02.02
It’s been awhile since my last post. In the interim, I’ve moved to Shanghai where I’ll take a position as Senior Consultant with a Shanghai-based strategy firm. More on that later.
Today’s post is about naming—specifically naming in English, or at least for primarily English-speaking audiences (suppose I have to make that distinction now). Upon seeing Pollywog’s list of what they consider the best and worst names of 2009, I realized that most of the “best” names are
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05.29
I’ve just read through some great blog posts and articles on Bing—the name as well as expectations for the upcoming Microsoft “decision engine.” Opinions on the name are all over the map, with (mostly) negative opinions led by naming professionals like those at Snark Hunting and Pollywog. I love the bitter sarcasm over at Snark Hunting, and they make a funny point comparing Bing (“ping” with a “B”) to Zune (“tune” with a “Z”). But one of the earliest lessons I learned about naming (or writing taglines, etc.) is that it’s easy—often too easy—to pick on someone else’s work. Or, to put it more bluntly, to dislike it because it’s not your own.
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05.04
I can’t find a transcription or recording of it anywhere online, but Citgo has been running a radio ad recently that touts its ability to provide “local jobs in your community.” I thought that seemed a little redundant. Where else could I get a local job?
But aside from nitpicking the word choice, the ad got me thinking about the name “Citgo.” I’ve been making a mental note of five-letter brand names ever since the Venza launched and I started wondering how many five-letter coined names are left. It seems like a silly question—and maybe it is—but I thought about how much time and money Toyota might have spent dreaming up “Venza,” and whether it would have helped to have a list of pronounceable, available five-letter strings that don’t have clear negative connotations (in English or other languages). Plenty of companies want short names, and rightly so (they’re easier to remember, among other advantages). How hard would it be to create a list of remaining possibilities?
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