Fritinancy

Name in the News: Marvina

This week a San Francisco startup, Marvina, launched its subscription delivery service for medical marijuana. For $95, $175, or $325 a month, San Franciscans who are qualified under California’s Compassionate Use Act can receive 7, 14, or 28 “top-shelf” grams of cannabis, tastefully packaged and delivered to their doors by an employee of a medical-marijuana dispensary.  

 

“Co-founder Dane Pieri came up with the idea because he was intimidated and overwhelmed by the cannabis dispensaries,” writes reporter Zara Stone in OZY.* “‘It’s like when you’re in the grocery store at the wine aisle; we didn’t know what to do,’ he told OZY. He thought he’d create a service where choice wasn’t in the equation.”

And the name? Here’s the story on the Marvina About page:

What does Marvina mean?

Nothing. Well actually its [sic] a nod to Malvina Reynolds, one of our favorite songwriters. Her song Little Boxes was also the theme song of one of our favorite TV shows, Weeds. (Ok, when we talk about Weeds we really mean seasons 1-3 because the other seasons really don't compare to those first three. If you're a fan of the show you know what we mean.)

For those of you unfamiliar with Malvina Reynolds (1900-1978), here’s a brief bio. Her birth surname was Milder; she was anything but. Here she is singing “Little Boxes.”

“Weeds,” of course, was Showtime’s long-running series about a housewife named Nancy (which also happens to be the name of Malvina Reynolds’s daughter) who starts selling marijuana after her husband’s premature death leaves her family in dire straits. The name of the fictional community in which Nancy lives, Agrestic, has been adopted by a marijuana dispensary in Corvallis, Oregon.

Marvina is an elegant portmanteau**—mar from marijuana and vina from Malvina—that stands out amid the ticky-tacky clutter of similar-sounding names in this area (see my post on 420 names). The Malvina Reynolds connection has extra resonance for a service that delivers its product in “little boxes.”

Speaking of weedy names, I’m headed to Portland, Oregon, for the next several days to attend the annual meeting of the American Name Society and sister organizations. On Saturday afternoon I’ll be giving a talk at ANS titled “Velvet Elvis at the Mary Mart: The New Normal Nomenclature of Legal Cannabis.” I hope to see some of you at my session – or maybe at the American Dialect Society’s Word of the Year vote Friday afternoon.

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* Sorry, I don’t know how OZY got its name. Look on their works, ye mighty, and despair?

** The company’s writing style, as we’ve seen, is less elegant.

Name in the Wild: Hue and Cry

I have a soft spot for very old words and idioms that are kept alive in contemporary brand names. Like this one:

Hue & Cry Security Systems, spotted in Oakland, California.

 

 

Hue and cry first appeared in English in the late 13th century “as an Anglo-French legal term meaning ‘outcry calling for pursuit of a felon’,” according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, which adds that “the extended sense of ‘cry of alarm’ is 1580s.” It’s a short, distinctive, and perfectly evocative name for a security company.

The hue in hue and cry is an Old French word meaning “outcry, noise, war or hunting cry” (“probably of imitative origin,” says the Online Etymology Dictionary). It’s unrelated to the hue that means “color,” which comes from Old English hiw (“color, appearance”).

For some other brand names derived from very old words—including Bluetooth, Kindle, and Whirlpool—see my August 2014 column for the Visual Thesaurus (no longer paywalled).

How Pitango Got Its Name

It’s “How They Got That Name” week on Fritinancy, bringing you origin stories of corporate and product names both famous and obscure. Our first entry, Pitango, is big in Israel but may be unfamiliar to readers elsewhere.

Founded in 1993, Pitango is Israel’s largest venture capital fund. It invests seed capital in technology, consumer, and life sciences companies.

 

 

Pitango is a Hebrew word (פיטנגו) pronounced with a broad A: pih-TAHN-go. The corporate website tells the name-origin story:  

Our name reflects our ethos. The Pitango is a fruit that grows in abundance throughout Israel, yet the ripest fruits are a challenge to find. Just like finding the right company takes a good eye for opportunity, persistence and skill – the sweetest Pitangos are hard to find, hidden by dense foliage. Once found, the effort is worth it.

The story could be told more elegantly, but it’s a decent start. The name itself is solid: the spelling is straightforward and the word is easy to pronounce in most languages. There’s a nice implicit association between two types of cultivation: agricultural and business. (It’s right there in “seed capital,” of course.) To anyone familiar with English, the embedded go and tango are pure positives, suggesting dynamism and partnership.

I also like the visual identity: the sophisticated balance of serif and sans-serif typefaces; the stylized, not-too-literal rendering of a cherry blossom (in cherry red).

Pitango is also the name of a restaurant in the coastal Israeli city of Netanya. The two Pitangos are unrelated except for their shared name.

Nicely Named: KissKissBankBank

Sometimes it pays to stay in your seat after the final scene of a movie. If you stick around after a Pixar feature you’ll see, deep into the closing credits, a list of “production babies” born to employees in the year before the movie’s release. The credit roll for last year’s Frozen, from Disney, lasted 10 minutes and included a nod to the person in charge of “caffeination.”

But even tiny independent films may have gems in their closing credits.

Last weekend, at the San Francisco International Ocean Film Festival, I saw a charming three-minute short, Une Balade à la Mer (“a trip to the sea”), whose credits included the name of the financer, KissKissBankBank.

 

Adorable Pacman-esque logo!

 

The name was unfamiliar to me, but not the allusion.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (1968), collected writings of the late film critic Pauline Kael.

 

I did a little research and learned that KissKissBankBank is a French crowdfunding site, similar to Kickstarter, that launched in 2010. The name isn’t just a clever pun: it’s also a perfect fit for a site that, unlike the more general Kickstarter, specializes in creative projects such as the film I saw.

Here’s some backstory on the name:

In 1962, after the release of Dr. No, the first James Bond movie, an Italian journalist dubbed Bond “Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.” Pauline Kael, who took the phrase for the title of her book, explained it as “perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of movies. This appeal is what attracts us, and ultimately what makes us despair when we begin to understand how seldom movies are more than this.” The original theme song for the 1965 Bond film Thunderball—sung by Shirley Bassey—was “Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.”*

Changing just one letter, KissKissBankBank says “love and money”—the twin pillars of crowdfunding—while retaining the association with movies and stardom. As a nice bonus, the company extends the verbal brand in a section called “The Stakisstics.” (If only they’d hire a native speaker—and writer—to edit the rest of the English-language content!)

The smoochy approach may be particularly useful in France, where crowdfunding is still regarded as slightly suspect. Vincent Ricordeau, KissKissBankBank’s co-founder and CEO, told Rude Baguette, a blog about French startups, that U.S. culture is “much more adapted to the crowdfunding model.” In France, he said, “if you’re a professional, and you admit that you need funding, it’s seen as a weakness.”

With humor and wordplay, KissKissBankBank overcomes the prejudice and charms the skeptics. Applause all around for a winning name!

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* Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is also the title of a 2005 pulp-fiction parody starring Robert Downey Jr., Val Kilmer, and Michelle (“True Detective”) Monaghan. It has an impressive 84 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Nicely Named: Bevel

When you enter an crowded, established, not-very-exciting market with the goal of upending expectations, the best way to signal your intention is with a distinctive product name that avoids the naming trends in your category.

That’s exactly what Tristan Walker, a former Wall Street trader and Silicon Valley executive, has done with Bevel, his new shaving system for men with coarse, curly hair (mostly but not exclusively African-American men, like Walker himself).

 

The weighted razor and skin-preparation products are meant to reduce and prevent ingrown hairs and razor bumps.

 

To understand how revolutionary the Bevel name is—and to appreciate the elegant, understated product design—take a look at some competitors.

 

    

Bump Fighter                                                                       Bump Patrol

 

       

Bump Stopper-2                                      Bump Terminator

 

          No Bump                                        Bump Down

 

Yes, it’s all bumps out there.

There are Bump products for the ladies, too:

Bikini Bump Blaster

 

The companies behind these products have fixated on a common strategy, naming the problem. Bevel stands out because it names the solution: a razor whose single blade is angled (beveled) to shave close to the skin. (Yes, a single blade. Walker is “deeply skeptical about multi-blade razors,” according to a TechCrunch story about his company: “He holds that because you can’t patent single-blade razors, there’s no incentive for incumbent companies like Proctor [sic] & Gamble to invest in the best solution.”)

And because the Bevel system is sold as a fairly spendy subscription service, it doesn’t require retina-burning graphics to command your attention in CVS or Walgreen’s. The products can speak with the quiet authority of good design.

The Bevel name succeeds on sound and appearance, too. Its velvety, liquid consonants suggest smoothness, while the V in the middle of the word—echoed in the logo—suggests the shape of an angled blade.

Bevel.com was, of course, taken. (It redirects to an optometry website with a different name.) The choice to go with a modified domain, GetBevel.com, was smart and appropriate.

(I was a little disappointed, however, that the company’s Twitter bio includes a pronunciation guide. Really?)

Bevel is the first product and “flagship brand” of Tristan Walker’s startup enterprise, Walker and Company. It’s pure coincidence, as far as I can tell, that this Walker evokes a much older hair-care brand—also developed by an African-American for African-Americans—with the Walker name.

The Madam C.J. Walker company of Indiana was founded in 1910 by Sarah Breedlove Walker, who used her husband’s initials as her business name. As a young woman Sarah Breedlove Walker had suffered hair loss; the products she developed to treat the condition proved so popular that she became America’s first female self-made millionaire.

 

Madam C.J. Walker 1998 U.S. postage stamp

The company thrived for more than six decades after Madam Walker’s death in 1919; in 1985, the company was sold to Raymond Randolph, who had worked in the black-haircare industry since the 1960s. The products are once again for sale under a slightly modified name, Madame C.J. Walker Hair Products. 

There have been many published biographies of Madam Walker. The one I want to read is On Her Own Ground, published in 2002 by Madam Walker’s great-great-granddaughter, A’Lelia Bundles.  

Negative Names with a Positive Twist

Many naming briefs stipulate that “negative words” be avoided. To be sure, there’s a risk to going negative with your company or product name. But sometimes the risk pays off. Consider Virgin: doesn’t the name suggest pilots with no experience? Or Caterpillar: huge machines and engines named for a tiny, destructive insect—seriously? Or Banana Republic: a small, politically unstable country governed by a dictator and dominated by a foreign interest? Yet each of those brands is dominant in its industry.

Here are three new names that embrace risk and cheerfully violate the no-negative-words “rule.”

 

Ordinaire.

 

This sign for this new wine shop and wine bar on Oakland’s Grand Avenue catches your attention with a word that seems meh. But is it really ordinary? Not exactly. “Ordinaire” has a specific meaning in wine lingo: vin ordinaire is inexpensive wine for everyday use. What seems negative at first is in fact enticing and relevant.

 

Mediocre.

Speaking of meh, the definition of “mediocre” is “middling” or “average.” (The Latin and Greek roots of the word translate to “halfway up the mountain.”)

But Mediocre Laboratories is anything but ordinary. There’s the clever logo, for starters, with its tilted E and cracked beaker. There are the ringing quotations about mediocrity. (“A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go further than a great idea that inspires no one.” — Mary Kay Ash.) There’s the “careers” heading: “Be a Mediocre employee. We’re looking for people so good they don’t need to call themselves ninjas, gurus, or rockstars.”

Mediocre was founded by Matt Rutledge, who sold his previous company, Woot, to Amazon. “We really tried to lower expectations with the brand,” Rutledge told TechCrunch reporter Ryan Lawler. “The team drew inspiration from Ev Williams and Biz Stone’s Obvious Corporation,” Lawler reports, “but since ‘obvious’ was taken, they decided to set the bar low with ‘mediocre’ instead.”

In keeping with the laboratory theme, each Mediocre e-commerce “experiment” is code-named for a dead scientist—Libet, Frisch, Wöhler, Pavlov, and Jensen. (I’m guessing about the last one, but it seems like a reasonable conjecture.)

 

Terrible.

Mediocre is average, but Terrible? That’s really bad, right? Who’d want that word associated with a mobile-apps firm?

Well, take a look at Terrible Labs’ logo/mascot:

T-Rex here serves as a reminder that “terrible” didn’t always mean “bad”; it originally meant “awe-inspiring” or, yes, awesome. (From Terrible’s Twitter bio: “We build terribly awesome web & mobile web apps with Ruby on Rails, RubyMotion, and other stuff.”) You might also associate Terrible with enfant terrible, an outrageous or shocking person.

Terrible Labs does a terrific job—see early definitions of terrific—of grabbing our attention and making the right conceptual connection. I’d like to see better follow-through in the web content, which is tame and predictable. (“Passionate about creating great products” … “We help our clients turn great ideas into great products” … and many more instances of “we help,” which doesn’t sound T-Rexy at all.) I do like the Terrible Labs blog tagline, “Because Terrible Labs loves you,” and I can’t help admiring the name of one of Terrible’s team members, Trapper Markelz. Trapper!

Name in the Wild: Mandelay

There’s always something peculiar, and peculiarly gratifying, to see at Pharmaca, the Western U.S. alt-pharmacy chain. This is, after all, a store that stocks Fruitrients, W3LL PEOPLE [sic], Topricin*, Alaffia (ha ha!), Cowgirl Skincare, and GladRags (“eco-friendly menstruation support made simple”).

But if I had to pick a current favorite from the Pharmaca shelves, it would be Mandelay “climax control gel.” 

 

Man … delay.

I’m tickled that it’s a man-word I hadn’t yet encountered. I’m amused by the punctuation after the name (a full stop, really?). And I can’t resist a name that has me Kipling—you’ve Kippled, haven’t you?—all the way home.

As for the product itself, here’s what a reviewer said on the CVS site: “It works, but a little too well.”

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* Oh, it’s the top ricin, is it? Paging Walter White!

Names of Interest

A few bulletins and follow-ups:

*

I was interviewed by Businessweek for “Zen and the Art of Startup Naming,” about the proliferation of “zen” names (Zendesk, Zendrive, Zenify, etc.). For more, see my Pinterest board of Zen names.

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Zen names notwithstanding, it looks like Y is the new Z. Last week I wrote about names that substitute Y for I, and I just recently I discovered a new double-Y name, Swayy. It’s a startup that “brings you the best content to easily share with your audience and followers, based on their interests and engagement.” Is the name meant to be pronounced with a plaintive ayy? Or is it just another case of “We rejiggered the spelling to get a cheap domain”?

Speaking of Sway(y), here’s your rhumba interlude.

 

*

And speaking of trends, will we ever see the end of the -ly naming fad? Evidently not, if Evidently is any evidence. The Toronto-based “creative content agency” (their phrase) also hops aboard the “you deserve it” bandwagon with this statement on its Facebook page:

There’s an asterisk after “We produce the engaging content your brand deserves”; the clarifying footnote reads “Deserves, in a good way.” Yes, “deserve” can flip its meaning—“Shame on you; you had it coming” or “You’re a winner!”—as I noted in my June column for the Visual Thesaurus, “The Ads We Deserve.”

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I love a name with a good story and a clever double meaning, which is why I’m so pleased by Rich Brilliant Willing, “America’s premier contemporary lighting and furniture design manufacturer.” The company was founded in 2007 by three RISD graduates whose surnames are—pay attention now—Richardson, Brill, and Williams.

*

Another name that pleased me: she++, “a Stanford-based community for innovative women in technology.” The name is a pun on the programming language C++. I love the logo, too.

Read more about “plus” in branding in my April column for the Visual Thesaurus, “Shall We Plus?”

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Finally, here’s your bad name of the week: Twibfy, a dopey and nearly unpronounceable name for a company that calls itself “an inspirational platform.” (Translation: Pinterest wannabe.) You won’t find the name story on the Twibfy website, but on Twitter a company spokesperson said it’s an acronym (!) for “The World Is Beautiful From us to You.” (Random capitalization and awkward syntax sic). When you search for “Twibfy,” Google asks whether you mean “Twiggy.” That spells twouble. (Hat tip: Catchword.)

Nicely Named: Oxgut Hose Co.

You have to admit it takes guts to name a consumer-product company Oxgut. But that’s exactly why this name works so well. It’s tough, it stands out, and it tells a story – just like the products that bear its name.

Oxgut Hose Co., a startup here in Oakland that’s currently raising money through Kickstarter, salvages “retired” fire hoses that have become unsafe and turns them into useful products: floor mats, furniture, hammocks, tote bags. “Tons of fire hose ends up in landfill,” says company founder (and former ad-agency producer) LauraLe Wunsch*. “And that’s where we come in. We work with fire departments to intercept the fire hose before it goes to the Dumpster and repurpose every bit possible.”

Well-executed stencil-style wordmark.

Those salvaged hoses are weathered yet still rugged and surprisingly colorful. “I’ve never seen anything so full of character or so worthy of a second life,” LauraLe says.

So why “Oxgut”? Because that’s what the first fire hoses were made from. Here’s how a staggeringly comprehensive How Products Are Made article on fire hoses tells the story:

The earliest recorded use of fire hose was in ancient Greece. According to the Greek author Apollodorus, one end of an ox’s intestine was attached to a bladder filled with water. When the bladder was pressed, the water was forced through the long ox gut and was directed “to high places exposed to fiery darts.”

Oxgut Hose Co. doesn’t belabor this history, but it makes sure the name isn’t an indecipherable enigma, like too many startup names I see.

Oxgut also plays, but doesn’t overplay, the emotional card. Just in case you’ve forgotten why fire hoses matter, the company tagline is “Exclusive designs with a heroic past.”

 

Fire-hose floor mats and non-fire-hose T-shirts from Oxgut.

 

In addition to creating an effective name and tagline, Oxgut’s founders are doing a lot of other things right. They’ve filed for trademark protection of the name, and they’re working the social-media angles. They’ve also produced a gorgeous print brochure with professional photos of all the products. And they’re showing a social conscience – while reinforcing the origin story – by donating a portion of their proceeds to the Children’s Burn Foundation.

To learn more about Oxgut and its products, check out Oxgut’s Kickstarter video and Facebook page.

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* LauraLe is a neighbor of mine, and I’ve happily supported her Kickstarter, but I have no other connection to Oxgut.

Double Oxymoron

I saw this business name on the side of a truck while we were both on the 880 freeway somewhere in Oakland, and it made my day.

 

Logo for Fighting Amish Electric in South Berkeley. Slogan: “Amish Quality, Modern Technology.”

 

Of course, it helps to know about the Fighting Irish. And the electricity-shunning Amish.

Elsewhere in oxymorons: Penn’s Fighting Quakers.

Spartanburg (South Carolina) Herald-Journal, October 18, 1936