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This is something I often have trouble with. As namers we are in an odd place - we are held responsible for knowing all sorts of words (both English and otherwise) and yet if we're any good we know that most of these words are not only unsuitable for use in naming, we can't use 'em in conversation either.
In the past few weeks I've been told numerous times (maybe five?) that one of the things that I need to portray to my clients is that I'm smarter than they are. Where does this come from? I have no clue if I'm smarter than my clients. My intelligence shouldn't matter. My facility with words and knowledge of naming is what matters. And in my humble opinion that facility must include an ability to prove itself without sounding like a pompous human thesaurus. Yeah, I think I probably just sounded pompous right there. It's tough. A namer shouldn't have to 'dumb down' their language to be understood, but they also can't speak a language that only naming geeks understand. We don't name companies to impress other namers (okay, so maybe there's a little of that sometimes) we name them to help our clients meet their goals. So... blog readers. Tell me. What do you expect from your namer? Do you want to see the dictionary-reading word-nerd? Do you want an every-man (or every-woman) that you can relate to? Do you want someone smarter than you are? What is it you look for? I'm thinkin' that you actually don't want someone smarter than you - you want someone better at naming than you are. I don't want my chef to be a genius - I want my chef to be a good cook. And they can do that without needing to make me feel like an idiot when I talk with them about what they do... Right? |
