Fritinancy

Book review: "Brand Naming," by Rob Meyerson

From time to time I’ve been asked—often by a college student or a copywriter—to recommend resources for learning the craft of name development. I’ve sighed and shook my head: It’s all about on-the-job training, I’d say. That’s how I learned to do what I do. There were no books, no courses.

I’m happy to report that I now have a different answer. Brand Naming, a new book from naming expert and podcast host Rob Meyerson, is a 162-page guide to just about everything a namer needs to know to get started and build a practice. (Disclaimer: I received a complimentary review copy of Brand Naming, and I’m cited a few times within its pages.)

The cover of Brand Naming is your first lesson: It includes some of the more than 100 alternate titles Meyerson developed—Namecraft, Naming Names, Verbal Identity, and more—before opting for the clear, straightforward, easily searchable choice.

 

On the Visual Thesaurus: Character names

You may know me as a developer of company and product names, but I’m also interested in the whole spectrum of naming. In my latest column for the Visual Thesaurus—timed to coincide with National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo—I look at fictional character names and offer some tips for creating memorable ones. I’m grateful to the many successful authors—including Elizabeth McCracken, Andrew Sean Greer, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, and Cathleen Schine—who generously shared their tips and insights with me. The column isn’t paywalled this month, so read (and share) freely!

Blog bonus #1: In the column I include a brief quote from a chapter on literary names in The Language of Names, the 1997 book by Anne Bernays and Justin Kaplan that’s occupied my reference shelf for more than a decade. Here’s a bit more from that chapter:

When the paperback edition of [Anne] Bernays’s first novel, Short Pleasures, was published in 1963, she was sued for a million dollars by a man who had the same unusual surname as one of her characters, a predatory, bisexual summer-theater director. The plaintiff was someone she had never met or heard of.

She discovered, too late, that there were only five people in the Manhattan telephone directory with that name, and they were all related to one another. It cost her thousands simply to defend the suit, which was eventually settled out of court.

Blog bonus #2: Want more naming suggestions, or feedback on your own characters’ names? Schedule a call with me on Clarity.fm. P.S. I also consult on book titles.

For naming inspiration, look outside

Where do you find a brand name? More specifically, where do you find a powerful, memorable, lasting brand name?

The answer, in one famous instance: outside the window.

In 1982, computer scientists John Warnock and Charles Geschke were working in Warnock’s garage in Los Altos, California, on a page description language for controlling printing. The product would end up being called PostScript; in 1985, Warnock and Geschke would license it to Apple.

PostScript is a solid product name. But Warnock and Geschke, who had been colleagues at Xerox PARC, had bigger plans. They needed a company name that wasn’t defined by, or limited to, a single product.

They found that name when they looked outside the garage window and saw Adobe Creek.

 

A fallen redwood in Adobe Creek. (Wikipedia)

 

New year, new name? Ten tips.

If one of your New Year’s resolutions is naming – or renaming – a company, a product, an organization, or a process, I’m here to help. Yes, you could hire me to do the job. Or you could do it yourself by following these guidelines.

What’s a naming objective, anyway?

(Part of my Naming 101 series.)

I frequently talk with company founders and executives who need a new name but don’t have the budget for professional naming services. Because I believe that everyone deserves an effective, appealing name, I do my best to show them how to tackle the challenge on their own. Sometimes that leads to a phone call – I use the Clarity service – during which I direct the do-it-yourselfer to my evergreen post on how to write a naming brief, the essential first step of any naming process.

Mission accomplished, right? If only.

Creating names with emotional appeal

I’m working with a client who wants to change his startup’s name, in part because the company’s focus has shifted. But he cited another, equally important reason for a name change: the current name isn’t inspiring. It lacks an emotional charge.

My mission: to develop a set of names that meet this “more emotion” objective while also being appropriate, authentic, memorable, and legally available. Here’s how I’m approaching the challenge. Feel free to borrow these suggestions for your own naming project.

A Useful Tool: Namecheckr

For many of my naming clients, the definition of “an available name” has expanded beyond trademark and domain to include a wide range of social media—not just Twitter and Facebook but also, in some cases, Instagram, Flickr, Pinterest, and other platforms. Checking each service was a chore until I discovered Namecheckr, which instantly screens for name availability across 18 platforms, including a few I’d never heard of (Papaly, IFTTT, Dribbble). If your first choice isn’t available everywhere you’d like it to be, try adding a word (go, shop, mobile, or whatever’s appropriate).

Consistency across all platforms should be your goal. When it isn’t achievable—if, say, you can claim ExcitingNewCo everywhere except on Facebook—I recommend modifying the brand name. Just don’t change the name for every platform. If all your modifications keep showing up as taken, it’s time to rethink your naming strategy and develop some claimable alternatives.

Namecheckr also screens for domain availability in four extensions: .com, .net, .org, and .io. That’s helpful, but it isn’t the end of the story. Many “taken” domains are in fact up for sale on the aftermarket; you’ll need to do a little extra digging into WhoIs, or query a domain broker, to learn who owns the domain and how much they’re asking. (Remember to negotiate!) There are also many options beyond the four primary domain extensions, including .co and .biz—often a good fit for smaller businesses—as well as country codes (.is, .ee, .la, .re, etc.) and newer extensions such as .moe, .pizza, .surf, and .tax. Here’s a complete list.

Namecheckr is not a substitute for comprehensive legal screening, which should be done by an experienced and savvy trademark lawyer before you embark on website development or any other brand activity. Twitter handles are free and domains are cheap, but a trademark lawsuit can be very, very expensive.

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P.S. Since you asked: No, I am not a fan of the dropped E in Namecheckr’s name. See my Pinterest board of this overplayed trope.

 

How to Present Names

There’s lots of advice out there for creating company and product names. (Some of that advice is available right here on this blog.) It’s much harder to find out what to do after you’ve developed and vetted that list of names. How should you reveal your top name candidates to your co-founders, the executive team, or the board of directors? How best to persuade and guide your audience toward making or endorsing a decision? How to respond if someone says, “I dunno … I just don’t like it”?

In my experience, this can be the toughest stage of the naming challenge. Here are five tips for making your case.

 

Do-it-yourself naming: Doing it better

I’ve been partnering for several months with Clarity.fm to give short, focused phone consultations about names and verbal branding. I’ve talked to business owners in Mexico, Australia, England, Brazil, and the U.S.; I’ve answered questions about company names, product names, taglines, and even Twitter handles. Most of my callers can’t afford comprehensive name-development services; what they want from me—and my 20-plus years in the branding business—are tips and feedback.

A few themes have emerged from these calls—common naming challenges that many entrepreneurs face. I share them with you in case you’re struggling with your own do-it-yourself naming project.

March Linkfest

“We’ve turned learning vocabulary into an addictive game,” says Vocabulary.com, which this week announced its new app (iPhone and iPad only, for now). Vocabulary.com’s chief technology officer, Mark Tinkler, told Fast Company that some people play “over 10 hours a day. It’s crazy.”

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The name of the 131-year-old Orient-Express—the subject of a Paul Theroux travel memoir and an Agatha Christie murder mystery—will no longer be attached to hotels and restaurants. The new name, Belmond, was developed by AgencySacks and “is derived from Latin for beautiful and world,” according to Belmond’s chief marketing officer, Ralph Abruzza. Read an interview with Abruzza about the name change—which will not affect the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express train—and a backgrounder that includes the brand-launch presentation. News to me: Belmond, né Orient-Express, owns New York’s ‘21’ Club. (Skift)

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Moriarty. Mordred. Voldemort. Mordor. Morlock. What’s the deal with “mor,” asks James Harbeck: “Is there something to the syllable that suits it for melancholy, darkness, and villainy?” (The Week)

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Is Netflix responsible for the rise of “queue” in American English? (New Republic)

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You’ve probably heard about Facebook COO Sheryl “Lean In” Sandberg’s campaign to ban the “bossy” descriptor for girls and women. Perhaps you’ve tangentially wondered, as I did, why cows are frequently called “Bossy,” at least in the U.S. There are two theories, and “no matter which of the two theories you pick, you end up in Latin.” (World Wide Words)

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In China, LinkedIn is “Ling Ying” (literally “lead elite”) and BMW is “Bao Ma” (“precious horse”). How branding consultancies manage the Chinese language gap.  (Advertising Age, via Marjanne Pearson.)

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From Pandemic to Yellow Top: 41 brand names given to drugs in “The Wire.” (Mental Floss, via Wordnik.)

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And speaking of fictional drug names, here’s a great big old Wikipedia list of them. (I wrote about one of those names, Ablixa, last year.)

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Languages that have contributed to English vocabulary: a nifty historical infographic (Lexicon Valley)

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If you must do naming research, here’s how not to do it. (Tip: Never ask “Is this name easy to say?”) (Lexicon blog)

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I attended my first roller derby match a couple of weekends ago, and couldn’t believe my ears when the announcer said that Fatal Dreidel would be skating for the Oakland Outlaws. Not only is that her actual nom de derby, it turns out there’s a whole subgenre of Jewish derby pseudonyms, including Mayhem Bialik, Yom Tripper, and Hebrewno Mars. (Jewniverse, via Diane Fischler.)

For more on derby names, see my May 2011 linkfest and law professor Dave Fagundes’s “Talk Derby to Me” (great title!), on “intellectual property norms governing roller derby pseudonyms,” published in 2012 in the Texas Law Review.