zappos superhero be named "EEE" - Everything. Everywhere. Every time.

[Used Refurbished Laptops]

The keyboard is where most subnotebooks get it wrong. They shrink it down too much or not enough. They make the keys a little bit smooshy, or they over compensate like the HP Mininote, creating a satisfying and solid feel that unfortunately drives the price up. The Acer though is different. The keyboard is decently sized, firm and easy to use. Our standard keyboard test involves writing articles, playing some games and writing the Jabberwocky poem over and over again – and we had absolutely no problems with any of them when it came to the Acer Aspire One.