Fritinancy

New Name Beat: Tungle

Disclaimer: Tungle isn't really new, just new to me. The company, which makes technology that simplifies the scheduling of meetings, was founded in Montreal in 2006. But I first heard about Tungle only last week, when its owners offered to underwrite a Social Media Breakfast I had signed up for.

I was grateful for Tungle's sponsorship and impressed by the brief presentation of company co-founder and CEO Marc Gingras. I'm glad to see the company is receiving glowing testimonials. (I haven't used the service myself.) But "Tungle" strikes me as a naming misfire.

Sure, it's short and pronounceable, if not euphonious. It's coined, but it resembles real English words.

That's the good news. And the bad?

New Name Beat: Nexus One

On Tuesday, Google introduced its Nexus One app phone, which runs on the Android open-source operating system and may or may not be the iPhone killer Google would like it to be. I'll let others debate the technical pros and cons, as well as Google's marketing strategy (selling directly through the web rather than through wireless carriers). I'm here to talk about the name.

Depending on your life experiences, you may have had one of these responses to "Nexus One":

1. "Cool! An homage to Blade Runner and Philip K. Dick!"

2. "Huh? A smartphone named after the shampoo I used in the '80s?"

3. "Swell. Another tired 'Nexus' trademark to add to the 200 or so already in the database."

I'm in the #3 camp. "Nexus" strikes my ear as an amateur name: bland, pretentious, past its prime, virtually generic, cluelessly geeky. Yes, it means "connection" (connexion to you Brits). Well, big whoop. A phone represents connection; it doesn't need to be named Connection.

(Memo to all companies choosing names: A strong name is suggestive, not descriptive. If you have the marketing budget to support it—and I'm guessing Google has a few bucks lying around—I'd even recommend you go for an arbitrary name: Apple for computers, Skiff for an e-reader, Anthropologie for a clothing store. Dare to be distinctive!)

On to "One." Are subsequent models going to be named Nexus Two, Three, and Four? Or is this an attempt to sound alpha, as in Air Force One? Attached to a corporate name, "One" sounds like the next big thing of 1993. Like Commerce One, one of several dot-doom companies in which I regret to say I owned stock. Or Cellular One, one of the earliest—circa 1977—mobile-connectivity providers. Neither of those names communicates "21st-century game-changer."

But enough about me and my take on Nexus One. What about that Blade Runner/Philip K. Dick contingent? What on earth are they talking about, and is it as cool as all that?

A summary for non-fanboys and -girls: Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) wrote high-class science-fiction that explored political and philosophical themes. Several of his stories have been made into movies (Minority Report, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly); his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? became the cult classic Blade  Runner (1982), starring Harrison Ford. Both the book and the movie center on a rogue group of androids called Nexus-6 replicants. 

Aha! Android: check. Nexus: check. It's just the sort of cheeky geekery we might expect from Google.

Indeed, Philip K. Dick's daughter, Isa Dick Hackett*, says Google is using both "Android" and "Nexus" without permission from her father's estate. “Google takes first and then deals with the fallout later,” Hackett told Wired.com:

The family says the use is a trademark violation, and sent Google a letter Wednesday demanding the company cease using the Nexus name and requesting the company turn over relevant documents within 10 days.

"Who, us?" replied Google, all googly-eyed innocence. "Pure coincidence!"

Well, there's always #2, the shampoo theory. Last time I checked, Nexxus Therappe** and related products were available in bulk at Costco.

Bonus food for thought: This hypothetical Nexus One logo evolution has been flying around the web all week.

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* Not a bland name.

** The what?

New Name Beat: Recology

San Francisco garbage pickup and recycling company Norcal Waste Systems announced today that it has changed its name to Recology. According to BusinessWire, the name change "is rooted in the company’s 89-year heritage as one of the nation’s first urban recyclers. Recology, with clear roots in words like recycling, renewal, reuse and reduction, signals that the company will be leading the evolution of the industry—eliminating waste from the vocabulary of consumer and industry alike."

And as the logo makes evident, "ecology" is also part of the new identity.

Along with the new name, logo, and web site, Recology has a new slogan (or "rallying cry," as the company calls it): "Waste Zero." The company is making its commitment tangible by moving to a new Gold LEED-certified office (50 California St., San Francisco).

The identity change is more than a facelift. The "Norcal" part of the old name is already obsolete: the company's compost operations are in Oregon, and Andrew Ross reports in the San Francisco Chronicle that the company will be expanding beyond California in other ways.

"Waste" is also obsolete, company president and CEO Mike Sangiacomo told BusinessWire: “Our industry is no longer about waste management." The new name "will help move us away from the mentality of disposal to a mandate to use less of what we have and get more from what we use.”

I give the new name and tagline two thumbs up (with an asterisk). Getting rid of "waste" is a wise idea and a clear signal that humans no longer can afford to keep throwing stuff away and ignoring the consequences. "Waste Zero" (which borrows its syntax from similar formulas such as Patient Zero and Inbox Zero) is direct and modern. And calling it a rallying cry casts the motto in a fresh light that's also appropriately recycled: slogan is the simplified spelling of Scottish-Gaelic sluagh-ghairm, which means "army (or battle) cry."

"Recology" is a clever compendium of timely language; the re- prefix has mostly positive associations right now (with the exception of recession), and -ology (knowledge about, science of) makes the company seem smart and savvy.

So why the asterisk? Just this: there will be an irresistible temptation to turn the name into Reek-ology if garbage ever starts piling up on curbs.

That aside, I want to give special credit to whoever rewrote the web site. The site design is minimal—free of waste, you might say—which puts the text in the spotlight. The content is clear and concise; sentences are short yet not cold, mostly because they're written in the first person plural:

First, the reality. We can’t afford to keep throwing away our future. We don’t have the resources and, thanks to global warming, we no longer have the time.

Now the promise. Every day, both traditional and new technologies are making it easier to stop wasting what we have and make more of what we use. In an easily compostable nutshell, this is both the underlying truth and overarching idea behind the name Recology.

"Easily compostable nutshell" is especially endearing.

Nice logo, too (sorry I couldn't grab a bigger one): the blue-green gradient evokes air, earth, and water, and the sprouting capital R suggests the benefits of recycling.

I haven't been able to find out who did the renaming and redesign. If you know, please share the information in a comment.

New Name Beat: Herdict

Here's a case of smart people who came up with a good idea that fills a need and is cleverly executed. The only weakness is the name. (Well, the visual identity is clearly dopey—see image, left—but design isn't my forte, so I'll give it a pass for now.)

I first learned about Herdict on Twitter, where the 140-character limit precluded much context. As I recall, the tweet said nothing more than, "Have you checked out Herdict?" So I played a guessing game with myself. I'm familiar with BlogHer, EngageHer, and HerRoom,¹ so I reasoned that Herdict must be a service or product for her—for women.

As for -dict, my first association—not the most obvious one, granted, but not wholly improbable—was "indict." So I thought the name was pronounced "her-dite," and had something to do with ... women criminals?

Well, no. Right after I saw that tweet, I read a blog post by Dave Weinberger, who was attending a lunch sponsored by Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, which turns out to be the brains behind Herdict. (As I said: smart people.) Herdict, Dave wrote, "tries to enlist people at large to answer the question 'What’s going on with the Net?'"

As the Herdict website says (in clear, friendly language; can't find fault there):

Let's say you find a site inaccessible...normally, you might call or e-mail your friends and ask them if they're experiencing the same thing. With Herdict Web, you can see - in real time - if others are reporting the same phenomenon, giving you a better sense of potential reasons of why the site is inaccessible.

And the name?

Herdict is a portmanteau of 'herd' and 'verdict' and seeks to show the verdict of the users (the herd). Herdict Web seeks to gain insight into what users around the world are experiencing in terms of web accessibility; or in other words, determine the herdict.

Uh-oh.

In just a minute, I'll tell you some of the reasons a portmanteau of "herd" and "verdict" is so problematic. But first I want to share the responses I got when I asked my own Twitter followers what "Herdict" suggested to them:

• "Verdicts for women, or it's a misspelling and there's supposed to be a 'k' on the end."
• "I read 'herdict' as 'heretic." (Two votes for that interpretation.)
• "I thought 'her dick.'"
• "Transsexuals?" (Two votes.)
• "A site for female lawyers--'her verdict'?"
• "Something about a herd ... and an addict?"

Interestingly, the only person who got "herd" from "Herdict" is not a native English speaker.

Here's my own analysis. Most of the problems with "Herdict" are liabilities of all portmanteau words. Portmanteaus are fun to construct, and they're usually the first strategy novice namers attempt. Take a word or a word part, smash it into another word or word part, and voilà: a newly coined word that's somewhat likelier than average to have an available domain. But not all words blend as seamlessly as famous portmanteaus like chortle or slithy (both coined by Lewis Carroll). Many word-blends result in what The Name Inspector calls awkwordplay, words in which the stress is ambiguous or syllabic transitions are difficult or unpleasant. Herdict suffers from the latter fault: it's hard to tell where we're supposed to break up the word. Her? Or herd?

But that's just the beginning:

• "Herd," a collective noun used with animals, especially cattle, is an unflattering way to refer to one's audience, public, or users. It suggests unthinking animal instinct, not human judgment.
• Jonathan Zittrain, Herdict's creator, makes a stumbling attempt to justify his zoology: "To many, the sheep is considered to be an unintelligent species content to simply run with the flock. On the contrary, sheep tend not to follow the herd when no natural predator is present." With all due respect, Dr. Zittrain, I don't think you've spent enough time outdoors.
• The collective noun for sheep isn't "herd," it's "flock."
• "Verdict" suggests judgment; we often associate it with "guilty." But Herdict doesn't pass judgment; it simply reports.
• Then there are the problems with the sound of the name. Is it -dict or -dick? It isn't always easy to hear the difference. (Try saying "I use Herdict" quickly a few times and you'll catch my drift.)
• Speaking of hearing, is it Herd- or Heard-? If you meet a new acquaintance and say you work for Herdict, will the other person hear "heard it"?

Successful names need to pass many tests: sight (what does its spelling suggest?), sound (is it pronounceable and unambiguous?), meaning, and appropriateness, among others. (Trademark is the biggest "other.")

But here's my main complaint: The name conveys no benefit. Nothing about "Herdict" suggests that the program exists to prevent web censorship and enhance web accessibility. The name doesn't communicate openness, fairness, or access. It suggests bovine compliance coupled with judgment. Or genitalia.

I hope Herdict succeeds as a business; I really do. Not only because I think it provides a worthwhile service, but because success may bring an infusion of funds large enough to finance a complete rebranding—verbal and visual. I wouldn't mind being part of it.

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¹Another good business with a dreadful name. Herroom.com sells lingerie, for Pete's sake, but its name sounds like phlegmy throat-clearing.

New Name Beat: Cuil

"Queel"? "Quill"? "Coo-ill"? No, no, and no. The name of the new search engine Cuil, which launched yesterday, is pronounced "cool." Why? Well, because they say so. And when you're challenging Google and calling yourself "the world's biggest search engine," brashness is everything.

Here's what Cuil says about itself on the home page:

 

The Internet has grown exponentially in the last fifteen years but search engines have not kept up—until now. Cuil searches more pages on the Web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft.

 

Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. When we find a page with your keywords, we stay on that page and analyze the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency.

 

Then we offer you helpful choices and suggestions until you find the page you want and that you know is out there. We believe that analyzing the Web rather than our users is a more useful approach, so we don’t collect data about you and your habits, lest we are tempted to peek. With Cuil, your search history is always private.

Cuil is based in Menlo Park, California; it was founded by a married couple, Tom Costello and Anna Patterson, both of whom have PhDs in computer science. He's an I.B.M alum who specializes in text relevance for searches; she's an expert in scaling architecture who wrote a search engine that she sold to Google, where she worked from 2004 to 2006. All very impressive--as is the fact that the site was launched on a paltry $7 million budget.

New Name Beat: Knol

Google was in the news last week (is there ever a week when Google is not in the news?) after the company's blog announced the quiet launch of a new, Wikipedia-like project called Knol. Unlike Wikipedia, whose contributors are anonymous (and their authority unknown to readers), Knol will "highlight authors," according to Google's vice president of engineering, Udi Manber:

Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it. The tool is still in development and this is just the first phase of testing. For now, using it is by invitation only. But we wanted to share with everyone the basic premises and goals behind this project.

There's no Knol logo yet, and only one sample page to view, but less than two days after Manber published his post a Knol social-networking community, "KnolStuff," had miraculously materialized.

All very interesting, of course. But what about the name?

In his blog post, Manber defines knol as "a unit of knowledge." He consistently spells the word with a lower-case k, and writes that "we use the word 'knol' as the name of the project and as an instance of an article interchangeably." Outside Google, however, commenters have capitalized the name.

So--spelling: variable. What about pronunciation?

Motley Fool punned about "grassy knol" (that's a JFK-assassination reference, in case you didn't recognize it) and proposed the term "Knol troll" "for the money-chasing types who will plague the site if Google winds up encouraging mutinous behavior." Both usages suggest a long-vowel pronunication, as does the example of two other English words that end in -ol: extol and control.

But if knol is short for knowledge, it would logically require a short vowel sound. And there are several examples in English of words that end in -ol in which the o is short: protocol, parasol, alcohol. Note that all of them are three syllables long, with the stress on the first syllable. The one-syllable knol--pronounced to rhyme more or less with doll--follows a less familiar model. (Doubling the l might or might not help: -oll can be pronounced with either vowel sound.)

(William Lozito of NameWire argues that Knol is too close to "nul," meaning "nothing."  Actually, nul is a Latin term, pronounced with a long u; the English equivalent is null.)

That's one pronunciation challenge. The other is the initial k, which is presumably silent. I've considered the problem of the initial silent k in my earlier analysis of Knuru (coined from knowledge + guru). Yes, many familiar words have a silent k--knife, knight, knee, knit--but when we encounter a coined kn- word we hesitate slightly. Could it be pronounced ka-nawl? Or ka-nole?

(I noticed another silent-k coined name last year, social-networking site that called itself Knover, coined from knowledge + rover. Again, the pronunciation was not quite intuitive. In any event, Knover seems to have come and gone within about 12 months: enter knover.com and you're redirected to something called FreshNotes.)

Google's new Knol is confusing legally, too. There's the much-better-known Knoll, the global, 70-year-old office-furniture manufacturer whose name rhymes with roll. And there's Knology (ticker symbol: KNOL), a 13-year-old cable company that serves the southeastern United States.

Finally, I'm not convinced that "Knol" clearly communicates "knowledge." There's that missing w, for starters. Without it, the word can look like knot or knoll to the casual reader.

That's a lot of encumbrances for one very short name.

Google could have made it work, to borrow a Project Runway catchphrase. Spelling the word Knole would have clarified that the vowel is meant to be long; spelling it Gnol would have retained the G-for-Google branding element while keeping the sense of to know (as in agnostic--admittedly a more arcane connection). Knowl is another option.

Or Google could have adhered to its established naming conventions (Gmail, Google Maps, etc.) and gone with a more straightforward name such as Gpedia, GoogleWise, Google Knowledge, or Googlepedia. Too boring? How about Gooru? Or TheKnow? Or even Ken, a wonderful old English word that means "perception" or "understanding" and is easy to anthropomorphize?

Read other posts in New Name Beat.

New Name Beat: Cision

In April the global "reputation management" company Observer Group changed its name to Cision. If Observer Group doesn't mean much to you, perhaps you're more familiar with one of its subsidiaries, Bacon's Information, which since 1932--and especially since its 2002 acquisition of MediaMap--has been an important source of information for public-relations practitioners, who rely on the company's database of more than 900,000 media contacts in 150 countries. Along with the rest of Observer Group, Bacon's is now Cision. In this installment of New Name Beat, I'll discuss the new Cision name generally, with a focus on the Bacon's transformation.

New Name Beat: 23andMe

If you're a sports fan or a celebrity watcher, you can be forgiven for expecting 23andMe to be a fan site about soccer megastar David Beckham. (He wears jersey #23 for his new team, the Los Angeles Galaxy.)

But 23andMe is something else entirely: the rare company that can speak with authority about its corporate DNA. For about $1,000, this new biotech startup will search your genome and create your personal genetic profile.* It takes its name from the 23 pairs of chromosomes in every human cell--and from its "genetics is about to get personal" assertion.

Perhaps you're wondering why the company isn't named 46andMe. Keep reading.

There's a lot of high-quality DNA in 23andMe's executive team. Co-founder Anne Wojcicki (pronounced wo-JIT-skee), a former health care analyst, married Google co-founder Sergey Brin in May in a secret ceremony on a private island in the Caribbean. The Brin-Wojcicki hookup had a genetic component of its own: the pair were introduced by Wojcicki's sister, now a Google vice president, who sublet her garage to Brin and his business partner, Larry Page, when they were starting Google. (Wojcicki's mother has also worked for Google, as a consultant.) Google has invested $3.9 million in 23andMe--pocket change for Brin and Page, but a big boost for the new company.

23andMe is an interesting name for a number of reasons. Let's start with the most salient: It's distinctive. Unlike a lot of new business names, it's not a meaningless coined word with some superfluous vowels (Orgoo, Squidoo, Meebo, etc.). It doesn't go steroidal with the overused -ster suffix (Friendster, Talkster, Dogster, Napster) or coyly drop a vowel (Flickr, Shifd, Wrickr, Pluggd). It doesn't have the contorted, constructed quality of many genomics firms: BioGenix, Cytomix, DigiGenomics, Xencor, Hypromatrix. Finally, it bucks the dominant "shorter is better" philosophy and dares to be five syllables long, although with only seven characters it appears shorter than it sounds.

23andMe is not alone among recent startups in using a numeral as part of its name. But it uses the number more cannily than most. Names such as 37Signals, 83 Degrees, and Core77 are mysterious to the point of meaninglessness, while 30Boxes (a calendar site), 411Metro, and Compass360--to take just three examples--are transparently obvious.

23andMe's name, however, is justifiable yet slightly enigmatic. The 23 "story" makes sense and reinforces the serious science behind the endeavor. Meanwhile, the rhyme between "three" and "me" adds a touch of lyrical whimsy while acting as a mnemonic device.

The more I thought about this name, the more it appealed to me. There was something about the number 23--something I couldn't quite identify--that made the name stand out. So I did some research and discovered that "23" is a number with a lot of stories to tell.

• Twenty-three is, of course, a prime number, divisible only by itself and by 1.
• It's the smallest prime number that isn't a twin prime.
• According to Wikipedia, "Twenty-three is also the fifth factorial prime, the second Woodall prime, and the second Smarandache-Wellin prime. It is an Eisenstein prime with no imaginary part and real part of the form 3n − 1."
• Avogadro's number, used in chemistry, is 6.0221367×10²³.
• In Biblical Palestine, the Sanhedrin had 23 judges.
• In the absurdist, chaos-centered religion called Discordianism (sometimes called "Zen for roundeyes"), all events are connected to the number 23. The digits of "23" add up to 5, which also has special properties to Discordians. (There seems to be a strong whiff of selection bias in these claims.)
• In the 2007 film The Number 23, starring Jim Carrey, a man's life unravels after he reads a book titled "The Number 23."
• Twenty-three was basketball star Michael Jordan's number when he played for the Chicago Bulls. It has since been retired.
• According to an information-sharing company called simply 23--not as effective a name, in my opinion, as 23andMe--you need at least 23 people in a room for there to be a probability of 50% or greater that two of them will share a birthday.
• And 23 has many other associations.

Many numbers come down to us with purportedly magical qualities: three wishes, seven wonders of the world, forty days and forty nights. Twenty-three, though, is quirkier and rougher around the edges, less obvious and therefore more intriguing. It doesn't disclose its meaning at a glance: it draws you in and invites you to investigate further. Substituting "46" for "23" for reasons of scientific accuracy wouldn't have achieved the same numerical/associational magic.

Then there's the "...andMe" component of the name, which warms and humanizes it--and which is why I think 23andMe is a better name than simply 23. I also like that the company chose not to make the name possessive--for example, "My23"--which would have altered the relationship between "me" and "my DNA," which in "23andMe" sounds like an equal partnership.

Even if it had a terrible name, 23andMe would draw attention because of its lucky parentage. The interesting qualities of "23andMe" give it even more credibility. In other words, 23andMe represents the optimal blend of nature and nurture.

Read other posts in New Name Beat.

* Esther Dyson, who is a director of 23andMe, plans to post her genome on the Internet in a couple of months. Read her Wall Street Journal commentary about why she chose to do it.

New Name Beat: Thoof

A couple of weeks ago The Name Inspector wrote a brief post about Thoof, which he called "a name whose existence cannot go unremarked." He continued:

This is a name that defies criticism. It’s so intentionally meaningless and phonetically counterintuitive that it renders irrelevant any earnest discussion of its strengths and weaknesses. A commenter on TechCrunch said it sounds like a potato gun being shot. What more is there to say?

Very well put. But in fact there is a bit more to say.

First, some background: Thoof is a personalized news site created by its readers rather than by an editorial staff. The site's About page--which is well hidden--has this to say:

What makes Thoof unique is a sophisticated algorithm which discovers a reader's interests and tailors the stories to each reader's individual tastes. Every Thoof reader will see a personalized page with stories he or she will find interesting. All that you, as a reader, have to do is simply read what you like, and Thoof takes care of the rest!

And further down the page, there's this curious line:

The original Thoof concept is due to Ian Clarke.

I say "curious" because "due to" is an oddly passive way to express Mr. Clarke's relationship to the company. The very next sentence, in fact, says he is the founder and CEO of Thoof. Why not come out and say he "created the concept"?

It's not as though Clarke were an unknown quantity. Seven years ago, at 23, he created an anonymous information-sharing system called Freenet that drew considerable controversy. Since then he's been involved in three other venture-backed startups, including the video-sharing site Revver.

In his TechCrunch blog, Michael Arrington wrote about Thoof from a business perspective, but some of his commenters wanted to weigh in on the name. There was the potato-gun comment, for one. Another commenter observed sarcastically, "With a name like Thoof, how could it fail?" Said another: "The name is a deal-breaker. It may be the worst web 2.0 name yet. These goofy names may work for the technorati but I don’t think they scale. " And yet another put it tersely: "Name sucks, concept uninteresting."

Finally, at comment #27, Ian Clarke joined the conversation:

To those who don’t like the name, I guess all I can say is “sorry”. I think mostly names are defined by the companies that use them, rather than the companies being defined by the names. Consider the impact of “Yahoo!”, “Flickr”, “EBay”, or “Skype” before they became well known companies. I think most people probably viewed them as being rather strange, but now they are part of our language. I think if Thoof is a success, that will define people’s perception of the name, positive or negative.

So where did "Thoof" come from? In a June 17 interview with New York Times technology reporter John Markoff, Clarke said he "discovered" the name Thoof by writing a program to search for Internet addresses that had not been taken. And, Markoff reported, "he said he also liked that it rhymed with truth."

There are several naming and branding fallacies here. Let's look at three of them:

- "Thoof" rhymes with "truth."  Not in standard English, it doesn't. It rhymes with spoof, reproof, and oof! In some British dialects (mostly lower class), -th- can sound like -f-  or -v-, but Clarke is Irish and presumably doesn't favor those pronunciations. (Irish -th- tends to sound more like hard -t-. I once had an Irish yoga instructor who would exhort us to "relax your ties!" It took me a while to figure out that she was talking about thighs.) I'm willing to bet that not one out of a hundred Thoof users make any connection to truth. Or even truthiness.

- The domain was available. Remember that SNL mockumercial about the Dillon Edwards investment firm ("the people you trust")? Good news: they were finally online. Bad news: the only domain they could get was clownpenis.fart. But hey, it was available! Thoof isn't as embarrassingly bad as that, but its availability has little to do with its effectiveness as a brand. A professional namer could have pointed out to Clarke that (a) there are many good domain names being transferred at reasonable prices, and (b) there are many memorable, pronounceable, non-silly alternatives to a preposterous "available" name.

- If the business succeeds, the name will sound good. Unfortunately, the examples Clarke cites--Yahoo, Flickr, eBay, and Skype--are all based on real, recognizable English words or phonemes. None is a nonsense syllable with zero inherent meaning. "Empty vessel" names like Thoof have an uphill (and expensive) battle to prove to customers and investors that their brand has significance. That's why truly coined names are relatively rare. The exception is Kodak, which is not as random as it may seem: it follows a familiar English word-formation pattern (consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel-consonant); it's easy to pronounce in virtually any language; and the KO- syllable even suggests "co-," a prefix that means with or together--a highly positive association.

Thoof may prove to be a good business idea, but it's a poorly conceived name. I do, however, like the Thoof logo. Unlike the name, it actually communicates meaning.

Read other posts in New Name Beat.

Update: The Ask Jason blog takes a more fanciful approach to the problem of Thoof:

So how did Thoof get its name? Well it all goes back to ancient Norse mythology. Thoof was the younger brother of the Thor, the god of thunder and war. Thoof, on the other hand, was the god of smiting antiquated news services. Newspapers, scrolls and tablets were his enemies. He instead wanted to provide his followers with dynamic news and information from all over the world, provided customized for each person. Anyone who tried to cross Thoof, met their demise in an unpleasant manner.

New Name Beat: Accretive Solutions

New Name Beat has been on hiatus for a while, but it's back with plenty to talk about. This week I'll take aim at some bad examples; next week I'll make amends by applauding some apt and well-crafted names.

Let's start with a multiple-choice quiz: What does the name "Accretive Solutions" call to mind?

a) Geology

b) Recombinant DNA

c) Something about a labyrinth and a minotaur

d) "Expert solutions in accounting and finance"

The answer--of course!--is accounting and finance.

"Accretive Solutions" attempts to solve the riddle, What do you get when you add Horn Murdock Cole to Dickson Allan, BF Consultants, and CFO Services? Technically speaking, you do get an "accretion": the Latin roots of the word (ad + crescere) mean "growing larger." In biology, accretion is the growing together of parts that are normally separate; in geology it's the slow deposit of water-borne sediment on land; in astronomy it's the increase in mass of a celestial object.

So, yes, "accretive" accurately describes the process by which the merger was effected. It may even describe the way the company does its work, one form at a time. But it's the wrong word for the corporate name. ("Solutions" is wrong, too, but for different reasons that I'll get to in a moment.)

Here's why.

Look at your face in the mirror when you say "accretive" and notice how the long e sound forces your mouth into an unlovely rictus. Strike one. Now listen to yourself. That long e has a small, compressed sound, unlike the sounds made by long or broad a, o, or u. Strike two. The short i of the -tive suffix reinforces the compression. Strike three.

Now, sometimes a "small" sound is just the ticket, as with Lilipip, which makes mobile educational software for children, or Twitter, whose users "revel in the minutiae of everyday human existence." (Thanks to The Name Inspector for that great description, and also for the lead to Lilipip.) But when you're entrusting your family's or your company's finances to an accounting firm, you want that firm to sound solid and substantial, not itty-bitty.

There's another problem with "Accretive": it describes a process instead of communicating a benefit. Who cares that the company was formed by agglomeration? Or that it does its work step by step? How will that information help me feel confident about the firm?

As Horn Murdock Cole (which is how the company used to identify itself in its public-radio sponsorships), this firm sounded traditional and maybe even a bit stodgy. But it clearly communicated that the name partners were actual people, and that, by extension, the company employed real people in real offices who took a personal interest in their clients.

Accretive Solutions, by contrast, is a pseudoscientific name that says nothing about relationships. The corporate web site speaks warmly and engagingly about trust and "the human connection." But the corporate name is at war with that message.

What's happened here is an all-too-common phenomenon in naming: the company has mistaken description for benefit--and forgotten that customers care mostly about benefit.

Finally, "accretive" carries just enough of an echo of "secretion"--especially when "accretive" is preceded by a word ending in s--to be tainted by the yuck factor. I don't know about you, but when I think about my accountant I don't want to be distracted by thoughts of glandular processes.

What about "Solutions"? Here's how The Dictionary of Corporate Bullshit defines it:

- a widely abused, vague, generic, and slightly mysterious term used to describe products, of all things, particularly software

- so overused it has lost all meaning; calling something a solution is really just a way of further reinforcing that it has added-value

Lately, "solutions" means "services," too--and ideas, and conversation, and idle dithering in meetings. It's a completely empty word.

(And as Frank Lingua [CEO of Dissembling Associates] put it in a spot-on parody of corpspeak, "If you aren't the lead dog, you're not providing a customer-centric proactive solution.")

"Solutions" is yet another slopover from the vocabulary of science (like corporate DNA); in combination with "Accretive," it really does sound like something liquid that's been precipitated in a test tube.

I don't care for "Accretive Solutions," but I do like that the company uses its new initials in phrases such as  "AS Promised" and "AS Delivered." That's fresh, clever, and meaningful. Too bad the initials represent a missed opportunity.

Read other posts in New Name Beat.