The Unbearable Redundancy of -ly

I’d hoped never to revisit the subject of -ly names, which I covered—exhaustively, I thought—in an August post that listed 29 such names, including Chirply, Erply, Zerply, and Estately. But a news item on TechCrunch today makes a follow-up inevitable, if not welcome.

The item: Enterprise applications and services company Infor has paid $100,000 for Local.ly. “.ly” is the country code for Libya.

The same post noted that Facebook last month paid an undisclosed sum for Friend.ly.

Adverb-style names: the trend without end.

More evidence: Twitter friend Anthony recently pointed me to 500 Startups, which provides seed funding for new companies. Anthony wanted me to check out those companies’ names. “Brace yourself,” he warned.

Indeed. The companies themselves may be innovative, but you’d never know it from their names. We’re still seeing droppd vowls (Forrst, GoVoluntr, Redeemr, Spinnakr), diacritical abuse (Cădee, a golf site), multiple Dailys (DailyAisle, DailyGobble, DailyWorth), and -ly names. Lots of -ly names. (And one “-li” name.)

The 500 Startups roster includes:

Central.ly, “connecting local businesses to the web.”

Contactually, “an email interface for your CRM.”

Graphic.ly “provides an immersive social experience and marketplace around digital comics and associated merchandise.”

Lovely “takes the frustration out of your apartment hunt.” (I’ve included this -ly name even though it’s an adjective, not an adverb. To me it suggests a fashion or beauty site—or online dating—rather than “this lovely apartment.”)

Recurly “gracefully handles all the complexities of subscription billing and recurring payments.”

Rewardli “lets self-employed and small business owners leverage the buying power in their social networks so they can get better deals on the products and services they need.”

Texting.ly “enables businesses to easily and inexpensively interact.”

More evidence: Last week I read on TechCrunch about Womply (“Amazing offers loaded to your credit cards”). Womply has a cartoon mascot, Mr. Wombat. I can’t explain the shift from B to P; I’m guessing “Wombly” would have risked sounding like an obstetrics service.

Last week also brought news, via email, of Grammarly, which calls itself “the world’s best grammar checker,” an audacious assertion that remains to be proved. I ran a short passage from one of my recent blog posts through Grammarly; it dinged me on “passive voice use” and “writing style” without telling me why. If anyone’s tried the service and has good (or bad) things to say about it, please let me know.

And still more: Book.ly calls itself “the better way to buy textbooks.” Posterly has something to do with posters, events, and venues, but the writing is so vague and amateurish I couldn’t tell for sure. (“Browse posters, listen and see where it’s going on” does not tell me anything I need to know. “It”?)

Finally—or so one hopes—there’s Yummly (“Every recipe in the world”). The enterprise is well funded, the site is attractively designed, and the brand is cleverly extended (the blog is called “Nibbles & Bits”), but the name is, um, repeating on me.

If you’re keeping score, we’re up to 43 -ly names.

UPDATE: In a comment, Risa reminds us about this Tom Lehrer song for The Electric Company.

UPDATE #2, Nov. 11: Oh look, another -ly startup: Giftly.

The last laugh belongs to Jotly (“Rate Everything”), a fake and very funny enterprise from Firespotter Labs. Jotly’s home page declares “Everything about your life is exciting. To everyone.” The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal notes that the Jotly video “manages to send up nearly every startup cliché in just two minutes.” See for yourself:

Comments

[Jessica]

And I was hoping Recurly would give me insight on how to style my daughters' hair ... My god, these just suck! Bad from a trademark perspective, embarrassing to utter in public, and for several, difficult from a SEO perspective as well.

[rootlesscosmo]

Nice little video--thanks for posting it.

In the late 40's, the jazz pianist and teacher Lennie Tristano had among his first students the alto saxophonist Lee Konitz (who's still alive and playing.) Very much in the hipster style of the period (which included being fluent in the vocabulary of psychoanalysis) they recorded tunes with the titles "Sound-Lee" and "Subconscious-Lee," the latter using the chord changes of "What is this Thing Called Love?" (a song title that positively cries out to be re-punctuated.)

Not very relevant, I admit.

[Jonathon]

At least a few of those names manage to be real words, too. Far too many just sound awkward, though.

[Jan Freeman]

I've only seen Grammarly as featured on Grammar.net (sponsor of the recent "Best Language Blogs contest). A commenter on my blog said that Grammar.net is owned by a company devoted to "creat[ing]link-baiting content and promot[ing] it in social media through viral seeding. Among the methods we use is infographics, a visual representation of information." {I.e., the "winner" badge provided on the site.) Don't know whether this means Grammarly is sketchy too, but it puts me on guard.

[Mark Gunnion]

Hey, thanks for the blogroll listing! I was just out trolling for naming stories called "The Name Game" when I came across - Vidly!

http://m.vid.ly/user/

It says, "Build your own YouTube." I'll have to check that out!

I ADORED the jotly video. Sounded like three of my last five briefings.

[Risa]

I can't think of ly without remembering this bit from the Electric Company. http://tinyurl.com/2bzkm26