Saw this fun little piece on naming today. It mostly talks about “Googlegängers” (folks who share the same name finding out about each other through Google). But the reference to people subliminally liking names that are similar to their own is fascinating.

I’ve experienced a slightly different, but likely related tendency in my years as a naming expert. Clients often have an uncanny (if irrational) draw to names that *they* came up with. Their names can be off-message and totally unavailable as trademarks, but if the CEO coined it, the chances of it ending up on the product increase exponentially. Seems odd to pay for a naming consultant if you’re only going to use what you already came up with. But what do I know?

In his column today, tech guru Walt Mossberg expresses high hopes for Dash. He has been using a beta version of Dash, and preliminarily he says it’s great. We’re so happy that Dash is getting well deserved accolades. It was a fun project, a great product, and a clever name (if we do say so ourselves).

Read the WSJ article, or read it as a PDF.

Ford recently announced that it is relaunching the Fiesta as a worldwide brand (see article). I love this naming strategy, but it doesn’t always work. Ford’s justification is two-fold: the name already has some existing equity (albeit, not all positive) and by using one name in multiple markets, they can trim down their marketing expense.

But from a naming consultant’s perspective, they got lucky. Fiesta is one of those words that has near-global awareness. The Spanish word (meaning festival or celebration, from the Latin festum/festa  meaning “feast”) has transcended borders and is now commonly understood by native English speakers (as well as speakers of dozens of other languages). Because the car is targeted at new car buyers (typically a younger demographic), the idea of a celebration ties in nicely with the broader marketing message for the car (again, across geographic borders).

Creating names with such international consistency is tough. Just ask the folks at VW. Can anyone spell Tuoreg? Taureg? Touareg? Or ask the folks at Buick. Who knew that Lacrosse was a Canadian slang term for masturbation? If they had done the linguistic research we offer our clients, they would have known before they launched.

Some of you may want to include the infamous “Nova” in this mix. However, let us dispel the myth once more. Yes,  when literally translated, “no va” would mean “doesn’t go” in Spanish. Yet the car is still sold (quite successfully) in Spanish-speaking countries. This is possible because people don’t usually parse brand names this way. I love the counter-example offered by Snopes.com: would anyone think twice about buying a dinette set that used the brand “Notable”? (Get it?)

Anyway, back to the subject at hand. Kudos to Ford for coming up with (and now relaunching) a brand name that sends the right message to a global audience. If any of you readers out there are looking for a new brand name that functions equally well in multiple international markets, Catchword can help.

Amazing how popular the topic of baby naming has gotten in the last few months. Here’s the latest entry from the New York Times.

One of my “golden rules of naming” is that parents shouldn’t tell their friends what names they are considering before they name the baby. (You tend to get mostly negative feedback pre-birth and nothing but positive feedback post-birth.) The NYT reporter John Tierney aptly points out that parents considering names like “Ima Hogg” or “Helen Troy” should probably check with a few friends first (maybe even your favorite naming company).

You don’t need a license to have a kid, but maybe you should be forced to get approval for the name you *think* you want to assign to your child. The poor kid named “Favre” certainly would agree (see earlier post).
I say again: leave creative naming to the professionals.

I was shocked to learn about a Florida couple who named their twin boys Brett and Favre (see article). These folks must not have read my golden rules of baby naming (see earlier blog posts). Naming is not about *you* it is about what (or who) you are naming (in this case, the babies). What may seem like a harmless and funny gag today will probably result in years of therapy for these poor kids.

Grow up people. Name responsibly. Show a little respect for your kids, and remember that they must live with the name you give them for the rest of their lives.

Network Solutions has been served with a class action suit. The suit claims that the NSI has forced customers into buying domains from the company rather than through potentially cheaper avenues, in effect netting the company millions of dollars. This make me happy, since I’ve always viewed NSI/Verisign as a government-sponsored monopoly that gets away with murder. Recently they were busted (in the colloquial “you got caught on tape” sense) for domain front-running. This is the practice of reserving domains that had been searched for availability at the NSI site: You’d type in some domain name, it would come up as available, and then (unbeknownst to you) NSI would register it. If you then tried to register it anywhere but at NSI, it would be listed as unavailable. They claimed that they were doing this to protect their “customers” from becoming victims of front-running by other registrars…yeah, and if you believe that, I have some very nice lakefront property in Florida for ya.

So now they’re being sued for this. I’m very curious to see how the suit plays out, as they have a long history of abusing and overcharging their customers (I’ll have a rant about that in an upcoming blog entry). They seem to have been caught red-handed here. On the other (red) hand, they’re the 500 lb gorilla that no one seems to be able to subdue. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Domain name availability is a huge issue for us as a naming firm. I can’t tell you how many great company names have been struck from lists merely because the domain is not available - or worse, how many times clients’ hearts have been broken because a domain acquisition deal fell through. I’m pretty good at brokering domain deals, but even I can’t strongarm those domain barons in the Cayman Islands, who populate the Interwebs with clickthrough sites.

I’m a big fan of Richard Wiseman’s Quirkology site - it’s all about psychology and perception and why human beings are so weird. And it’s fun! These are the people who brought you the World’s Funniest Joke and the amazing Color Changing Card Trick video (you really have to watch this one). Their research into jokes, lying, observation, etc. is all based on experiments conducted with average people all over the world.

The latest experiment is about names - personal names, and what they mean to their owners:

Does your first name influence your life? To help find out, Prof Richard Wiseman has teamed up with The Edinburgh International Science Festival to carry out a unique experiment.

It’s a set of six simple questions about your own name, and how you would react and judge people based only on their names. I just took it and I was surprised by my own biases and preconceptions - I had to think hard about why I assigned certain personality traits to certain names. For me, some are certainly based on personal experience (Katie will always be more intelligent than Caroline), but for others - who knows? Why do I think Jack is luckier than Andrew? Note that the experiment is run out of the UK, so there’s a slight leaning toward British names, in my opinion. I did sign up to get the results of the experiment when it’s done.

Go here to take the Name Experiment. It’s fun! It’s science! It Quirkology!

A friend of mine told me about a new fortified water for dogs. The name? “Fortifido”. Duh. Leaving behind the fact that someone actually took the time to create, and then brand, this stuff, I have to say I think the name is great. Distinctive, but relevant and fun. And I bet the .com domain name was free too.

Catchword has not (yet) had the opportunity to name any pet products. We did name Petopia, but that company has gone to the great dog-park in the sky.

Do dogs bark when they see brand names they like? Wouldn’t you just love to observe the market research around this name? “So what associations come to mind when you hear the name ‘fortifido’?”

“Woof”

A naming consultant’s new best friend.

From the “What Were They Thinking” file, BBC News brings us word of yet another naming fiasco. Here’s what happens when folks decide to try naming on their own instead of working with a trusted naming consultant.

The product is a bed for young girls. In either a desperate ploy for free (but negative) publicity or a remarkably gauche demonstration of literary ingnorance, Woolworths decided to name the bed “Lolita”. Oops.

Here’s the rest of the BBC story.

Dear Woolworths: We know you need a new name for one of your bed models. We are here for you. Please call us. Leave name development to the pros.

Central, the hot new bar in LA just a short lurch from its sister bar, Parc, gives an old—and ubiquitous—word a fresh new spin. Pair it with sibling Parc, and you’ve got a cleverly-themed umbrella brand name that the owners adeptly exploit to distinguish both spots. Faux branches, lights strung like stars, earthy design: a Hollywood take on Manhattan’s Central Park if ever there was one. Nice when product naming is as deft as this.