Unlike most other heads of naming agencies who usually come from a linguistics or communications arts background, Athol(*) has two degrees in Computer Science and has been the consummate technical marketeer for most of his life. Working in local and international markets, both large and small, in hardware, software, equipment and component companies, he progressed from programmer and support engineer to senior sales and marketing executive roles at companies like Sperry Univac, Digital Research, Sony, Maxspeed and others. As a result, he learned first hand that good products cannot succeed without proper branding, promotion and positioning. Ironically, a lot of his work and focus was always on computer languages.

In the past few years he has done much more work in international and consumer fields, where the naming arenas are so more intricate. But at least in these fields he is gratified to find management know they have to do some marketing.

Athol co-founded NameTrade while still working as a marketing director at Sony Microsystems, then later joined them full time when they were merged to create Cintara, a complete branding agency. He started over in 2001 with the launch of Brighter Naming, where the focus is only on names and taglines. This ensures no conflict with other creative agencies that might be onsite at a given customer.

Athol has always been fascinated by names and word patterns, and is happy that all that old Latin beaten into him at private school can now be put to good use. Not many people get to turn their hobby into a job! Unlike other linguists or namers who specialize in a strong second language, Athol speaks a little bit of many, including German, Spanish, Japanese and Afrikaans.

Today he is much more interested in spoken languages than computer languages, and is especially adept at listening and working with non-native English speakers. Group psychology is another of his interest areas, and a very important underlying issue at every turn in the naming process.

At the same time, Athol has been reading and writing about names and branding for quite a long time, and is especially fascinated with how consumer marketers and technical marketers think they are so different from one another. In reality, they can learn so much from each other. Some of this comes through in Athol's notes and comments in his regular blog www.nameawards.com, as well as his books. He has also been quoted in The Wall St. Journal., USA Today, Inc Magazine and was featured in a Business 2.0 article (See News section for details).

Prior to settling in the San Francisco Bay Area, and now Silicon Valley, Athol worked in Africa and Europe and has traveled extensively around the world for business and pleasure. While making up names, he loves the soft instrumental sounds of distant music from foreign places he has visited. Like the drum and seed instruments of Africa, the reed pipes of the Peruvian Incas, the mouth organs of the Maori's, or the classical flamenco guitars of Andalusia.

An author and accomplished public speaker, Athol has recently retired after 17 years as a popular marketing and management lecturer for UC Extension in Silicon Valley, where he was also the outside marketing certificate coordinator. Somehow he still finds time to play the occasional game of racquetball, lawn bowls or golf, or to take long hikes in the local hills. His personal website is www.svmarketeer.com though nowadays he spends more time over at the US Lawn Bowls site, where he is the national marketing manager (volunteer).

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(*) About the name Athol.

About the name Foden