Category: History

I’ve had a few emails this month from readers who were interested in hearing what was on my bookshelf. It’s probably been about a year since I wrote anything about our reference materials, so I figure it’s about time to update.


But first, I must say that I’m not going to tell you what’s on my bookshelf. There are about 200 books there – most of them only read once or twice and now only very occasionally thumbed through. The stuff I use more regularly has a place on my desk. Forty-two books have that place of honor in my office – running along the back edge of my desk within easy reach. Thirteen of these books have a major “How-To” aspect to them – shedding light on how to develop, categorize, or evaluate names.


Here’s a list of the current “How-To” type books on my desk that are dedicated almost entirely to naming. The snippets of information aren’t really reviews. They’re just a bit of context to help you understand how the book is used:

1. Blake, George. Crafting the Perfect Name: The Art and Science of Naming a Company or Product. USA: Probus, 1991
   1. An excellent, if dated, reference for people looking to name their own company. As with most of the books here, it does a great job educating you on the basics of naming, and even provides lists of source material in the appendix so you can start naming immediately. Unfortunately the lists are far short of what would be needed to perform a comprehensive naming project for a mid-size (or larger) firm. The age really shows when it addresses the legal aspects of naming – including the hoops one must go through to check if a name is registered. I refer mostly to Chapter Six when I crack the cover – the chapter on Names to Avoid.
2. Barrett, Fred. Names that Sell: How to Create Great Names for Your Company, Product, or Service. Portland: Alder Press, 1995 (Amazon Rank = #993,472 in Books)
   1. A book aimed at people who have a basline of experience in naming. Barrett runs through all sorts of criteria for how to name companies, but in his effort to cover everything (he does come close) he drops any sense of order. He provides Twenty-Five different techniques for developing names – and these appear in a jumble of methods we’ve been unable to untangle. There’s gold here – it’s just a little hard to find. Barrett also provides another list of source words at the back of the book – and again the list is a bit lacking. A bit of a peek inside a namer’s head – all sorts of information but not in a structure that aids in learning. We’ve opened it a few times in the past year – mainly to remind ourselves how another namer might approach a particular problem.
3. Cader, Michael. The Name Book: A Unique Reference Listing of Everything Imaginable That Has a Name (Except Babies!) New York: Random House, 1998 (Amazon Rank = #505,676)
   1. A book of lists that goes quite well with the how-to books. It offers very little how-to and a whole lot of reference. What’s great here is that the lists are intuitively sorted into groups. Interested in a powerful name? Perhaps you want to examine lists of Spanish monarchs, or Roman emperors, or military ranks… An amazing number of ideas to get the mind moving. Feels a touch dated, but when referencing historical stuff this might be a benefit.
4. Charmasson, Henri. The Name Is the Game: How to Name a Company or Product. Homewood: Dow Jones-Irwin, 1988
   1. Charmason may be smart, but he suffers from the same affliction that Barrett does. There are some interesting methods listed here, but the book is dense and cluttered. Again suffers from age as major passages of the Trademark section are no longer applicable. Charmasson has some interesting takes on naming, though after the first couple reads I must admit I haven’t gone back to this one. It’s just not that useful and has been overcome by better and more readable books. (We’re putting it back on the shelf today.)
5. Frankel, Alex. Wordcraft: The Art of Turning Little Words into Big Business. New York: Random House, 2004
   1. Prior to meeting other namers at Alexandra Watkins’ party I had little idea how the other namers worked. This book brought new insight into both the process of naming within major branding firms and the presentation of fully developed names. It is rarely cracked other than to illustrate a point to a client who wants to know how others do something. Incidentally, this is likely the best book ever written about the naming industry (in my quite humble opinion.)
6. Javed, Naseem. Naming for Power: Creating Successful Names for the Business World. Toronto and New York: Linkwood, 1993
   1. You may be sensing a pattern here. The How-To books just seem jumbled. Javed is a famed speaker and columnist and this book appears to be a compilation of his speeches and writings. Again no real order here, and no overarching messages or lessons. Add in the fact that I can’t personally follow what he is saying much of the time – and that time has proven quite a few of his examples false – and this has little value. Why is it on my desk? Because I can use it to show how our views, practices, and opinions differ from the mainstream. Some of the names he really likes fall into traps we try to avoid – and having an expert advocate for names a client likes (and then have that expert proven wrong) adds power to our words.
7. McGrath, Kate, Trademark: How to Name your Business & Product. 1994
   1. We use this only as a primer for the basics of trademark law. It is not up to date at all, but the terminology it uses and the classes of names referenced haven’t changed much. If you want to understand what sorts of names can be trademarked and why then this baby is a good bet.
8. Morris, Evan. From Altoids to Zima: The Surprising Stories Behind 125 Famous Brand Names. New York: Fireside (Simon & Schuster,) 2004
   1. Not a how-to, really, but a “how they did it.” Fun to read and a good reference to trot out when a name covered within the pages is in the same industry as one of our clients. It usually helps expand the thinking at the brainstorming meetings. (We have a long list of books that cover the etymology of corporate names – we’ll get to that another day.)
9. Nussel, Frank. The Study of Names. A Guide to the Principles and Topics. Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1992
   1. Really only on our desk as a reference, this book helps us remember the science of naming – especially some of the more obscure terms and their full definitions. Can’t remember what Morphosyntactics are? This is the book for you. I personally open the cover about once a month to a random page. It’s helpful in getting my mind onto a different path when naming. The whole book explains terminology in naming and lists examples of just about every type of name known to man. AND it is highly organized! Oh – and the reference materials cited contain some of the hardest to find and most useful older research documents on Onomastics.
10. Rivkin, Steve. The Making of a Name: The Inside Story of the Brands We Buy. New York: Oxford, 2004
    1. Perhaps our second-most-favorite book on naming. Somewhere between a how-to and an industry overview. Fun to read. Can’t say I read it that much, except for the appendix containing the reference materials. We actually found many of our materials here. If you want to create a library of easily accessible naming books this isn’t a bad place to look for titles.
11. Room, Adrian. Trade Name Origins. Chicago: NTC, 1982 (Amazon Rank = #1,006,067)
    1. Similar to the Morris book, this one does the same thing, but for more companies in less detail – and twenty (plus) years earlier. Great for finding patterns in naming that you want to latch on to or avoid.
12. Wegryn, Jim. Funny Thing About Names. An Entertaining Look at Naming in America. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, 2005
    1. This is a new addition. It’s on my desk mainly because it’s new – and because Wegryn appears to be just as much of a statistics geek as I am. Nice list of more recent research papers at the back, and a strong index that helps me to find relevant examples to share with clients and partners. A little more humor here than I’d like to see – but the title does warn us. I’d be more interested in reading the pure research behind this – because it looks like he did a lot of it (including an interesting bit on the history of street names that have impacted the English language.)
13. Williams, Phillip. Naming Your Business and Its Products and Services: How to Create Effective Trade Names, Trademarks, and Service Marks to Attract Customers, Protect Your Goodwill and Reputation, and Stay out of Court! (City Unknown): P. Gaines, 1991
    1. Horribly out of date book that attempts to cover everything under the sun about names and trademarks in 90 large-print pages with lots of clip art. Covers some interesting territory with its random list of things you can name your product after (symbols, mythology, history, bible, geography, literature, and puns… yep, that’s it!) This is my “there is no one book that can show you how to name” book. From what I have seen so far there isn’t even a good list of name classifications in print yet. There is an interesting appendix at the back that shows all the pages of an old trademark application, but it bears little relevance to naming today.