Name Awards Blog

 

Back when the PC market was just starting its meteoric rise, Intel grew frustrated at AMD turning around and simply tacking "AM" on the front of 386, 486 etc., and took them to court to stop using their processor names/numbers. Intel based their legal arguments in large part on the fact that since Boeing could own registered trademarks on 707, 727, 747, etc., why couldn't they have exclusive rights to 386, 486, etc. for microprocessors.

Seems fair and correct right? But there was a big flaw in their own implementation. As it turns out, Intel had never officially and legally called their chips by these numbers. AMD pointed out that when you read the name on the chip it says I80486 or I80286 for example. And those were the part numbers they had used in their marketing and packaging literature too. Even their customers (at least the major computer firms that had lawyers review their press releases) had carefully specified I80286 like names. While most of these had not been registered as trademarks, Intel was entitled to common law rights in the full numbers. But not in 286, 486, 386 which the public and press had used and recognized as the "call brands".

So Intel went home and decided to come up with some new worldwide brand name that they could promote and protect and keep any guerilla marketeers from even getting close to. And as many are want to do, they organized a big naming competition within the company. To make sure they got lots of submissions, they listed a trip for two to Hawaii, as the prize. They had hundreds of entries of course, but then didn't know what to do with them so they also hired two eminent naming agencies NameLab and Lexicon to come up with names and to review the submissions (at fees estimated to be $40 - $50K each for their services).

While none of their own employees came up with the exact Pentium name, they were gracious enough to award two who came closest with trips to Hawaii anyway. When the name Pentium was announced to the public, there was a collective sigh of what is that, especially around Silicon Valley. People had not expected such a radical departure in styles. But with Intel's major marketing machine and industry awareness, Pentium was part of every engineer's dictionary within a week....though we hear some inside Intel still don't like it. Our guess is they are engineers who still pine for part numbers!

As any scholar will tell you, and everyone who has studied mathematics knows, the reason the Pentagon in Washington is so named is because it has five sides. Penta is the Greek word for five. Fine. But Intel was still making ever faster chips each year, and if they followed this style, the successor chips should have been called the Sexiums! Somehow this doesn't quite work, so Intel is back to sticking numbers after Pentium, in large part because they did such a good job of branding Intel Inside the public came to believe it meant Pentium Inside, and have voted with their pocket books to not embrace other named chips like Titanium from Intel as readily. Incidentally, Lexicon provided the winning name to Intel and have named all their products since that time.

Motto: Professional naming provides you a secure and unique name around which to safely build a worldwide brand....but you have to use the names correctly to protect them.