The Zen of Namifying

It’s the trend that refuses to give up the ghost.

The latest namifying example to catch my attention is Zenify, a relaxation drink. The manufacturer was handing out free cans at last weekend’s Brewery Art Walk in Los Angeles.

Brother, can you spare a hyphen?

At least the makers of Zenify have made up a story about their verbifying suffix. It’s poorly articulated, but it’s something:

Zenify is a Zen state of mind, clearing away mental clutter to the power of the Phi(fy), which represents the perfect balance between excess and insufficiency. When you drink Zenify, you will be in a Calm, Sharp & Focused [sic] state and this feeling will allow you to react at peak performance in over-stimulating times. Zenify helps you harness your existing energy without being distracted by your surroundings.

Elsewhere on the site, you learn that by “the power of the Phi(fy)” they’re referring to the “golden ratio” or “golden mean,” a mathematical concept expressed by the Greek letter phi. What does all that have to do with the exponential numeral in “Zen²”? I’m in a state of not-knowingness.

The “zen” part of Zenify is even more pervasive in commerce than the “-ify” suffix. As I wrote in a 2008 column for the Visual Thesaurus, zen often stands in as “a synonym for ordinary nothingness”:

Zen can be combined with mail to describe “an incoming e-mail message with no message or attachments.” Zen spin is a verb meaning “to tell a story without saying anything at all.” And to zen a computing problem means to figure it out in an intuitive flash — perhaps while you’re plugged into the earphones of your ZEN MP3 player, now available from Creative with a 16Gb capacity.

Since then, we’ve seen Zenbook, Zencoder, Zendesk, Zenfolio, Zen Lounge, Zenmap, ZenPayroll, Zenprise, ZenQA, Zenverge, ZENworks, and Mommy Zen. And many more: the USPTO trademark database includes 627 live marks with “zen.”

Zendesk

 

Then there’s The Daily Show’s Moment of Zen, the brief video clip that ends each show. Satori not included; a better title for the segment might be Moment of Eye-Rolling, Forehead-Slapping Bemusement.

For more evidence that the -ify trend has jumped the shark, see my previous posts and the 86 pins on The Name Inspector’s Wall of Namifying.

Comments

[empty]

I take it you prefer the (according to some dictionaries) double-ess spelling of "focused". Whatever.

And I take it these drink purveyors pronounce "Phi" with a long I. I go back and forth on it. From time to time I have occasion to straighten out a roomful of math students on which Greek letter is which. (It rubs me the wrong way when they think a nu is a vee, or when they randomly guess that phi is called theta. I once had a young woman who called alpha "fish" because that's what her high school teacher called it. But I digress.) But then I have to admit that phi may be called either "fee" or "fie" in English, and before I know where I am I'm standing in front of my class making "Jack and the Beanstalk" references, saying "fee fi fo fum" ...

Sorry. I'll stop now.

[Nancy Friedman]

Empty: I spell "focused" with one S. The [sic] is a disclaimer for the peculiar capitalization and ampersand.

[empty]

Oh, I see. I did wonder if it had to do with the ampersand.

[Matthew Stibbe]

I think people like using 'zen' in their company or product names because it implies a certain 'deepness' or 'subtlety' or 'elegance'.

Curiously, you don't see western philosophy inspiring a lot of product names. There are few PlatoDesks, Socrates Habits, etc. out there.

Why? I guess companies don't want to appear to 'smart' or intellectual. What a shame.

[Jamie]

@Matthew, there used to be a Japanese manga set in the Platon Hotel. But apart from that...