The human affinity for language shapes the way we react to the world around us in complex ways and the commercial world is no exception.
When we encounter a name for a product or service, our brains unpack it and make a series of automatic inferences. Before we know we’re doing it we’ve categorised the offering, assessed its probable quality and provenance, and made a number of guesses about the values or character of the business. In that single instant of linguistic clairvoyance, we’ve created neural pathways which we retrace and reinforce every time we think of that brand.
It’s no surprise then, that companies are keen to find names that can give them an edge in the market. The last few decades have seen a scramble to claim the linguistic high ground: words that are easy to say, easy to remember and loaded with an energy that can set them apart from their peers. And with every successful trademark registration, that job gets a little harder for the next person in line.
Brand naming evolved as a discipline to meet the challenges of this new reality. Here are some of the ways professional namers approach the task of putting language to work in a commercial context.
Keeping it real.
Companies covet real words because they’re a shortcut to a set of associations that are already hard-wired into our brains. Rewiring that usage to suit a product lets you tap into that energy, resulting in a name that is naturally memorable and easy to use.
It’s an obvious strategy, and therein lies its weakness: there are only around 170,000 entries in an English dictionary, compared with more than ninety million active trademarks. That’s made finding a real word that’s not already been claimed a rarity: akin to finding a gold coin washed up on a beach.
In fact, an increasing part of the allure of real words is that they are so rare. In a commercial world saturated with awkward inventions, owning something real has become a status symbol; a signal to the market of your straightforwardness and fresh thinking. Ever since Apple rewired our connection from fruit to consumer tech, companies have been trying to repeat the feat: Lime for e-scooters; granola for AI note-making and lemonade for insurance.
In a commercial world saturated with awkward inventions, owning something real has become a status symbol.
These days it usually pays to look further afield. For those looking to name things professionally, it’s a good idea to squirrel away interesting words for later use. Tune your ear to listen for unusual words that might have been overlooked. cantrip, antecede, singsong. These may not have an obvious commercial application, but in the right context they can surprise you.
Compound interest
If the dictionary isn’t connecting you to the answer, sometimes the solution is to double up. Compound names, like putting together ‘face’ and ‘book’ to make Facebook gives us far better odds to come up with something original.
It still draws on real words, can be highly communicative and often travels well across cultural and linguistic borders. What’s more, it’s versatile: offering the cheerful irreverence of Mailchimp, the opaque menace of Blackrock and the bold juxtaposition of Skullcandy.
The catch is that compounds are notoriously finicky, and for every decent one there are dozens that feel like something from a bad fantasy paperback. With more and more people turning to AI to name their companies, it’s not hard to predict a spate of lacklustre compounds that will quickly date them.
One way to escape this uncanny valley is to build out from existing compounds: if lifeline works, why not Lightline? If we are comfortable with wellspring, why not sellspring?
Switch it up.
Compounds aren’t the only way to boost your chances. Acronyms have given us names like NASA and ASOS; compressing longer phrases into something shorter and more usable. Initialisms do something similar while keeping the letters separate: IBM for International Business Machines; BYD for Build Your Dreams. Both can be efficient and practical, but over time they can become detached from their original meaning and end up functioning as empty vessels; arbitrary names that don’t even try to tell a story. If that detachment comes as a result of runaway success in the market, perhaps that doesn’t matter: ASOS may have its origins in ‘As Seen On Screen’, but it has long since moved on to bigger things.
Then there is the coin: a broad category of constructed words like Kodak to more descriptive substitutions like Lyft. Worthy of special mention is the classical coin, beloved of financial institutions and large corporations and borrowing from Greek or Latin to create new words. Think Diageo, Novartis or Altria. Done right, this kind of naming can still conjure a feeling of timeless grandeur and sophistication. But it’s a well-trodden path, and unless you’re careful, it’s easy to fall back into something that feels corporate or pompous.
The ‘clip’, meanwhile, cuts a part off a word, letting it stand alone. Think Cisco from San Francisco. Good candidates for this treatment tend to be longer words with distinctive elements that can survive post amputation; Pelago from archipelago, or Essity from necessity. Cut off too much and you’ll end up with something lifeless and indistinct or veer into another word. Lose the P from ‘podium’ and you’ve probably killed the part you liked.
Of course, there’s nothing stopping you from using several words in a row. Long names are always a trade-off: extra words can buy you richer meaning, but at the cost of ease of use. Done well, you can find your way to the elliptical charm of And Other Stories or the on-the-nose personality of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.
The only rule that really counts is that there are no rules.
These are a few time-honoured strategies for overcoming unfamiliarity and arriving at strong, memorable names. But of course, naming is a creative exercise and in creative endeavours the only rule that really counts is that there are no rules. Want to name something after your horse? It worked for Snickers. Want to name something to specifically alienate your intended audience? It worked for Lululemon. A full taxonomy of all the possible kinds of names is a fool’s errand, however fun it might be to try,
The secret, when it comes down to it, is in learning to listen to your instincts. Conviction wins over consensus every time. Because as a human being, using language is as natural to you as it is for a spider to weave webs, or a wolf to howl at the moon.
Tom Heesom is a Strategy Director based in Stockholm with a specialism in verbal identity and brand naming. With over a decade naming professionally, Tom has created names for clients ranging from startups to billion-dollar international giants. He works at Kurppa Hosk, a global brand agency built to support companies in the moments that define them.
The human affinity for language shapes the way we react to the world around us in complex ways and the commercial world is no exception.
When we encounter a name for a product or service, our brains unpack it and make a series of automatic inferences. Before we know we’re doing it we’ve categorised the offering, assessed its probable quality and provenance, and made a number of guesses about the values or character of the business. In that single instant of linguistic clairvoyance, we’ve created neural pathways which we retrace and reinforce every time we think of that brand.
It’s no surprise then, that companies are keen to find names that can give them an edge in the market. The last few decades have seen a scramble to claim the linguistic high ground: words that are easy to say, easy to remember and loaded with an energy that can set them apart from their peers. And with every successful trademark registration, that job gets a little harder for the next person in line.
Brand naming evolved as a discipline to meet the challenges of this new reality. Here are some of the ways professional namers approach the task of putting language to work in a commercial context.
Keeping it real.
Companies covet real words because they’re a shortcut to a set of associations that are already hard-wired into our brains. Rewiring that usage to suit a product lets you tap into that energy, resulting in a name that is naturally memorable and easy to use.
It’s an obvious strategy, and therein lies its weakness: there are only around 170,000 entries in an English dictionary, compared with more than ninety million active trademarks. That’s made finding a real word that’s not already been claimed a rarity: akin to finding a gold coin washed up on a beach.
In fact, an increasing part of the allure of real words is that they are so rare. In a commercial world saturated with awkward inventions, owning something real has become a status symbol; a signal to the market of your straightforwardness and fresh thinking. Ever since Apple rewired our connection from fruit to consumer tech, companies have been trying to repeat the feat: Lime for e-scooters; granola for AI note-making and lemonade for insurance.
In a commercial world saturated with awkward inventions, owning something real has become a status symbol.
These days it usually pays to look further afield. For those looking to name things professionally, it’s a good idea to squirrel away interesting words for later use. Tune your ear to listen for unusual words that might have been overlooked. cantrip, antecede, singsong. These may not have an obvious commercial application, but in the right context they can surprise you.
Compound interest
If the dictionary isn’t connecting you to the answer, sometimes the solution is to double up. Compound names, like putting together ‘face’ and ‘book’ to make Facebook gives us far better odds to come up with something original.
It still draws on real words, can be highly communicative and often travels well across cultural and linguistic borders. What’s more, it’s versatile: offering the cheerful irreverence of Mailchimp, the opaque menace of Blackrock and the bold juxtaposition of Skullcandy.
The catch is that compounds are notoriously finicky, and for every decent one there are dozens that feel like something from a bad fantasy paperback. With more and more people turning to AI to name their companies, it’s not hard to predict a spate of lacklustre compounds that will quickly date them.
One way to escape this uncanny valley is to build out from existing compounds: if lifeline works, why not Lightline? If we are comfortable with wellspring, why not sellspring?
Switch it up.
Compounds aren’t the only way to boost your chances. Acronyms have given us names like NASA and ASOS; compressing longer phrases into something shorter and more usable. Initialisms do something similar while keeping the letters separate: IBM for International Business Machines; BYD for Build Your Dreams. Both can be efficient and practical, but over time they can become detached from their original meaning and end up functioning as empty vessels; arbitrary names that don’t even try to tell a story. If that detachment comes as a result of runaway success in the market, perhaps that doesn’t matter: ASOS may have its origins in ‘As Seen On Screen’, but it has long since moved on to bigger things.
Then there is the coin: a broad category of constructed words like Kodak to more descriptive substitutions like Lyft. Worthy of special mention is the classical coin, beloved of financial institutions and large corporations and borrowing from Greek or Latin to create new words. Think Diageo, Novartis or Altria. Done right, this kind of naming can still conjure a feeling of timeless grandeur and sophistication. But it’s a well-trodden path, and unless you’re careful, it’s easy to fall back into something that feels corporate or pompous.
The ‘clip’, meanwhile, cuts a part off a word, letting it stand alone. Think Cisco from San Francisco. Good candidates for this treatment tend to be longer words with distinctive elements that can survive post amputation; Pelago from archipelago, or Essity from necessity. Cut off too much and you’ll end up with something lifeless and indistinct or veer into another word. Lose the P from ‘podium’ and you’ve probably killed the part you liked.
Of course, there’s nothing stopping you from using several words in a row. Long names are always a trade-off: extra words can buy you richer meaning, but at the cost of ease of use. Done well, you can find your way to the elliptical charm of And Other Stories or the on-the-nose personality of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.
The only rule that really counts is that there are no rules.
These are a few time-honoured strategies for overcoming unfamiliarity and arriving at strong, memorable names. But of course, naming is a creative exercise and in creative endeavours the only rule that really counts is that there are no rules. Want to name something after your horse? It worked for Snickers. Want to name something to specifically alienate your intended audience? It worked for Lululemon. A full taxonomy of all the possible kinds of names is a fool’s errand, however fun it might be to try,
The secret, when it comes down to it, is in learning to listen to your instincts. Conviction wins over consensus every time. Because as a human being, using language is as natural to you as it is for a spider to weave webs, or a wolf to howl at the moon.
Tom Heesom is a Strategy Director based in Stockholm with a specialism in verbal identity and brand naming. With over a decade naming professionally, Tom has created names for clients ranging from startups to billion-dollar international giants. He works at Kurppa Hosk, a global brand agency built to support companies in the moments that define them.
Further Reading
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