Christopher Johnson's Blog, page 6

Hard truths of naming: Face them now and save time

Naming isn't all soft, fuzzy language stuff. Mind you, The Name Inspector loves the soft, fuzzy language stuff. It's his job to love it. But he realizes that businesspeople often have more practical considerations on their minds, as they should. So here are some hard practical truths about naming that The Name Inspector often shares with his clients, and that he discussed recently while speaking at a TechCafe Happy Hour and serving as a Mentor at the Founder Institute.

Before you start trying to come up with a name, you have to get real. Recognize your true goals and fully acknowledge your practical constraints. That will save you time down the road. Get started by answering these questions honestly.

What does the name have to do?

First you have to decide what the name is going to do for you. Does it have to communicate clearly and directly, or serve as the basis for a brand? These are really the two main possibilities. A name has to communicate clearly, for example, if you're hoping it will turn up in results for generic web searches like "sandwiches in seattle". (But remember, it doesn't have to be your name that captures search traffic like that.) If you want a name that will help people remember you and think good thoughts about you, then you want a brandable name. Brandable names almost always communicate indirectly. More on that in a future soft, fuzzy, language-y post.

Do you need a .com domain for this name?

If it's a company or service that exists primarily as a website, you probably want a brandable domain name, and a short, memorable .com domain will lend you the most credibility. Still, you can get creative and use a different domain extension until you make it big (or get funded) and can afford to acquire the .com.

If you're naming one of several products or services, you can probably get by with different pages on your main company site.

Are you prepared to spend serious money on a domain name?

If not, then you have to rule out using a single correctly spelled real word. A name like Amazon or Gist is out of the question, because all the real words that are even semi-common have been registered, and the ones that are for sale have asking prices in the thousands.

Is it important for you to choose your name within a couple weeks or so?

If so, buying a domain is not the way to go, unless you find one that you can buy immediately for a specific price. Otherwise, contacting the owner of a domain and negotiating a sale takes too long.

Do your criteria for choosing a name match your goals and constraints?

Too often people use vague criteria for choosing a name, like "It has to jump out and grab me" or "It just has to feel right". Of course, it's great for a name to grab you and feel right, but these vague criteria often mask implicit, unrealistic ones that will never be met, and can doom a naming effort to endless stagnation. Occasionally The Name Inspector has a client who is willing to spend no more than $500 or so on a domain name, but who wants a name "like" Twitter or Apple, and not one that's just "squished together words". Big red flag. What such a client really wants is a cool English word available as a .com domain (see above) that everyone else has somehow overlooked. Such names might be available for pennies on Fairy.com. If not, it's time to take a hard second look at goals and success criteria and make sure they're consistent with practical constraints.

OK, now that you've faced these hard truths, it's time to roll up your sleeves and get naming! Of course, you

 

The longest, craziest company names in Seattle

Brevity is a virtue in a name, usually. Come up with a short name that relates to your company or product in an imaginative way, and you're golden. A sort of verbal minimalism is the goal of most naming efforts.

Some names, however, succeed with a more…maximalist approach. Two extreme examples are the well-known full-sentence product names Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific and I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. GYHST was popular in the 1970s, and its name might be regarded as a late, faint echo of 1960s psychedelic maximalism, best exemplified, perhaps, by Screaming Yellow Zonkers, a sort of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band of the snack food aisle. The Name Inspector's father was a food package designer (now retired), so the black SYZ box with Peter Max-esque illustrations was an object of great interest in our house. Dad, in fact, went on to design the first black breakfast cereal box for Circus Fun cereal from General Mills. (No doubt this early experience with product packaging and logos and names was formative for The Name Inspector.)

This little walk down memory lane has been inspired not by premature nostalgia but by the question of who has the longest, craziest company name in Seattle. If we interpret "company name" loosely to allow web properties, then it would have to be lolcat capital of the world I Can Has Cheezburger, from Cheezburger Network. This name commits sins besides cumbersome length: it's also grammatically anomalous and misspelled. Yet in its own way it's perfect for what it is.

Runner-up might be : Jackson Fish Market. While this would be the most mundane name in the world for a fish market on Jackson St., it's strikingly bizarre for a software company name, which is what it is. And that's cool.

Other contenders would be Peppers and Pollywogs, Obey the Decider (another sentence name!), No Longer Need It (as a verb phrase that's not an imperative, it's a grammatical oddity for a name), and newcomer Baldy Beanbag (not that long, but strange enough to make up for that). And the good old Robot Co-op deserves a mention, if only for the wonderfully counterintuitive idea it expresses (Do we want a company to be run by robots? And can robots form co-ops?).

How about it, readers? What are some other long, crazy company names from Seattle? Or from anywhere?

When naming backfires

On a recent flight to San Francisco, The Name Inspector was seated, by coincidence, right across the aisle from an acquaintance. On the return flight, he was moved from an aisle to a middle seat to accommodate a family, and found himself right next to the same guy. Weird. Anyway, the two had ample time to chat, and this guy told The Name Inspector about a Seattle business called BackFire Chiropractic. The Name Inspector was, needless to say, appalled and fascinated. This has to be the worst medical name he has encountered since learning about a dental practice called Fiddler on the Tooth.

What on earth would make someone think it's a good idea to name their business BackFire? Especially a chiropractic practice (a chiropractice?)?

Here's what the word backfire makes The Name Inspector think of:

A plan going terribly wrong
A loud noise coming from a vehicle's tailpipe
A back that is on fire

The least objectionable association is (2), and with a bit of imagination, that one is pretty bad (picture an especially elaborate chiropractic version of the "pull my finger" gag). (1) is just terrible in an obvious way (and chiropractic, with all that yanking and twisting, just seems like it's bound to go wrong). (3) seems uncomfortable under any circumstances, but potentially especially acute in a chiropractic setting. If your chiropractic treatment backfires, you might find yourself saying, "Doc, it feels like my back is on fire!" And here's the kicker: in the window of this chiropractor's office there is a neon spine.

Just to be generous, let's enumerate the appropriate things about the name BackFire:

It contains the word back

That's about it. Maybe that feeling of one's back being on fire can be interpreted as the reason for seeing a chiropractor in the first place. Or maybe (this is really a stretch) a back on fire can be understood as a good thing–a metaphor for vitality. On second thought, maybe not.

A tip to business owners: don't pick a name just because it contains a word related to your business. Context is everything.

Hooray for The Name Inspector

Every year, the blog LexioPhiles has a contest of sorts to pick the world's top language blogs. The Name Inspector has been lucky enough to be included in those unscientifically chosen but distinguished ranks in the past. Now they're at it again. Please consider casting a vote. Just click on this button (included for your convenience, despite the fact that it clashes so horribly with The Name Inspector's lavender and red color scheme) and then select The Name Inspector from the list:

 

Thuuz? Oh, pleez.

Who hasn't had the frustrating experience of regretting having missed a big game that everyone talks about the next day? Actually, The Name Inspector hasn't–for a reasonably sporty fellow he's oddly immune to the normal enthusiasms of sports spectatorship. Don't get him wrong, he can appreciate a well caught ball, an impressive defensive maneuver, or even a good pummeling  as much as the next guy. He's just happy to take these things as they insert themselves into his zone of attention. But more to the point: The Name Inspector knows there are lots of people out there who do have that frustrating experience, and that's why he can appreciate the ingenuity of Thuuz.

Thuuz is a startup that assigns an "excitement score" in real time to sporting events, notifies fans when things get especially thrilling, and even tells them how they can tune in to share the excitement. Pretty great idea, right? (If it really works. But let's face it, the users of this are going to be big sports fans. They're just looking for more excuses to watch sporting events.)

But then we have the name Thuuz. The Name Inspector is not a fan. Clearly it's built on the bones of the words enthused, enthusiasm, and enthusiastic. So far so good–apt, if a bit pedestrian. But that syllable is pretty weird sounding. It's really the first consonant and the vowel together that sound odd. The Name Inspector talked about this in connection with a while back. He quite reasonably declared that the "Thoo-" part was a bit counterintuitive in English, and then this smartypants named John commented that it was an accident of history that there is no word thoof, and The Name Inspector held his ground, and John was all "what about enthusiasm", and The Name Inspector was like "good point but what about at the beginning of a word", and John was all "historical linguistics blah blah". So clearly The Name Inspector won that round.

The real problem with Thuuz is the spelling, which uses not one but two cheesy alterations: the double vowel and the z at the end. Thuze would be more straightforward–the founders were probably unable to acquire the domain thuze.com. In Thuuz the "uu" performs an odd function of sorts, because if the name were spelled Thuz people might think it rhymes with fuzz. But the "uu" is just weird. (And now John is going to say "What about the word vacuum", and The Name Inspector will be all "It's still unusual", and the disagreement will escalate until there's a fistfight followed by an exhausted moment of bonding, just like in a bromance movie, and an unbeatable linguistic duo is formed.)

This is one of those names that will have to be spelled for anyone who hears it without seeing it.

Fans are really great about jumping and shouting and being noticed and painting their chests purple. The Name Inspector thinks that non-fans need to stand up and get noticed sometimes, too. So here he is. He wishes the founders of Thuuz the best of luck with their startup, but he's got to say, "Let's not hear it for the name Thuuz!"

Are you out there, Zulily Charlotte?

The Name Inspector was fortunate to have had the opportunity to help Zulily come up with their name. In case you haven't checked it out, Zulily specializes in daily deals for moms, babies, and kids. The company offers amazing bargains and inspires great enthusiasm among its customers. The name Zulily, while odd to some, is loved by others.

In fact, some people love the name Zulily in ways The Name Inspector never expected. It recently came to his attention that a new mother announced last summer on the Baby Name Genie forum that she was . The Baby Name Genie site displays lots of banner ads for Zulily, so most contributors to the forum knew exactly what inspired the name Zulily Charlotte, and the post triggered a bit of a diaperstorm. Some people expressed incredulity and derision: It's just weird…Can you imagine being a grown woman with that name? Ridiculous…If I got introduced to an infant named Zulily I think I'd die laughing…I think Zulily is silly sounding, but it's your baby…

Others, however, defended the name (though some were a bit…defensive about it): I know lots of people will hate it, but every time the ad pops up on the site, I think it's cute…In my preggo hormones, I thought it was cute, too…This name is no worse than some of the crazy celebrity names out there that people choose to name their children, and I think it's pretty…Zulily, hmmm–I like it actually! I like that you're bein' bold!…

Now, The Name Inspector never imagined Zulily as a name for a girl, and if he had a daughter of his own, he probably wouldn't be as bold as this new mother. But oh, how he hopes the story of Zulily Charlotte is true! What better validation could a namer receive than to have a creation be chosen, from all the possibilities in the world, to name a new human being?

If you're out there, Zulily Charlotte, The Name Inspector wishes you all the happiness in the world.