12.20.07
If names were all literal
Every week as a professional namer I see people struggle when they can’t get names that are very descriptive of
their products or services. Yet so few famous brand names are .. so for Xmas fun, lets award some name prizes to names that would have rather different connotations if taken literally.
For examp
le, Safeway is a great name for a condom company, StarBucks is good for the name of a bank in Hollywood, Microsoft is very fine bathroom tissue, and Oracle could be th
e Toastmaster’s Club or local church.
Why don’t you think of some more and suggest them, especially after a trip to shop for Xmas.
P.S. Shouldn’t FritoLay be the name of fresh eggs? Look at the logo too!
Sallie Goetsch (rhymes with "sketch") said,
December 26, 2007 at 10:02 am
Starbucks could equally well be a shop selling Battlestar Galactica or Moby Dick merchandise (depending on your generation and choice in entertainment). But “Microsoft” is actually descriptive: microcomputer software.
Even when companies do have literal names, people make jokes about what they *really* sell. (Snap-On Tools is the obvious example.)
If all names were literal, there wouldn’t be many trademarks, and it would be a real challenge for competing businesses to come up with distinctive names. Would it be the end of competition, or would companies just have to append the founder’s name to the product description? “Bill Gates’ software” sounds tediously pedestrian.