Fashionable Names
Business Week just published a fascinating article explaining the ins and outs of naming in the fickle world of fashion. The unspoken connection between Kafka and the catwalk is also explored here for the first time.
Drug-O-Matic pharmaceutical name generator
From our sister-site Wordlab, comes this handy drug name generator:
The Drug-O-Matic brings the power of the big pharmaceutical companies to you, the little guy. Their power? To saturate the collective consciousness with names like Paxil, Zantec, and of course, Prozac. Now, armed with this tool, you can strike back. All you need is a few hundred billion of your own research dollars, and there’s nothing stopping you from being the next Mr. or Ms. Eli, Lilly, Merck, Glaxo, Smith, or Kline. There are currently over 15.2 million potential drug names lurking within this little apothecary’s monster.
Now it’s time to take my next dose of Ectiol, Cynol, Genedint, and Zadricon.
Nut Poppers–ouch!
“It’s a whole new nut experience.” That’s what it says on the packaging anyway. The good folks at Planters have a new product, the name of which should provide endless giggles to stoners of the Beavis and Butt-Head variety: Nut Poppers.
Now if they could only pull off a co-branding effort with In-N-Out Burger, they’d really have something. And like all good things in life, Nut Poppers come in Ranch, Cheddar and Original flavor. Ah, the tantalizing taste of original, one of those flavors that goes with just about everything.
IKEA love songs: play the IKEA product name game
Test your knowledge of IKEA’s product names by playing The IKEA Game, and when you’re done, check out Transblawg’s post, which reveals the method behind Ikea’s product naming madness. It was translated from a German article, so you know it must be good for you.
The sensual side of computer port technology names
Consumer product names in the computer port technology sector run the gamut from the highly effective WiFi, Airport and FireWire, to the engineering-department-labeled IEEE 1394 and 802.11b.
Somewhere on the flaccid end of the scale resides “PCMCIA Card.” These are the cards that fit into those mysterious slots on your PC laptop and allow you to connect with wireless networks, ethernets, etc. According to the PCMCIA website, a new, smaller and more powerful card will soon be released. The code name is listed as “Newcard.”
Will PCMCIA give this new card a new name? What kind of name would stand a chance of being embraced by consumers in a positive way? We’ve created a taxonomy of consumer product names in the computer port technology sector to help answer these important questions.
Also, if you do any work related to the marketing, branding or advertising of consumer computer products, you can grab this taxonomy and plop it into you next mind-numbing PowerPoint presentation. It will instantly make it look like you have been doing something productive with your time, as well as serve to keep the whole room busy for hours while they attempt to assimilate its meaning.
Ditto for those of you tasked with marketing airlines, biotech / pharmaceutical companies, or web portals.
Ah, to be a verb in the vernacular
Does anything smell as sweet to the marketers of a company or product name? Like Fed Ex, Xerox and Kleenex before it, Google has become a verb.
In honor of the web search company’s fifth birthday this week, the BBC has published an article which celebrates all things Google. This bit caught our eye:
“Now Google is a noun, adjective and verb. For instance “to Google” is to use the search engine to check someone out before you meet them.”
The described “triple crown” of usage is quite impressive, but Google as an adjective? If you can figure that one out, comment with some “Google as an adjective” examples.
Now, “Spam,” that’s a different story… best to save it for later so as not to ruin this google day.
Posted by Jay on
September 8th, 2003 - 10:23pm |
company names + pop culture + powerful names + product names |
Comments (0) From the rain forest to planet Huya
You no longer have to be a Greek or Roman god to have a planet, or at least a mini-planet, named after you. You can be a Venezuelan rain god, for instance. This just in from our sources in Venezuela:
A “mini-planet” far out in our solar system, discovered by astronomers at a Venezuelan observatory, will bear the name Huya (Juyá), the rain god of the Wayúu Indians who live on the arid Guajira Peninsula of northern Venezuela and Colombia.
The Wayúu hope that their god, from his new vantage point in the company of Neptune and Pluto, will work some miracle to alleviate the thirst their lands have suffered for several generations.
Juyá measures some 600 km in diameter and is composed of rock and ice. It is located in the outer reaches of the band of celestial bodies beyond Neptune, known as the Kuiper Belt, after the man who discovered it in 1951, Dutch-U.S. astronomer Gerard Kuiper.
Larger than the asteroids in its group, it is a tiny planet, barely a quarter the size of Pluto, the smallest of the nine in the solar system.
How did the astronomers settle on the name Huya?
The name Juyá was chosen from among more than 20 names considered by astronomers, anthropologists and Wayúu leaders, headed by Jorge Pocaterra. Juyá — god of rain, a warrior, hunter, seducer and inhabitant of “the place beyond the Sun.”
To facilitate its pronunciation in English, the spelling has been altered to “Huya.”
And now all of us English speakers can yell, “Hip Hip Huya!”
