New name beat: Taltz

I was leafing through People magazine at the hairdresser’s, as one does, when my attention was hijacked by an ad for a new drug with an unusual name.

That’s actually two unusual names: “ixekizumab” (the generic name) and “Taltz” (the trade name). But Taltz was the name that made me stop and ponder, and later do some research. Can you guess why?

Hint: It has nothing to do with meaning.

In fact, I can’t tell you what, if anything, the Taltz name is intended to signify or suggest. (A few speculations below.) I do know that Taltz is a new injectable treatment for plaque psoriasis from Eli Lilly, approved for use by prescription in March 2016. It doesn’t rhyme with “waltz,” as I at first surmised; rather, the vowel sound is closer to the A in pal or Cal.

 

 

 

But here’s why “Taltz” caught my attention, and why it stands out in the universe of drug names: it has only one syllable.

I had a hunch one-syllable pharmaceutical names were rare, and I confirmed that hunch with a statistical breakdown of the names of the 457 most popular drugs in the Drugs.com database. Of this name set, 246, or 53.8 percent, have three syllables; 84, or 18.3 percent, have four syllables; and 82, or 17.9 percent, have two syllables. Forty-five names, or about 10 percent, have five syllables; three names have six syllables; two names (hydrochlorothiazide and hydroxychloroquinine) have seven syllables, and one name (methylprednisolone) has six syllables.

Other than Taltz, just one name – Yaz, a contraceptive pill manufactured by Bayer – has one syllable. That gives Taltz a big advantage on the distinctiveness spectrum.

By the way, the opposite trends hold among tech-company and app names. Technology firms have something akin to a fetish for short names with as few syllables as possible. Think of one-syllable names like Slack, Lyft, Nest, and Waze; and short two-syllable names like Etsy, Uber, GoPro, Hulu, and Yahoo. Just this week, the ephemeral-messaging service Snapchat lopped off its second syllable and became Snap.

Pharmaceutical names, however, are subject to far more stringent regulations than other categories of names – not just from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) but also from the Federal Drug Administration (FDA). Many drug names also have to be available outside North America. And they must be unique, which isn’t true for most other categories of names. (Wineries and breweries can be almost as challenging to name as drugs.) Here’s a summary from Medscape of the requirements:

First and foremost, the name must be easy to remember. Ideally, it should be one physicians will like -- short and with a subliminal connotation of the drug. Some companies associate their drugs with certain letters (e.g., Upjohn with X and Glaxo with Z). If the drug is expected to be used eventually on a nonprescription basis, the name should not sound medicinal. There must be no trademark incompatibilities, and the company must take account of the drug's expected competition.

Each company's naming process is individualized, proprietary, and taken very seriously. Marketing departments are often very influential. An industry representative described the naming process as being "as complicated as a space shuttle launch; as you get down to the final countdown, you must have a very good reason to stop. . . . Marketing builds momentum for a name, and standing in the path of a good name is like standing in the path of a train: You do it only once.

Adding syllables can be one way to create a unique name and avoid confusion with another drug. (It doesn’t always work out: consider Serafem and Serophene, Razadyme and Rozerem, and other frequently confused drug-name pairs.)

Does “Taltz” carry a “subliminal connotation” of its benefits? Maybe. Its crisp consonants and single-syllable efficiency may suggest speed and effectiveness. The Z at the end of the name may be intended as a brand identifier: Like Glaxo, Eli Lilly makes a number of drugs with Z in their names, including Prozac, Gemzar, Symbyax, and Zyprexa (the company’s best-selling drug of all time). To me, “Taltz” suggests a surname: at first glance, I read it as Taitz, as in Orly Taitz, the infamous dentist-lawyer and birther conspiracist.

As for the generic name, ixekizumab, the stress falls on the second syllable; the suffix -zumab signifies “humanized antibody.” The rest of the word? No idea.

Comments

[Jessica]

Great minds and all ... I just saw a commercial for Taltz at the airport this weekend and immediately wondered why one syllable and how the heck to pronounce it, while thinking Orly Taitz at the same time. And I will insist on pronouncing it to rhyme with "waltz" or "New Paltz" because my mouth cannot form the sound the marketers prefer. So there.

[CGHill]

I caught a commercial for Taltz this week, and they definitely pronounced it to rhyme with "waltz" or "New Paltz." Perhaps Lilly's ad people are reading this?

[Nancy Friedman]

@CGHill: I just heard that ad too. Definitely a change from the in-house video!

[Brett Miller]

Regarding the components of the generic drug name, ixekizumab, the parts that I can discern are as follows:

ix- = unsure about this portion of the name (perhaps "ix" refers to the number "nine"?)
e- = probably refers to the type of original cell line from which the antibody was obtained - in this case, "e" refers to "hamster," or more specifically the "chinese hamster ovary," a commonly used type of epithelial cell
ki- = drug that acts on a type of glycoprotein (cytokine) called an interleukin - in the case of ixekizumab, it's interleukin 17
zu- = means "humanized," which refers to antibodies that, although not originally derived from humans, are modified so that they more closely resemble those antibody types found in humans
mab- = is the name part correctly described above as Monoclonal AntiBody, which would be one of many different types of identical clones of a specific "parent" cell and often have specificity as to the target region to which they will bind

[Brett Miller]

Also found an FDA document created during the process of Proprietary Drug Review - the "prescription simulation response" grid (which appears to try to run throgh multiple permutations of the drug name "Taltz," serving the purpose of attempting to anticipate and avoid any possible verbal or written errors regarding that name) is especially interesting.

It can be found here:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/nda/2016/125521Orig1s000NameR.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwiNyvLCzvzPAhXmq1QKHVOLDLkQFgh_MAo&usg=AFQjCNGjuVUHe1BV5iuUZyZNDeqtrpSx9A&sig2=Ka63pCdXMx0FtPGDqZwPrQ">http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/nda/2016/125521Orig1s000NameR.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwiNyvLCzvzPAhXmq1QKHVOLDLkQFgh_MAo&usg=AFQjCNGjuVUHe1BV5iuUZyZNDeqtrpSx9A&sig2=Ka63pCdXMx0FtPGDqZwPrQ">https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/nda/2016/125521Orig1s000NameR.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwiNyvLCzvzPAhXmq1QKHVOLDLkQFgh_MAo&usg=AFQjCNGjuVUHe1BV5iuUZyZNDeqtrpSx9A&sig2=Ka63pCdXMx0FtPGDqZwPrQ

[euwe]

I found my way here thinking it sounded vaguely Jewish