What’s a Cestro?

And what’s in it for me?

That’s what I asked when I encountered Mycestro. I saw it as a three-syllable name, because my brain picked out “my” before it performed any further analysis. I was stumped by “cestro,” though. Ancestor? Incest?

Even reading in TechCrunch that Mycestro is a “3D mouse for your fingertips that you’ll look funny using” didn’t help. Not until I listened to the inventor, Nick Mastandrea, narrate a Kickstarter video did I realize that Mycestro is a misspelled portmanteau of mice and maestro. It’s meant to be parsed myce-stro and pronounced maestro. The reasoning, TechCrunch says, is that when you use the device “it looks like you’re conducting your own private orchestra.”

An intriguing image, and I wish Mr. Mastandrea had explored it further instead of falling in love with that misleading, wince-inducing portmanteau.

As I’ve said many times, portmanteau names rarely succeed (see Infegy, Blellow, Shpock, Rapiscan, InnoCentive, Smorn, and others). Mycestro joins the Hall of Failed Portmanteaus – the Halfaport – with several strikes against it: We rarely speak of computer mice in the plural, the weird myce spelling suggests something mushroomy, and the ce-st combination in the middle of the word confounds the tongue. And, as I’ve already noted, it’s very difficult to un-see the first-person possessive pronoun in the first syllable.

Comments

[Jessica]

If you changed it to Mycestra, I think you'd have a great name for an antidepressant or a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory. You're welcome, Big Pharma.

[Mark Gunnion]

Hmm, Mousetro.com is available. At least it doesn't have the plural. Could be pronounced "mouse-set-tro", though. Mystro.com is taken, and looks like Mystery, anyway. Micetro.com is taken, but not in apparent use yet, and looks like my-set-row. Moustro.com is for sale, but looks like a French restaurant, pronounced "Moose-tro". Myctro.com is parked, maybe for sale, but it's icky. Yeah, I think this one's just unsolvable. "Mouse" is now a fading technology, anyway, so he should let go of that part, and go all in with the conductor image. And give up on using the word Maestro, too - for Americans, that's just too odd a spelling to make a pun out of. How does this silly language reconcile Maestro and Aegis, anyway? The only solid American brand with an "ae" is Aerosmith.

[Nancy Friedman]

Mark: I checked out Mousetro, too. I think it's a reasonable replacement, and I don't think the pronunciation would be a problem.

Here's what the problem is: The inventor wants us to associate the new product with a familiar category, but I'd like to see a radical redefinition. The mouse got its name from the tail-like cord; with wireless technology, we no longer have that association. A real name-development exercise would explore new associations brought to mind by the device.

[Mudge]

Saw a portmanteau and thought of you:

https://orgreenic.com/

[Licia]

Very interesting example. In a global market, the English-as-a-second-language point of view should not be underestimated, but apparently the creators of Mycestro never took it into account. Also the majority of non native speakers would parse the name as My-cestro, find it difficulto to pronounce and wonder what on earth a cestro might be (to Italians it looks like a misspelling of cesto, “basket”). Very few would associate Mycestro with maestro.

[Diana Landau]

Reminds me of misty pings!