Blog Archives

Google to learn Alphabet

After massive growth with a very young management team, it seams like they are going to stop Googling in preschool and go to kindergarten to learn their alphabet. Along the way they are sure to shake up some old notions,

Posted in Branding, Consumer Goods, Domain Names, Name Changes, Name Origins, Naming News, Technology Names, Trademarks

Twilio name tries too hard

When I first heard of this company, it was the name that caught my attention. That in turn made me concentrate hard to try to understand what they did. In due course I realized the potential of their tool kits

Posted in Branding, Consumer Goods, Domain Names, Name Origins, Naming News, Strange Names, Trademarks

Why is Pluto’s moon named Charon?

While all the world’s scientist are walking around in amazement about the discovery details of the former planet Pluto, I am thinking, “How did Pluto’s moon get the name Charon and what does it mean?” Luckily for me, the whole

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Posted in Name Origins, Naming News, Public Site Naming, Strange Names

If it is not a Frisbee® it is a ???

For Father’s Day a few years ago, my college boys took me around Golden Gate Park in San Francisco on their favorite Frisbee Golf course. It was a lot cheaper than me taking them on a round of real golf

Posted in Branding, Consumer Goods, Name Origins, Naming Education, Naming News, Sports Naming, Trademarks

A123 Systems – Superb technology…any old name will do?

Many an executive has said (or at least thought) that any old name will do since they have such great technology or such a great solution, or even such a great sales force? But what happens when you grow up?

Posted in Branding, Industrial Products Naming, Rotten Names

SnapChat should snap tight

After reading a debate on Facebook on the need for profanity, especially in this day and age of prolific social media communications where you don’t know your exact audience, I picked up a recent copy of Business Week and read

Posted in Naming News, Trademarks

SKYY is a great name and it is not for cloud-computing

When I survey a lot of startup and popular mobile app names, I sometimes wonder where all the vowels have gone. And, of course, the letter Y is the hybrid letter of our alphabet. Sometimes a vowel, sometimes a consonant.

Posted in Branding, Consumer Goods, Naming Education, Naming News, Trademarks

Absolutdata forced to run from their own trademark application.

I am not a teetotaler (well not quite) nor a prude, but I still don’t like software companies named after alcohol drinks. Yes I know Blue Martini was successful for a while, but I never could bring myself to even

Posted in Domain Names, Name Origins, Naming Education, Naming News, Technology Names, Trademarks

Smart and cool packaged food names like Late July

When I first wrote this I had been meaning to blog for weeks but kept running into only bad names – and I had been reluctant to put my black hat on too many of them. ThenI was served in

Posted in Branding, Consumer Goods, Food Names, Trademarks

Awkward name of the week

At last year’s Silicon Valley Code Camp, Infragistics provided the registration lanyards as shown in the photo here. The novel idea of a zipper wasn’t obvious to all of us at the first go around. More importantly, we saluted them

Posted in Branding, Naming News, Strange Names, Technology Names, Trademarks