Reports AdAge:

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Online advertising company aQuantive Inc. has agreed to buy SBI.Razorfish from New York-based SBI Group for $160 million, according to the company.

The acquisition will “create one of the largest interactive agencies,” Brian McAndrews, president-CEO of aQuantive, said in a statement.

…Seattle-based aQuantive said it plans to combine its media-buying division, Avenue A, with Razorfish. The combined entity will be known as Avenue A/Razorfish, and will be the new brand for the company’s interactive agency. Razorfish specializes in corporate Web site design. Avenue A specializes in media buying.

Has anyone involved with this merger stopped to consider the merits of the new company name, consisting as it does of a random combination of an evocative name (Avenue A) with an arbitrary name (Razorfish)?

Actually, this is pretty typical agency behavior that you see over and over in the advertising world when companies commit merger: usually the result is a combination of partner surnames (dimassimo carr), occasionally a mix of surnamed with non-surnamed (Hal Riney Publicis, now altered to Publicis.Riney), and once in a blue moon two non-surnamed companies that get fused together (Avenue A/Razorfish).

In this industry its all about reputation — that is the brand equity these two companies are desperate to preserve. If either company pulled in a majority of the equity, it would be the chosen name for the combined entity, since there are no surnamed egos involved on the marquee to force a combination of names. Most likely, the Avenue A brand has more cachet in some markets, and Razorfish in others, so they hedged their bets and combined the two names.

We wouldn’t be surprised if this awkward coupling of names turns out to be just a temporary measure for a year or so to get everyone used to the merger, and then re-brand the company with a new, single name. Let’s just hope that when such a day arrives, they don’t saddle themselves with a name like marchFIRST (now defunct), Alventive (now defunct), Scient (now defunct), or Viant (now defunct), or we’ll be left pining for the good old days of Avenue A/Razorfish.