What’s in a Bad Name?

I was talking with a friend last night about the process of naming and I was asked a rather pointed question:

What makes a bad company name?

I responded with a lengthy monologue talking about acronyms, insults, generic names, and even a whole diatribe about naming without purpose. After about ten minutes I was stopped with a second question:

Okay… so is this something that every naming professional agrees on, or are these just your personal peeves?

I had assumed that about 3/4 of what I was saying was known and communicated by most naming professionals, but I figured I should check it out before I committed to it. One sleepless night later and I have some results.

What follows are the number of books (out of nine that I checked) that refer to a particular issue as being bad news for a company name.

Copying another company’s name 9
Defining exactly what you do 6
Using an Acronym 6
Having Negative Meaning 4
Using a person’s name 3
Difficult or Adjusted spelling 3
Having a long name 3
Having a name that translates poorly 2
UsInG MiXed Case 2
Ugly Sounding Name 2
Lack of Alliteration 2
Using Numbers 1
Starting with “The” 1
Using Geographic Names 1
Using How-to Names 1
Linking to fads 1
Using each letter only once 1
Being boring 1
Using ideomatic expressions 1
Using Meaningless names 1
Using Jargon 1
Encyclopedic Words 1
Using Symbols in name 1
Fake latin words 1
InternalCaps 1
Can’t pronounce word 1
Consonant-heavy names 1

There certainly appear to be a few items that everyone says to avoid – but everything else has only one or two detractors.

I was surprised by the lack of consensus for the items lower on the list – as well as a few opinions that go directly against some of the advice we provide to our clients and use in our own naming. Aliteration isn’t necessarily important in the shortest of names, for instance, and having a negative connotation (as Caterpiller and Virgin do) certainly can be turned into an advantage.

What this seems to indicate is that you’re not guaranteed to be able to name companies well just by reading a book (or nine) about it. This is an art (or science) that is in a constant state of flux. Names that worked twenty years ago may not do so well today, and names that are doing well now (such as Flickr) will likely be laughed about in decades to come. The goal of most companies will be to create a name that can survive through multiple generations of naming. I’m not sure that this list of “to-don’ts” will get you there.

We believe that there are some hard and fast rules out there – many relating to trademark issues – but most of the rules change based on what you are trying to achieve. Think about it: A company trying to capitalize on a fad probably shouldn’t avoid naming themselves after or for that fad or they’ll miss the boat entirely.

What do you think? Are there naming rules that cannot be violated under any circumstances? Are there generally accepted principles that everyone should follow to give the best chance of success? (We happen to think the latter is true – and is evidenced by the first few items to avoid in the list above… but we’re open to hearing other opinions.)

Check out these links for more on how not to name your stuff.

The best link, however, belongs to this site – because they mention one thing that none of the authors seemed tohit on: Sometimes there’s a hidden word in your name that changes the meaning entirely. (Usually not for the better.) Stokefire checks for it – we call it a parse check – and so should you.

Tate Linden
Principal Consultant
Stokefire Consulting Group
703-778-9925