Company and Product Naming, Brands and Trademarks: rants & raves, cheers & jeers, fun & foibles
One of the fun parts of naming is discovering new roots and meanings every day. I must have been asleep at the wheel to not know that Nevada is from the Spanish word “snowfall”.
There is snow in the mountains and the north, but enough to name the state after it? Wow. Imagine we name some winter ski parkas (that are good in snowy weather) Nevada. People will surely not get it and assume we lost all our naming marbles in the casino.
Sweeping across the nation is a new chain of high class Chinese restaurants called P.F. Chang’s. Imagine if they had just been called Chang’s. Wouldn’t they have sounded very common? Wouldn’t it have been very difficult to own, trademark and protect that name?
On the other hand, what a difference a few initials make! Suddenly a touch of class is added.. even if you haven’t tried one of their restaurants so far. Pure initials are a disaster from a marketing point of view for most new entities unless they are backed up with megabucks marketing, but initials plus a common word really help free up some unique name space and customer mind share.
So how do you pick which initials to use? Peter Fleming (of the famous Fleming Steakhouses), simply used his own. And so there really is no Mr. P.F. Chang to greet you ever… but don’t tell everyone. Simply take them out for a new class of Chinese American food.
Now that Yahoo has become a $44 billion soccer ball in takeover battles, it is interesting to look back on the origin of this name. Only 14 years old - an eternity in internet time - this is one of the last names that came straight out of the dictionary and the domain was free!
Jerry Yang and his partners were looking through a dictionary for any words similar to Yacc (Yet Another C Compiler for those of you who are not Unix propeller heads) when they came across the word Yahoo. I am sure they must have looked at the meaning too - and promptly ignored it - because definitions vary from “A slightly crazy cowboy” to “a brutish, vicious person”. Today this is almost a conservative name. Amazing how things change with time and usage. But I bet they never would have picked such a radical name (at the time) if they had not been a bunch of youngsters fresh off campus. Can you imagine an older management team telling their board of directors about the meaning of such a name? Not many places it would have flown, other than at what today is Yum! brands.
Of course, despite what the dictionaries say, Yahoo had become the sound of an expressive yell as well… and why the company name is properly tagged with an exclamation mark!
P.S. My big old Webster’s points out that the first meaning of the word came from Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels: a race of brutes having the form and all the degrading passions of man. If the takeover fight gets dirty, this might become too true!
This week I am working on a beer naming project, which is rather amusing because for weeks I have been thinking of putting up this posting about the Bass Ale name.
Have you ever sat in a bar and looked at the big red triangle in the Bass sign, and noticed that it says Trademark across it? They are a very special case in trademark law, as Bass is the first registered trademark ever issued anywhere in the world.
Yes, the British beat the USA to get their system going by a few months. And they selected Bass to be the first trademark. After all, what could be more British than a pint of ale?
So Bass has a name and trademark distinction no other beer will ever have. Of course, today it is a registered trademark around the world - and you do see the magic ® in the bottom right corner.
Receiving my fat copy of Wired magazine nowadays is quite a joy since so many others have fallen by the wayside or become leaflet size. And their Geekipedia supplement this month shows how they really pay for that size through these great advertising vehicles, even when they give it such a wierd name. Of course, they are owned by Conde Nast publications who know a thing or two about attracting classy advertisers.
But who are they trying to curry favor with when they rank Apple Corp (the Beetles record publishing company) as being smacked down by Apple Inc (who Think Different)? And conveniently forget that Apple Computers Inc (as it used to be) lost their trademark fight in UK High Court, and ended up paying $43 million for continued use of their name rights once they added music to their computers. On top of which, they lost the insurance claim too.. another $6 or $7 million (or more) in legal bills.
Apple is one of the megabrands of the world now, but the name rights alone cost it $50 million or so. Very interesting, especially when so many execs are reluctant to pay even $5,000 for their company name. Of course, a brand is a lot, lot more than a name. But as Al Ries and Jack Trout said a long time ago: “Your name is your primary weapon in the battle for the mind.“
First we had Lucky Stores, then they got taken over by Albertson’s and all of Northern California growned… but eventually we had to eat so many of us still shopped there. Then some of these stores became SaveMart.. and no one noticed or cared.. and we weren’t about to go into such a lower class chain with a very old style pedantic name.
Finally.. someone with money and branding brains shows up, and now 
eight stores a week are going back to the future. And the Lucky store brand will be seen again. Welcome back.. a name and a brand we loved passionately returns. A brand that had grown to have some personality.
But does name recycling work? Yes, in particular if it fixes an error. NCR became a successful high tech company again after escaping the grips of the awful AT&T GIS systems moniker. Nation Wide bank took over Bank of American and wisely didn’t enforce the name of the conqueror. When the acquired company has a better name, why not capitalize on it?
P.S. Of course, the big name out here in supermarkets is Safeway and they are busy expanding into the restaurant business, with the awfully named Citrine bistros. Ouch. See the name critic’s review of this name.
For Father’s Day my college boys took me around Golden Gate Park in San Francisco on their favorite Frisbee Golf course. It was a lot cheaper than me taking them on a round of real golf (in fact, free, except for the sandwiches).. and very interesting. Of course, despite the name we all use, the course was properly marked as the Disk Golf course. Believe it or not, Frisbee has been the registered trademark of the Wham-O Corporation since 1959, and they have recently extended the mark to many other clothing and toy categories, in addition to flying disks.
Then, right on cue, I read an article that reminded me Frisbees were named after the Frisbie Baking Bompany - which just happened to ship their cakes and cookies in round tins with nice lids that you could whiz across the room!
If you have any other interesting name origin tidbits, why not drop me a comment or an email? There are more in-depth name origin stories on our Brighter Naming website.
Since this is my first entry on this blog, I have to ask all you out there a naming question related to the beginning of time: How did Adam and Eve get their names?
And since this is a professional naming blog, some proof, evidence or least background details would be much appreciated.
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