Zinzin Naming Guide

Zinzin
The Naming Guide
v. 1.8 | October 30, 2011
The best product and company names require the least advertising.
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They are advertisements.

Great names are a powerful force in the branding, marketing and advertising campaigns of the companies they work for. They differentiate you from competitors, make an emotional connection with your audience, and help to build a brand that ignites the passions of your customers. At Zinzin, we believe that a powerful name is the result of a powerful positioning strategy. The key is to find a fresh way into the hearts and minds of your customers, redefine and own the conversation in your industry, and engage people on as many levels as possible. The best product and company names represent the ultimate process of boiling these ideas down into a word or two. This document will show you how.
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Contents
Introduction: Who is Zinzin? .....................................................................7 About our name ..............................................................................................................7 The Naming Process ...................................................................................8 Great Names Begin With A Rigorous Process................................................................8 Competitive Analysis ......................................................................................................9 Know your competitive messaging landscape ..........................................................9 An example of competitive analysis for names ........................................................9 Name Taxonomy Charts .........................................................................................11 Taxonomy of the Company Names of Naming Companies ..............................12 Taxonomy of Search Engine, Browser and Web Portal Names........................15 Taxonomy of Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) Names.............................................16 Blank Name Taxonomy Chart ...........................................................................18 Brand Positioning .........................................................................................................19 A real-world example of brand positioning ...........................................................19 Naming Process Filters .................................................................................................19 The negative connotation filter ..............................................................................20 Morpheme Addiction ..............................................................................................22 Let the Brand Positioning Guide You .....................................................................23 Name Development ......................................................................................................24 Functional / Descriptive Names .............................................................................24 Invented Names ......................................................................................................26 Experiential Names .................................................................................................27 Evocative Names .....................................................................................................28 Trademark Prescreening ..............................................................................................29 Linguistic Connotation Screening ................................................................................30 Name Evaluation ..........................................................................................................30 Decision Making .....................................................................................................34 Blank Name Evaluation Chart ................................................................................35 The Zinzin Naming Manifesto ..................................................................36 Naming Case Studies ................................................................................47 Gogo ..............................................................................................................................47 Aria ................................................................................................................................47 Groove ...........................................................................................................................48 Audience .......................................................................................................................48
Zinzin | The Naming Guide
Jupiter Wells .................................................................................................................48 Firefly ...........................................................................................................................49 Arte................................................................................................................................49 Antidote ........................................................................................................................50 truTV .............................................................................................................................50 Pulsar ............................................................................................................................51 Primordial .....................................................................................................................51 Streamline .....................................................................................................................52 Evolve ...........................................................................................................................52 Monkeybar ...................................................................................................................52 TheWit ..........................................................................................................................53 July ...............................................................................................................................53 Landslide.......................................................................................................................54 Zounds ..........................................................................................................................54 Twine ............................................................................................................................55 The Address ..................................................................................................................55 Showcase .......................................................................................................................56 Firebrand ......................................................................................................................56 Zeno...............................................................................................................................56 Oasis ..............................................................................................................................57 Mojo ..............................................................................................................................57 Prevathon .....................................................................................................................58 Luna ..............................................................................................................................58 Freestyle ........................................................................................................................59 Heartstring ...................................................................................................................59 Crossfire ........................................................................................................................60 Veneer ...........................................................................................................................60 Groov ............................................................................................................................61 Mosaic ...........................................................................................................................61 Pipeline HD...................................................................................................................62 Origin ............................................................................................................................62 The Signature at MGM Grand ......................................................................................63 Mirage ...........................................................................................................................63 Rivet ..............................................................................................................................63 Whoop ...........................................................................................................................64 Tandem .........................................................................................................................65 Bigfoot ...........................................................................................................................65 Trident University ........................................................................................................66 Anthem .........................................................................................................................66
Radius ...........................................................................................................................67 Bait & Tackle .................................................................................................................67 Echelon .........................................................................................................................68 TCX Ethanol .................................................................................................................68 Constellation .................................................................................................................68 Affinity ..........................................................................................................................69 Intrigue .........................................................................................................................69 Crescendo......................................................................................................................70 Acrobat .........................................................................................................................70 Zinzin Client List ......................................................................................71 The Compendium of Amazing Names (CAN) ...........................................72 Colophon ...................................................................................................73
Introduction: Who is Zinzin?

Zinzin is a naming and branding agency that creates powerful product and company names to propel and differentiate brands beyond their competition. We are committed to helping companies rise above the generic branding chatter that clogs cultural discourse. We want to set your brand free. It is our belief that naming is a science, and for that we have a rigorous, battle-tested process in place. But we also firmly believe that naming is an art, and it is the art and poetry of great names that separate companies from the pack of competitors who fail to understand the value of a great name. A great name is an art, a great naming process is a science. Science + art = the most powerful project outcome.
ABOUT OUR NAME

Our own name, like many we have created for other companies, is full of surprises, layers of meaning, and rich associations, though at first glance it may seem no more than a "made-up" name with no story. No matter, a little brand called "Google" is in the same boat. And like "Google," our name is also uniquely "unknown" enough to enable us to brand it as THE place for the naming of companies and products. Eventually, we want "Zinzin" to become synonymous with naming the way "Google" is for search. So where did the name "Zinzin" come from? Zinzin is colloquial French for bonkers, cracked, touched , loopy, potty, crazy, nuts. Just what you want in a naming firm, right? But wait, the plot thickens In addition to being a "crazy" word, Zinzin is also a French slang placeholder name, a name that you call something when you don't know or specify the actual name (like "gadget" or "thingamabob" or "whatchamacallit"). Zinzin = entity, thing. In this sense, Zinzin is our very own permanent placeholder name, a universal urname. James Joyce recognized the value of this word, and coined his own meanings for it in Finnegans Wake, where it represented noise, sin, punk, and the great disruptor, which, incidentally, is Zinzin's role in the global naming industry. Read more about the Story of Zinzin, including team bios and more about the Zinzin name, on our website: http://www.zinzin.com/our-story/.
The Naming Process

GREAT NAMES BEGIN WITH A RIGOROUS PROCESS
Successful product and company names may appear to have been created by magic or luck, but it is possible to develop names that are dynamic, effective and fully leverage a brand's potential if you have the right process in place. A process that is clear, insightful, logical and focused will lead to a name that is a powerful component and reinforcement of your brand strategy, and pave the way for buy-in throughout your organization. Before you begin, it is essential to decide what you want your new company or product name to do for you. There are many marketing goals that a powerful name, brand and messaging can help you achieve, including: Clear separation from your competitors Demonstrate to the world that you are different Reinforce a unique positioning platform Create a positive and lasting engagement with your audience Be unforgettable Propel the brand through the world on its own, becoming a no-cost, self-sustaining PR vehicle Provide a deep well of marketing and advertising images Rise above the goods and services you provide Completely dominate your category The key is to find a fresh way into the hearts and minds of your audience, redefine and own the conversation in your industry, and engage people on as many levels as possible. The best names accomplish all of these goals and are advertisements in and of themselves. Every naming project is, in reality, a brand positioning project. The power of a name is in its ability to demonstrate the ideas and qualities that you are looking to communicate. In naming and branding, as in all aspects of life, it is always more powerful to demonstrate than to explain. Whether we are developing product or company names, the process steps and factors outlined below are what gives us the ability to create powerful and lasting brands.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Our process begins with a thorough competitive analysis, in which we quantify the tone and strength of competitive company or product names in your industry by ranking them in a Name Taxonomy. Creating such a document helps your naming team decide where they need to go with the positioning, branding and naming of your company or product. K N O W Y O U R C OMP E T IT IV E M ESSAGING LANDSCAPE A competitive analysis is an essential first step of any naming process. How are your competitors positioning themselves? What types of names are common among them? Are their names projecting a similar attitude? Do their similarities offer you a huge opportunity to stand out from the crowd? How does your business or product differ from the competition? How can a name help you define or redefine your brand? Can you change and own the conversation in your industry? Should you? Quantifying the tone and strength of competitive company names or product names is an empowering foundation for any naming project. Creating such a document helps your naming team decide where they need to go with the positioning, branding and naming of your company or product. It also keeps the naming process focused on creating a name that is a powerful marketing asset, one that works overtime for your brand and against your competitors. We display the results of a given sector of names in the form of name taxonomy charts (see examples below), a format we also use to examine taglines and language common to an industry. A N E X A MP L E OF C OMP E T ITIVE ANALYSIS FOR NAM ES An important first step when naming a business, product or service is to figure out just what it is that your new name should be doing for you. The most common decision is that a name should explain to the world what business you are in or what your product does. Intuition dictates that this will save you the time and money of explanation, which actually turns out not to be true. Why? Let's consider the arena of online bookstores. Here are a few of their names:
1bookstreet A1Books allbooks4less AllBookstores alotofbooks BestBookBuys BookCloseOuts Bookland BookNetUSA BookPool BooksAMillion
BookSense books-forsale BooksNow Bookspot Bookwire CheapyBook Classbook CoolBooks Ebooks eCampus eSuccessBooks
gobookshopping HalfPriceBooks nwbooks Testbooks Textbooksatcost Testbooksource Textbookx TheBookPeople TrueBooks VarsityBooks
When Jeff Bezos founded Amazon, it was billed as an "online bookstore" just like all of the above, and since it was one of the first such companies, there was even more reason to go with a descriptive name, right? Otherwise, how would anybody know what the business was about? Shouldn't it just be books.com? Bezos knew that someday his company might want to sell more than just books, and that someday an online presence would be a given for all companies. In short, he understood that the name should be bigger than just "books" or "online," and further it needed to distance itself from all the competitors who would surely follow. He needed an evocative name that could grow and evolve with his business and become a powerful brand. In "Amazon," he found just such a name, and the list above confirms that the competition did come in droves, though a key difference is that they are forever relegated by their names to selling only books. They are also, sadly, forever relegated to being totally forgettable and blending in with the rest of their ilk. The notion of describing your business in the name assumes that the name will exist at some point without contextual support, which, when you think about it, is impossible. The name will appear on a website, a storefront, in a news article or press release, on a business card, on the product itself, in advertisements, or, at its most naked, in a conversation. There is simply no imaginable circumstance in which a name will have to explain itself, and if it does, by being blandly descriptive, it will likely fade into the background, indistinguishable from the bulk of its competitors. Which brand are you more likely to remember, Amazon or one from the list above? Where are you more likely to go online to buy a book, let along anything else?
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A naming project can quickly run aground if the names being considered are judged without the context of a clear positioning platform, a thorough competitive analysis, and an intimate understanding of how names work and what they can do. N A M E TA X O N O M Y C H A RT S We developed the name taxonomy format to bring an elegant simplicity to a complex set of intertwined naming elements. The taxonomy chart keeps the process focused on the competitive aspect, forces you to quantify both the negative and positive attributes of each name under consideration, sets a high standard for you to meet, and gives everyone involved a clean and easy framework in which to disparage, insult, and belittle each other.
On the pages below are three sample name taxonomy charts, along with a blank chart for your own use. You can view many more taxonomy charts for different industries in the Process > Competitive Analysis section of the Zinzin website: http:// www.zinzin.com/process/competitive-analysis/.
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TA X O N O M Y O F T H E C O M PA N Y N A M E S O F N A M I N G C O M PA N I E S
Behold the companies in our very own industry, naming company names in the company of the names of other naming company names. Are we biased in our opinion? Absolutely. We believe strongly that the name a naming company names itself is a clue to the kinds of company names they believe in. And if a naming company cannot manage to give itself a distinctive, memorable name that sets itself apart from the slew of competitors you see below, a company name that can evolve into a strong brand within the industry and come to represent more than just the goods and services being offered, how can they possibly convince others that what they fail to do in their own company name they can somehow magically do for their clients? So a call to arms is in order: Namers, name thyself well! Because you've got company.
5 4 3
FUNCTIONAL
INVENTED Zinzin
EXPERIENTIAL A Hundred Monkeys Eat My Words Catchword Brains On Fire Idiom Lexicon Metaphor
EVOCATIVE Igor
5 4 3
Wordlab
Tipping Sprung* Applebaum Addison Ashton Brand Group Hayden Group Landor Lippincott Mercer Master McNeil Rivkin & Associates Russell Mark Group Siegel & Gale Wolff Olins
WildOutWest (WOW)
Good Characters Word for Word
Tungsten
Cintara
Capsule
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ABC Name Bank Brighter Naming Moore Names Name Designer Name Development Name Evolution -1 Name Generator NAME-IT NameLab Name One Name Pharm NameQuest Name Razor NameSale Name Sharks Name-Shop NameStormers Name Tag NameTrade Namebase -1 NameWorks Naming Systems Naming Workshop Namington Namix Strategic Name Development The Naming Company Wise Name Brand-DNA Brand A Brand 2.0 Brand Channel Brand Design Brand Doctors Brand Evolve Brand Evolution Brand Fidelity Brand Forward Brand Institute Brand Juice Brand Ladder -2 Brand Link Brand Maverick Brand Mechanics Brand Meta Brand People Brand Positioning Brand Salt Brandscape Brand Scope Brand Sequence Brand Slinger Brand Solutions Brand Spark
Namix Nomen Nomenon Nomina Nomino
Bizword Comspring Logoistic Macroworks Mnemonic
One Big Roach
-1
-1
-1
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Brand Vista CoreBrand Future Brand Independent Branding Interbrand -2 Not Just Any Branding The Better Branding Company The Brand Company The Brand Consultancy Trading Brands FUNCTIONAL INVENTED EXPERIENTIAL
Blue Taco
-2
EVOCATIVE
*Tipping Sprung: Yes it does sound like a random invented paring in the Bearing Point mode, but it's actually the names of the two founders, so it goes into the Functional category, where it rates higher than the rest for being a little more unique and memorable. Levels of Engagement: These eight levels (y-axis levels from minus 2 to plus 5) represent the amount of material (meaning, stories, associations, imagery, multiple layers) in a name the audience has to play with and personalize and how "engaged" they are by a name. Names in the minus 2 level are the least engaging, and likely to be quickly forgotten; the higher the number the better, with level 5 being the best. Functional Names: The lowest common denominator of names, usually either named after a person, purely descriptive of what the company or product does, or a pre- or sufxed reference to functionality. (Infoseek, LookSmart) Invented Names: "Invented" as in a made-up name (Acquient, Agilent, Alliant, Google) or a non-English name that is not widely known. Experiential Names: A direct connection to something real, a part of direct human experience. Usually literal in nature, but presented with a touch of imagination. (Netscape, Palm Pilot) Evocative Names: These names are designed to evoke the positioning of a company or product rather than the goods and services or the experience of those goods and services. Removed from direct experience, but relevant evoking memories, stories, and many levels of association. (Virgin, Apple, Cracker Jack)
ADDENDUM: Jay Jurisich, Zinzin's CEO / creative director, also founded and named Igor, and prior to that worked for A Hundred Monkeys; he also founded and named Wordlab. So yes, weird as it sounds, we're sort of specialists in the excruciating art of naming companies naming themselves.
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TA X O N O M Y O F S E A R C H E N G I N E , B R O W S E R A N D W E B P O R TA L N A M E S
Here are some names you may be familiar with in the Internet industry. Note how many search engines went with Functional names that include the words "search/seek" or "crawler/spider."
5 4 3 2 FUNCTIONAL INVENTED EXPERIENTIAL EVOCATIVE
5 4 3 2
Google
Magellan Safari Explorer Navigator Ask Jeeves Excite Netscape Snap Altavista Cyberdog Dogpile Fathead
Yahoo! Northern Light
Firefox
Mozilla
Camino
A9
Mamma Opera Overture
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AOL GoTo HotBot MSN Open Directory AllTheWeb Cyber411 FindWhat.com InniSearch Infoseek LookSmart Planet Search QuestFinder SavvySearch Search King SearchPort What-U-Seek
FUNCTIONAL
Alexa Inktomi * Lycos Teoma Thunderstone
goHip mySimon WiseNut
iCab Rex
-1
-2
MegaSpider MetaGopher MonsterCrawler SuperCrawler WebCrawler
InfoTiger
-2
INVENTED
EXPERIENTIAL
EVOCATIVE
* Inktomi: In Lakota mythology, Iktomi is a spider-trickster god and a culture-hero for the Lakota people. But since most people don't know that (or care), we are treating it as an Invented name. And besides, the "spider/crawler" metaphor has been pretty thoroughly mined by search engines.
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TA X O N O M Y O F S P O R T U T I L I T Y V E H I C L E ( S U V ) N A M E S
This chart of SUV names reveals a singular positioning strategy that permeates most of the brand names in this industry, resulting in the bulk of these names being assigned low marks on this scale. It's not that the names themselves are poor. Rather, it's because the names don't help to differentiate one vehicle from another; many of them are variations on the same theme (rugged, outdoorsy) and not pulling any marketing weight. Why does Suburban rate an elevated position? Because it's the most refreshingly different and honest name in the Experiential category.
5 4 3 2 FUNCTIONAL INVENTED EXPERIENTIAL EVOCATIVE
5 4 3 2
Jeep Jeepster Hummer Jackaroo Xterra
Suburban Amigo Aviator Sidekick Blazer Discovery Defender Escape Excursion Expedition Explorer Forester Freelander Mountaineer Navigator Scout Tracker Trooper Wrangler
Element Avalanche Cayenne Safari
Land Cruiser Overland Range Rover Pathnder TrailBlazer Travelall
Unimog
Armada Frontier Highlander Matrix Passport Samurai Silverado Tundra Typhoon
-1
4Runner Rav4
Grand Vitara Korando
Envoy Liberty Rendezvous Tribute
Aztek Bordeux Bronco Cherokee Comanche Durango Kahuna Montana Montero Murano Navaho
-1
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-1
Rainier Rodeo Santa Fe Sequoia Sonoma Sorento Tacoma Tahoe Touareg Yukon CR-V EVX EX LX 470 MDX ML55 QX4 SLX SRX X5 XC90 XL-7
FUNCTIONAL
-1
-2
Terracross VehiCROSS
Bravada Escalade Sportage
Axiom
-2
INVENTED
EXPERIENTIAL
EVOCATIVE
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B L A N K N A M E TA X O N O M Y C H A R T
Here is a blank name taxonomy chart you can print. Try plotting your and your competition's product or company names on this chart and see how they sort out.
5 4
FUNCTIONAL
INVENTED
EXPERIENTIAL
EVOCATIVE
-1
-1
-2
-2
FUNCTIONAL
INVENTED
EXPERIENTIAL
EVOCATIVE
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BRAND POSITIONING
Our next step is to help you refine and define your brand positioning. The more specific and nuanced your positioning is, the more effective the name will be. All great names work in concert with the positioning of the business or product they speak for. The best positioning finds a way to reinvigorate or change the conversation that an industry has been having with its consumers. Our positioning process is predicated on understanding everything about your brand, where its been and where its headed. The resulting naming process is based on a forward-looking positioning strategy that takes into account your brand, your competition, and your entire sector. And for the duration of a naming project, it pays to keep this fundamental rule in mind: you are not naming a company, product or service, you are naming the positioning of that company, product or service. A REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE OF BRAND POSITIONING While its important to understand what competitors are doing in order to act in a distinctive and powerful way, its also useful to learn from their mistakes and successes. For instance, the company that became Apple needed to distance itself from the cold, unapproachable, complicated imagery created by most other computer companies at the time, companies with names like IBM, NEC, DEC, ADPAC, Cincom, Dylakor, Input, Integral Systems, Sperry Rand, SAP, PSDI, Syncsort, and Tesseract. The new company needed to reverse the entrenched view of computers in order to get people to use them at home. They were looking for a name that was unlike the names of traditional computer companies, a name that also supported a brand positioning strategy that was to be perceived as simple, warm, human, approachable and different. Of course, once they had a clear positioning platform in place, there were still hundreds of potential names for the new company to consider. The process for knowing how and where to look for that one perfect name is detailed in the next section, Naming Process Filters.
NAMING PROCESS FILTERS

One of the keys to successful company and product naming is understanding exactly how your audience will interact with a new name. Creating a filter that evaluates names in the same way that your target market will is essential to both creating the best name possible and to getting that name approved and implemented by your company.
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Clients have often said to us, after they have tried unsuccessfully to create a new name themselves, "we're just not creative enough." Our answer is always the same: No, you're just as creative as us or anyone else, you just have the wrong filters in place. What exactly do we mean by "naming process filters"? By "filters" we mean the mental constructs of what a name should be or what a name can't be. For example, if you were starting up a computer company in the 1970s and you had a mental filter in place that dictated that the name for your company had to be descriptive, like "Digital Equipment Corp," then you wouldn't even consider the name "Apple" such a name would never occur to you in the first place because your internal naming filter would block it. So the key to creating a powerful new brand name is to first make sure you don't have limiting filters in place that are hiding the strongest name candidates from view. But how do you this? How can you be sure that you are not being limited in ways you aren't even aware of? The answer is to always bring it back to the brand positioning: stop trying to name your company or product directly, and name your brand positioning instead. THE NEGATIVE CONNOTATION FILTER The other type of naming filters are "after-the-fact" judgments about names, usually strongly evocative names with perceived negative meanings. Many of the best names are provocations: Virgin, Caterpillar, Banana Republic, Yahoo, Oracle, The Gap, Stingray, Fannie Mae, Gogo, Primordial, Landslide, Twine, Crossfire. To qualify as a provocation, a name must contain what most people would call "negative messages" for the goods and services the name is to represent. This is where most corporate naming committees get very uncomfortable. Fortunately, consumers process these negative messages positively. As long as the name maps to one of the positioning points of the brand, consumers never take its meaning literally, and the negative aspects of the name just give it greater depth, making it memorable. Caterpillar is the most effective brand name in the earth-moving equipment sector precisely because it is not "Bull" or "Elephant" or "Workhorse" or anything else that is linear and obvious. Caterpillars the insects are weak and easily squashed, yet Caterpillar the brand is the most engaging name in its industry, and nobody who considers buying a Caterpillar bulldozer is ever deterred by thinking that it will be weak like a little bug. Naming committees will often latch onto such meanings, however, and use them to shoot-down great names, so it's vital to understand that consumers do not negatively deconstruct names the way naming committees do. Customers are in fact adept at not
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only being unfazed by negative meanings, but at actually being attracted to powerful names, regardless of any "negative" connotations. The biggest challenge that evocative names face in surviving a naming exercise is the fact that they map metaphorically to the positioning of a company or product rather than directly to the goods and services offered or the experience of those goods and services. To illustrate how damaging a negative connotation filter can be, unless everyone on a naming project understands the brand positioning and the correlation between it and an evocative name, this is the type of feedback that evocative names will generate: Virgin Airways Says "we're new at this" Public wants airlines to be experienced, safe and professional Investors won't take us seriously Religious people will be offended Caterpillar Tiny, creepy-crawly bug Not macho enough easy to squash Why not "bull" or "workhorse"? Destroys trees, crops, responsible for famine Banana Republic Derogatory cultural slur You'll be picketed by people from small, hot countries Yahoo! Yahoo!! It's Mountain Dew! Yoohoo! It's a chocolate drink in a can! Nobody will take stock quotes and world news seriously from a bunch of "Yahoos" Oracle Unscientific Superstitious A bearer of bad news, usually foretold death and destruction Only primitive people put their faith in an Oracle Sounds like "orifice" people will make fun of us
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The Gap Means something is missing The Generation Gap is a bad thing we want to sell clothes to all generations In need of repair Incomplete Negative Stingray A slow, ugly, and dangerous fish slow, ugly and dangerous are the last qualities we want to associate with our fast, powerful, sexy sports car Killed the beloved Crocodile Hunter The "bottom feeding fish" part isn't helping either Clearly, consumers do not deconstruct names in either a negative or a literal fashion, but rather within the context in which the brand is defined. Internal naming committees, however, almost always do, so getting a committee to acknowledge this difference and to interact with names as the public does is step one. M O R P H E ME A D D IC T IO N As you can well imagine, this kind of negative deconstruction is at the root of why committees have difficulty agreeing on a non-descriptive name that has any meaning. It's also what gave birth to the second major school of bad naming: the "unique empty vessel" that "can become whatever you want." Here are several truly empty morphemic constructions: Acquient, Agilent, Alliant, Aquent, Aspirient, Aviant, Axent, Axient, Bizient, Candescent, Cendant, Cerent, Chordiant, Clarent, Comergent, Conexant, Consilient, Cotelligent, Equant, Ixtant, Livent, Luminant, Mergent, Mirant, Navigant, Naviant, Noviant, Novient, Omnient, Ravisent, Sapient, Scient, Sequant, Spirent, Taligent, Teligent, Thrivent, Versant, Versent, Viant, Vitalent and Vivient As with overly descriptive names, these monikers are not part of an elegant solution, they are the seeds of a branding nightmare. This type of name is arrived at because of the lust for a domain name, consensus building, and as a shortcut to trademark approval. They are the kind of names most loved by trademark attorneys, but few others. At some point in the process marketing left the room, and nobody seemed to notice. And while they may technically be unique, it's at the level of a snowflake in a snow bank.
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LET THE BRAND POSITIONING GUIDE YOU So how do you avoid being caught in one of these traps that often lead to the adoption of terrible names? The key is to make sure that everyone on a naming committee understand this process, is aware of the pitfalls and most importantly, evaluates all names being considered especially evocative names with potential negative meanings based on the brand positioning. If everybody who is part of a naming decision is held accountable to the brand positioning, then a positive outcome is much more likely. Above we showed some of the negative meanings of a group of successful brands; below are examples of positive meanings for two of those brands, based on their brand positioning: Virgin Positioning: different, confident, exciting, alive, human, provocative, fun, fresh, reinventing the air travel experience. The innovative name forces people to create a separate box in their head to put it in. Qualities: self-propelling, connects emotionally, strong personality, a deep well of images and ideas to draw from Oracle Positioning: different, confident, superhuman, evocative, powerful, forward thinking, predictive. Qualities: self-propelling, connects emotionally, strong personality, a deep well of images and ideas to draw from As an exercise, go back and see how the other names deconstructed above Caterpillar, Banana Republic, Yahoo!, The Gap, and Stingray stand up when held to these high standards. These are the qualities that separate a potent, evocative name from a useless one that is built without a considered positioning platform, such as BlueMartini or Razorfish. Random names like these disallow audience engagement, because there are no pathways between the image and the product, and no room for connections to be made. Once everyone is in agreement that these examples are powerful, successful brand names, and everyone is aware why they work, then the stage is set for a successful naming project, because the right filters are now in place.
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NAME DEVELOPMENT
The first step in name development is deciding what you want your new name to do for your marketing, branding and advertising efforts. Making this decision allows you to narrow your name search to a certain category of name. The relative strengths and weakness of the four major categories of names are discussed on the following pages: Functional / Descriptive Names Functional names are purely descriptive of what a company or product does. Invented Names There are two kinds of invented, as in made-up, names: those that are built upon Greek and Latin roots, and those poetic constructions that are based on the rhythm and the experience of saying them. Experiential Names Experiential names offer a direct connection to something real, to a part of direct human experience. Evocative Names These names are designed to evoke the positioning of a company or product rather than the goods and services or the experience of those goods and services. FUNCTIONAL / DESCRIPTIVE NAMES Functional names are purely descriptive of what a company or product does. These types of names include the purely descriptive (The Naming Company), those that are named after founders (Landor Associates), and those that are acronyms (IBM). 1. When descriptive names work: When a company names products and their brand strategy is to direct the bulk of brand equity to the company name. Examples of companies that follow this name strategy are BMW, Martha Stewart and Subway. 2. When descriptive names don't work: When they are company names. Company names that are descriptive are asked to perform only one task: explaining to the world the business that you are in. This is an unnecessary and counterproductive choice. The downside here is many-fold. This naming strategy creates a situation that needlessly taxes a marketing and advertising budget because descriptive company names are drawn from a small pool of relevant keywords, causing them to blend together and fade into the background, indistinguishable from the bulk of their competitors the antithesis of marketing. As an example of the "brand fade out" caused by choosing descriptive company names, consider the names of the following branding and naming companies:
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Brand/Branding Companies Brand-DNA (.com) Brand-DNA (.net) Brand A Brand 2.0 Brand Design Brand Doctors Brand Evolve Brand Evolution Brand Forward Brand Juice Brand Ladder Brand Link Brand Maverick Brand Mechanics Brand Meta Brand People Brand Positioning Brand Salt Brand Scope Brand Sequence Brand Slinger Brand Solutions Brand Vista CoreBrand iBrand Independent Branding Not Just Any Branding The Better Branding Company The Brand Company The Brand Consultancy
Name/Naming Companies ABC Name Bank Brighter Naming Moore Names Name Development Name Evolution Name Generator Name-It Name Lab Name One Name Pharm Name Quest Name Razor Name Sale Name Sharks Name-Shop Name Stormers Name Tag Name Trade Namebase Names-n-Brands Nameworks NameWorks Naming Systems Naming Toolbox Naming Workshop Namington Namix Strategic Name Development The Naming Company Wise Name
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These kinds of company names are easily avoided if a thorough competitive analysis is performed and if the people doing the naming understand the following basic concept: The notion of describing a business in the name assumes that company names will exist at some point without contextual support, which is impossible. Company names will appear on websites, store fronts, in news articles or press releases, on business cards, in advertisements, or, at their most naked, in conversations. Names are thus free to perform more productive tasks, without the need to explain themselves. This is fortunate, because for most projects having a descriptive name is actually a counterproductive marketing move which requires an enormous amount of effort to overcome. A descriptive naming strategy overlooks the fact that the whole point of marketing is to separate your brand from the pack. It actually works against you, causing you to fade into the background, indistinguishable from the bulk of your competitors. INVENTED NAMES There are two kinds of invented, as in made-up, names: those that are built upon Greek and Latin roots, and those poetic constructions that are based on the rhythm and the experience of saying them. 1. Names built upon Greek and Latin roots (Examples: Acquient, Agilent, Alliant, Aquent) The upside: These names breeze through the trademark process because they are unique, eliminating the potential for trademark conflict. For companies looking for a hassle-free way to secure a domain name without a modifier, this is a fairly painless route to go. They are free of negative connotations. Because these names are built upon Greek and Latin morphemes, they are felt to be serious sounding. For the above reasons, these are the easiest names to push through the approval process at gigantic global corporations.
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The downside: Because these types of names are built on Greek and Latin morphemes, you need the advertising budget of a gigantic global corporation to imbue them with meaning and get people to remember them. While they don't carry any direct negative messages, such names do cast a cold, sanitized persona. These are names with no potential marketing energy they are image-free and emotionally void. 2. Poetically constructed names that are based on rhythm and the experience of saying them (Examples: Snapple, Oreo, Google, Kleenex.) The upside: They breeze through the trademark process. Easy domain name acquisition. By design, the target audience likes saying these names, which helps propel and saturate them throughout the target audience. Highly memorable. Emotionally engaging. They are rich with potential marketing energy. The downside: Tougher for a marketing department to get corporate approval for. When making a case for a name based on things like "fun to say, memorable, viral, and emotionally engaging," you need to present a solid, quantifiable case. We can show you how.
E X P E R I E N T IA L N A ME S Experiential names offer a direct connection to something real, to a part of direct human experience. They rise above descriptive names because their message is more about the experience than the task. For instance, in the web portal space, descriptive product names include Infoseek, GoTo, FindWhat, AllTheWeb, etc. Experiential names of web portals include such product names as Explorer, Magellan, Navigator, and Safari.
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The upside: These names make sense to the consumer. They map to the consumer's experience with the company or product. Because they require little explanation, experiential names are easily approved in a corporate process. They work best for products within a brand strategy designed to accumulate brand equity for both the company and the product. Experiential company and product names are most effective for the early entrants in a business sector, becoming less effective for later adopters. The downside: Because they are so intuitive, experiential names are embraced across many industries with high frequency, making them harder to trademark. These are names that tend to be historically common in the branding world. Their over-usage makes them less effective in the long run. For instance, while Explorer, Navigator and Safari are web portal names, they are also the names of SUVs. The similarity in tone of these names across an industry is indicative of similarities in positioning. As web portal names, Explorer, Navigator, Safari and Magellan are all saying exactly the same things in exactly the same ways to exactly the same people. Consequently, they aren't pulling any weight when it comes to differentiating a brand.
E V O C AT IV E N A ME S One important way that evocative names differ from others is that they evoke the positioning of a company or product, rather than describing a function or a direct experience. Continuing with more examples of the names of web portal companies: InfoSeek, LookSmart = functional Explorer, Navigator = experiential Yahoo = positioning (Evocative) Another example companies from the airline sector: Trans World Airlines = functional United = experiential Virgin = positioning (Evocative)
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And finally, from the computer industry: Digital Equipment = functional Gateway = experiential Apple = positioning (Evocative)
The upside: A rare type of name, making it a powerful differentiator. Nonlinear and multidimensional, making it deeply engaging. Helps create a brand image that is bigger than the goods and services a company offers. Trademark process is better than average. When created in sync with positioning, it is a branding force that can dominate an industry. The downside: When created out of sync with brand positioning, it's an ugly mess. Because evocative names for companies and products are created to compliment positioning rather than goods and services, they are the toughest type of names to get corporate approval for, being a bit of an abstraction for those outside the marketing department.
TRADEMARK PRESCREENING
During a Zinzin naming project, all company or product names we present to clients are at minimum prescreened by us against the USPTO trademark database and a Google due diligence screen. Depending upon the requirements of your project, names are also prescreened against the CTM, the WIPO Madrid Protocol, or other global trademark or specialty databases. We do this in order to feel confident that the names your attorney submits for final trademark screening and application are at least likely to pass muster for registration. If not, valuable time is lost. If you are conducting your own naming process, we've posted links to the major online trademark screening pages here: http://www.zinzin.com/ process/trademark-prescreening/.
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LINGUISTIC CONNOTATION SCREENING

Some naming projects we work on require that names be screened for semantic meaning, usage, connotation, spelling and pronunciation in a variety of foreign languages. Our partner for linguistic and foreign language connotation screening, Translations Direct, is one of the UK's most respected agencies for translation and language-related services. In 1997 its founder Nelly Thelwall, a Swiss national based in Salisbury, England, saw a need for a more thorough approach and introduced a unique four-stage process including editing and proofing by native speakers of the target language. Today, with experience in more than 40 languages, the company offers single- and multi-language services and is increasingly asked to help with overseas product testing and market research. So what is Nelly's secret? "Clients appreciate our personal service," she says, "but most importantly we deliver work that's fluent, totally accurate and on time." During the course of a European naming project for a Dutch client, Translations Direct performed linguistic and connotation screens of names in Arabic, Danish, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Norwegian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish on a rush basis over a weekend to meet a Monday deadline. And for a recent Canadian project, Translations Direct screened nine names in ten European and fifteen non-European languages with a four-day turnaround! With Nelly and her crew working for us, we can assure our clients that the name we create for them will not contain any nasty surprises in other languages.
NAME EVALUATION
How exactly do names work, and how do you choose the best name from a pool of viable candidates? We created a straightforward way to dissect potential names into nine categories to make it easier to understand why names work or don't work, and to more easily weigh the pros and cons of one name versus another. When considering potential names for your company, product or service, it is vital that the process be kept as objective as possible, and that subjective personal responses to names, such as "I like it" or I don't like it" or "I don't like it because it reminds me of an old girlfriend/boyfriend" are exactly that subjective and personal, and have no bearing on whether or not a potential name will actually work in the marketplace as a powerful brand that supports all your positioning goals.
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All well and good, but clients often ask us to be more specific, to explain objectively just what makes a name work. With that in mind, we created a straightforward way to dissect potential names into the following nine categories to make it easier to understand why names work or don't work, and to more easily weigh the pros and cons of one name versus another: Appearance Simply how the name looks as a visual signifier, in a logo, an ad, on a billboard, etc. The name will always be seen in context, but it will be seen, so looks are important. Distinctive How differentiated is a given name from its competition. Being distinctive is only one element that goes into making a name memorable, but it is a required element, since if a name is not distinct from a sea of similar names it will not be memorable. It's important, when judging distinctiveness, to always consider the name in the context of the product it will serve, and among the competition it will spar with for the consumer's attention. A Distinctive name is self-propelling, because it is: A name that people will talk about. A name that works its way through the world on its own. A name that's a story in itself, whether it's at the local bar, on the job, or on CNBC. Depth Layer upon layer of meaning and association. Names with great depth never reveal all they have to offer all at once, but keep surprising you with new ideas. Another way to think of Depth is to consider the poetic qualities and value of the name: How does the name physically look and sound? How does it roll off the tongue? How much internal electricity does it have? What kind of meaning associations does it trigger? Does it work on many different levels? How does it sound the millionth time? Will people remember it? Is the name a constant source of inspiration for advertising and marketing? Does it have "legs"? Energy How vital and full of life is the name? Does it have buzz? Can it carry an ad campaign on its shoulders? Is it a force to be reckoned with? These are all aspects of a name's energy level. Another way to think of Energy is in terms of a name's personality: Does the name have attitude? Does it exude qualities like confidence, mystery, presence, warmth, and a sense of humor? Is it provocative, engaging? Does it command attention, respect, interest? Is it a tough act to follow? Humanity A measure of a name's warmth, its "humanness," as opposed to names that are cold, clinical, unemotional. Another though not foolproof way to think about this category is to imagine each of the names as a nickname for one
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of your children. Names with great Humanity are much more likely to generate emotional attachments from their audience: What does the name suggest? Does it make you feel good? Does it make you smile? Does it lock into your brain? Does it make you want to know more? Does it make you want fall in love with the brand? Positioning How relevant the name is to the brand positioning of the product or company being named, the service offered, or to the industry served. Further, how many relevant messages does the name map to? This is a hugely important category, perhaps the most important of all, and it usually merits an evaluation process all its own. Because no matter how great a given name is based on all the other criteria discussed on this page, if it doesn't map to the brand positioning, it will fail, plain and simple. Caterpillar and Virgin are both fantastic brand names, but they wouldn't work if you switched them between the two companies, because then they wouldn't map to the respective brand positioning. Sound Again, while always existing in a context of some sort or another, the name WILL be heard, in radio or television commercials, being presented at a trade show, or simply being discussed in a cocktail party conversation. Sound is twofold not only how a name sounds, but how easily it is spoken by those who matter most: the potential customer. Word of mouth is a big part of the marketing of a company, product or service with a great name, but if people aren't comfortable saying the name, the word won't get out. "33" The force of brand magic, and the word-of-mouth buzz that a name is likely to generate. Refers to the mysterious "33" printed on the back of Rolling Rock beer bottles for decades that everybody talks about because nobody is really sure what it means. "33" is that certain something that makes people lean forward and want to learn more about a brand, and to want to share the brand with others. The "33" angle is different for each name. Trademark As in the unavoidable reality of trademark availability. Scoring is easy here, as there are only three options, and nothing is subjective: 10 = likely available for trademark; 5 = may be available for trademark; and 0 = not likely available for trademark, and the final call can only be made by your trademark attorney. All of the names Zinzin presents during a naming project have been prescreened for likely trademarked availability. This category is the most cut-anddry of the bunch, because you can either get a trademark for a given name or you can't, and if you can't it doesn't matter how great the name is, you must discard it and go back to the brand positioning to find a name that does everything on this list AND is available for trademark. It can be a difficult, messy process, but the good news is there are always more great names out there you just need the right process in place in order to find them.
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These are the categories we scrupulously consider for every name we present to clients, and we've done it so many times that it has become second nature to us. But for those just stepping into these confusing brand waters, it often helps to rate names in each of these categories and compare the rankings. In the table below, we have attempted to quantify our impressions of several brand names in the music / media downloading sector by assigning up to 10 points in each of the nine categories; the more points, the better (90 maximum total points):
1. We can't know the actual positioning of established brands, so we're treating these names as if they hadn't been used yet and are under consideration for a product which has the primary positioning goals of being a very unique, energetic name that has the potential to become a powerful brand that is lodged in the heads of millions of consumers. 2. Since these are all established brands that all own their respective trademarks, they each get an automatic score of "10". For names under consideration during an actual naming project, for simplicity you may choose one of three options: "10" = likely available for trademark; "5" = may be available for trademark; and "0" = not likely available for trademark (at which point the name should be removed from consideration).
The point of this exercise is to break the names down into relevant components to better understand what makes some names better than others and why, and it should give you an understanding of how we arrive at the rankings you see in our name taxonomies, such as the one for Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) Names. Rarely will a name score the highest across every category, but the best names score consistently well. Ultimately, it's about defining "like" and "don't like" not in personal, subjective terms, but in terms of how well names support the brand positioning.
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DECISION MAKING Now you should have a clear idea about why certain names work better than others. But this exercise is also about feeling confident that you chose the best name for your company or product by understanding why certain names work best when all factors of name, positioning, and competitive context are taken into consideration. Clearly, you are not just choosing a name, you are also making a number of important decisions in order to find the pitch-perfect tone for your brand, for your voice in the world. Most corporations have no problem delegating marketing and advertising issues to the marketing department, but when naming is involved, especially naming the company itself or key products, suddenly everyone wants to have a say in the process, and it can quickly become politically and emotionally charged. Therefore, it is essential that you keep the number of people involved in a naming project to a minimum, that they have real authority, and that they all understand the ideas outlined above.
Next page: a blank Name Evaluation char for you own use.
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B L AN K N A ME E VA LU AT IO N CHART Here is a blank chart you can use as an exercise to evaluate names you are considering for your own project and see how well they support the positioning of your brand. Be sure to add some of your most successful competitors to this list, so you can accurately gauge how well your names can compete in the marketplace. Assign up to 10 points in each of the nine categories; the more points, the better (90 maximum total points):
1. How well a given name supports your core positioning for the brand you are developing. 2. For names under consideration during a naming project, for simplicity you may choose one of three options: "10" = likely available for trademark; "5" = may be available for trademark; and "0" = not likely available for trademark (at which point the name should be removed from consideration).
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The Zinzin Naming Manifesto

This manifesto represents a distillation of our core philosophy about naming and branding. Welcome to the conversation.
1. Let there be names.

T.S. Eliot wrote that the world will end with a whimper, not a bang. Perhaps. But it began most evocatively with a Big Bang. Did the Big Bang know itself by that name as it was happening? Doubtful the name came much later. In our world today, however, everything begins with a name. As you embark on the adventure of naming your company or product, you have the opportunity to create a Big Bang or a little whimper. Do the right thing make a Big Bang.
2. Grunts, squeals & crude vocalizations.

Communication began with grunts and squeals, crude vocalizations, painted images and a lot of hand waving. From this names evolved to identify the bison to be hunted or the ideal cave for shelter and ceremony. Names are the beginning of language, and from language sprang culture and civilization. But it all began with a name, and it's a good bet that the first name was probably "I". I am hungry. I want you. I need a new name for my cave painting business. The first "iBrand."
3. Name, rank and serial number.

For too many people and companies, a name is merely an identifier, a functional string of letters or numbers with little brand value. This is the baseline, primordial meaning and function of a name. As Wittgenstein puts it, "A name cannot be dissected any further by means of a definition: it is a primitive sign." The question is, what more can a name do for you? Quite a few things, actually, once you move beyond the primitive notion that names are merely descriptive, functional signs.
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4. Language is alive and on the move.

The way we write and speak today would have made people living in the 17th century, never mind Neanderthals, think us aliens from a far off galaxy. Things change, culture changes, languages are born and die, names come and go today's "Google" is not your grandfather's "International Business Machines." If you're looking for stability, go somewhere else. Language is on the move. It is a living, breathing organism, always changing, morphing, evolving. Don't fear this change revel in it.
5. Language is dirty.
Language is messy. It is governed by rules that are often broken and riddled with exceptions that give it life. In order to create the best possible name for a company, product, baby, horse, character, or other, you have to be willing to do anything and go anywhere with language. Nothing is sacred. Language is alive, and life is messy. When mucking about with language, don't be afraid to get your hands dirty.
6. Language is dead, long live language.

Language is the fruit fly's view of evolution rapid change, mutation, morphogenesis. It is capable of being influenced, molded, formed, deformed and reformed before our eyes and ears. It is a mutant made to be torn asunder and reconfigured. As William S. Burroughs wrote, "Language is a virus from outer space." We all have the capacity to be language biologists, creating new life from the wreckage of old text.
7. Born of science, transformed into art.

Great names are born from a specific process approaching science in its rigor, but the result is pure art. From competitive analysis to brand strategy, positioning, name development, trademark prescreening, linguistic connotation screening, name evaluation and adoption, there's much more to successful naming than pizza, beer, a thesaurus and frenetic whiteboard scribbling. The goal of all this hard work is an
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evocative name with the power to set minds reeling, ignite conversations, spur involvement, create brand loyalty, and become embedded in memory.
8. Does the carpet match the drapes?

We talk a lot about brand positioning and how important it is, so let's define our terms. Simply put, the positioning of a brand is the set of core messages the brand demonstrates to the world, through tone, personality, emotion and narrative. So a better way to think about your task is in these terms: you are not naming a company or product you are instead naming the positioning of a company or product. Once you determine the brand positioning, only consider names that map strongly to that positioning. In fact, any names you consider must support the brand positioning in order to be successful.
9. Slay dragon, heal earth, reach nirvana.

What feelings do you want your target audience to associate with your company or product? Do you want them feel that they are creative, "outside the box" individualists (Apple)? Part of a large, connected tribe (Facebook)? Empowered to push themselves beyond what they think they are physically capable of (Nike)? Which archetypes The Hero, The Great Mother, The Mentor, The Guardian, The Herald, The Shadow, The Trickster does your brand most closely align with? Discover the epic ideas behind your brand and they will lead to your unique story and positioning.
10. Show me, don't tell me.

Great names demonstrate your brand positioning. Weak names force you to explain your brand positioning, and that's called advertising. It is very expensive, and not nearly as effective as demonstrating. Bear this in mind when considering the cost of a naming project; money saved now may cost you much more in future advertising expenses. The best product and company names require the least advertising, because they are advertisements in and of themselves.
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11. Don't be hogtied by arbitrary filters.

If the perfect name for your product is "Blue," but you have a naming convention that only considers geometric shapes and sounds, not colors, then you have an arbitrary filter in place that is limiting the names you can even consider. The only filter that matters is the Supports The Positioning filter all other filters, like "the name needs to be serious" or "it should start with a letter A" are arbitrary, exclusionary, and will lead you into a morass of bad name choices.
12. You can get it if you really want.

Clients often say to us that they got stuck when trying to name a company or product themselves because they are "not creative enough." We tell them, no, you are just as creative as us or anyone else, but your problem is that you have the wrong filters in place. The key is to focus on the positioning of your brand, and then look for names that best support that positioning, being careful not to filter out potential naming directions or, conversely, to allow anything and everything through.
13. When was the last time you enjoyed naming?

While there are definitely parts of a naming project that can be hard, challenging work trademark screening, due-diligence research, linguistic connotation screening, domain checking, etc. the actual name generation, discussion and deliberation should be engaging, thought-provoking, cathartic, stimulating, argumentative, enlightening, and just plain fun. You are creating a name that ideally will function as a very concise poem and catch fire out in the wider world. It's a rush. And yes, naming should be fun.
14. Misery is no mother.

Just because naming should be fun, doesn't mean it always is. But it's important that you have an open mind and allow yourself to be alive to the possibilities of what a name can do. You have to set a positive tone for this exercise right from the start if you're stuck in a miserable naming rut and the experience seems like torture, realize that you are doing something wrong, and change your approach. Companies and products are not born from misery or ennui, and neither are the best names.
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15. In celebration of all the milquetoast mousey wimps.

When naming, it never works to act out of fear. If you want to blend in with the competition and go unnoticed by the public at large, that's easy enough to achieve. But if you are positioning your company as a bold, adventurous risk-taking revolutionary, and you are afraid to adopt a name that supports such bold positioning, then your brand is in trouble the public will see through your attempts to be "bold" if you lead with a weak name. So don't wimp out; let your name be as powerful as your vision.
16. The risky business of risking business.

When naming, companies often make a fundamental mistake about the nature of risk. The faulty assumption is that they need a descriptive name in order to "describe what they do," or what their product does, because they "don't have a huge marketing budget" to do this describing. In other words, an evocative name that doesn't "describe what they do" is considered too "risky." This kind of thinking is prevalent across all industries, and it's also completely wrong. That's because a powerful name will create brand awareness, get the press to write about it, generate word-of-mouth buzz, engage with your audience and convert them to fanatic devotees of your brand. The generic descriptive name, on the other hand, will drown in a sea of sound-alike clones, and you'll end up having to pay a lot more money for advertising in a vain attempt to get the brand noticed by your glazedover audience. It may seem counter-intuitive, but it's true: in terms of the bottom line, "safe" names are risky and it's the "edgy" names that are actually a much safer choice, because of what they can do for your brand and the value they'll create.
17. Own the conversation.

The greatest brands are emotionally engaging, thought-provoking, absolutely original and tend to upend industries. They are not me-too wannabes, struggling to get a word in edgewise. Rather, they own the conversation in their market. This kind of dominance is what product developers aspire to, but sadly the naming of a revolutionary product or company often gets short shrift. Don't let that happen to you. A name can and should dominate an industry as much as a company or product. Aim high.
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18. Let your freak flag fly.

It's a very simple calculus: if your competitors are all doing the same thing, then you will stand out if you do something different. And the first and most visible point of differentiation is with your name. That's why every naming project should begin with a thorough understanding of the competitive landscape. Look for all the obvious and subtle ways in which your competitors do and say the same thing, and then find a new, uncharted place to plant your flag.
19. Burn your thesaurus.

Consulting a thesaurus is the first stop on the naming train for most people, who think that finding the right synonym will lead to the perfect name. It won't, because it's already been done to death. Go deep instead immerse yourself in art, read poetry and literature, study science. If you want an uncommon name, surround yourself with uncommon sources. Each competitor of yours that chooses a boringly "appropriate" name from a thesaurus is doing you a great favor.
20. Turbulent seas.

We live in a culture with so many signals coming at us so quickly, that most messages, including brand names, just get buried in the avalanche of tweets, calls to action, toll-free numbers, friend requests, dinner conversations, infomercials, podcasts, IMs, talking heads, talking points, advertorials and webinars. Everyone is in a hurry all the time, with advertisers and content providers often accelerating their signals to stay "up to speed" and lodge their nuggets of information into our minds before competing messages can take root. In this cultural feeding frenzy, individual messages can easily be lost. Notice an opportunity here?
21. Shelter from the storm.

The key to getting noticed in the turbulent sea of cultural messages is not to speed up, but to slow down. If your name can disrupt someone's ordinary routine, they will stop and pay attention. Perhaps only for a few seconds, but sometimes that's all it takes to create an initial engagement with a brand. In a world where everything is fast, it's only natural that slowing down perception can be a major point of differentiation.
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22. A word that paints a thousand pictures.

Old cliches never die, but they can often be turned inside-out. So while it's true that a picture might be worth a thousand words, a great name is a word or two that can paint a thousand pictures in the minds of your audience. If you want proof of this, hand a few leading names over to your graphics team to play around with. If they come back to you with, "We had so many ideas for what we could do with this one," it's likely a strong name.
23. I yam what I yam.

Keep your names, messaging and language real. Don't talk down to people. Don't insult the intelligence of your customers by condescending to them. Be real, genuine, honest, transparent, helpful, understanding, and authentic you can't fake it, and you can't advertise it. You must demonstrate these qualities, and since a name is the most prominent part of a company's brand image, you have to begin by not accepting empty, phony language into your company or product names.
24. Difruhnt, but not that different.

If your name is different for the sake of being different or extreme in any way just for the sake of being extreme, then it is doomed. The most powerful names are those that best support the brand positioning, no matter what, and depending on the circumstances, a name might be "extreme" or it might not. If your name is trying too hard to be different just in order to stand out, it won't it will blend in with all the other names that are also trying too hard, and failing, to stand out. Vive la diffrence.
25. 1.39 million very unique solutions.

When creating a brand name or any collateral messaging, avoid vacant, overused words like "solutions." A quick web search will confirm that you can find a solution for nearly every problem, except perhaps for the problem of having too many "solutions." Other empty vessels include "network," "business," "business solutions," "leading provider" ("leading" anything, for that matter), or the ultimate, "a leading provider of business solutions." Search that last phrase in Google, in quotes, and weep (1.39 million tears).
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26. Beware of geeks bearing gifts.

Beware "experts" who cloak their methodology in the jargony garb of fancy proprietary "black box" naming "solutions." Naming is hard work, and to do it right requires focus, passion and persistence, but rocket surgery it is not. If a consultant has a rigorous process for creating names, they shouldn't be afraid to share that with the whole world. You're better off hiring a couple bright high school students than an MBA wielding a Magic 8-Ball.
27. Visualize your arch rival's smirk.

When evaluating the names on your shortlist, perform this little thought experiment: imagine that your fiercest competitor has just re-branded, and their new name is one of the names you are considering (try it with each name). Which of the names would drive you most crazy with envy when, as you visualize it to the fullest, the smug CEO of Arch Rival, Inc., unveils their amazing new name to the world, the press writes stories about it, the blogosphere lights up, and the social media channels buzz like caffeinated honeybees? Conjure up as much painful detail as you can really wallow in it. This exercise will very quickly point the way to the best name on your list. And if none of the names would bother you if launched by a competitor, then go back to the drawing board until you have a name that does. It is often easier to imagine a competitor choosing a particular name than your own company choosing it, because the Arch Rival name adoption fantasy is divorced from your own internal debates and politics.
28. Focus groups can't save you now.

Many a troubled naming project began with a brainstorming session, but it's possible to do brainstorming right and add value to your naming process. Use this opportunity to get outside of yourself and hear divergent opinions; avoid being restricted by internal naming filters, preconceptions, or office politics; consider suggestions as concepts as much as potential names; and don't get emotionally invested in any given name before it has been properly trademark screened. A well-run brainstorming session can give everyone on your team the discourse and information needed to propagate, nurture and support strong names.
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29. Like snowflakes in a blizzard.

Invented names made from morphemic mashups are often praised for being "completely unique, unlike anything else that is out there." While this might be technically true, such names are only unique in the same way that every snowflake is unique; in a blizzard, however, the uniqueness of an individual snowflake disappears. The same thing happens when "unique" mashup names join the real world brand blizzard they vanish from sight, indistinguishable from one another.
30. Sibilants, plosives & fricatives oh my.

The lesson of snowflakes is to never confuse structural uniqueness the "genetic code" of an individual name, its unique sequence of letters with semantic uniqueness, its "uniqueness of meaning." Any name has meaning on some level witness the linguist's parade of sibilants, plosives and fricatives that often accompanies a new name unveiling. The trick is to create names that are meaningful, not just names that have meaning.
31. Measure your ingredients carefully.

One issue to resolve when looking at a product naming strategy is when and to what extent does it make sense to engage in ingredient branding naming individual technology components, such as GM's "OnStar" navigation system, or PCs with "Intel Inside." This is a tricky and nuanced area of branding to get right, and to avoid brand dilution it is important to strike a balance and only name ingredients when it makes sense to turn them into powerful sub-brands. Don't go on a naming spree just for the hell of it.
32. Frozen in the amber of brand equity.

When a successful brand has years of positive history and stories behind it, that is known as brand equity, which is something to be treasured and nurtured. But if a brand has been struggling, has grown tired, or has been damaged, its brand equity might better be described as baggage. If you have a successful brand in spite of a poor name, a new, powerful name can only help, and your customers will gladly follow your lead. But if your brand has fallen on hard times, then you have no real brand equity to worry about you've got nothing to lose, and you're free to reinvent the brand.
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33. Got them domain domination blues.

Don't be discouraged by the difficulty of securing a domain name, and don't let domains dictate your choice of names. It's far better to have a great brand name with a compound word modified domain than a weak name with an exact-match domain. Thanks to Google and social media, your brand can be easily discovered regardless of its Web address. The brand should always have priority over the domain name; the only exception being Internet pure-play companies, where the brand and the domain are one.
34. We don't need no stinking demographics.

It's not enough to just "produce" products for "consumers" to consume. You need to foster engagement with your audience. Live in the big world and be a part of it, treat individuals with consideration, and be open, transparent and helpful. That includes creating brand names that respect your audience's intelligence, are entertaining, memorable, and add value to the culture. Never forget that it's individual people, not demographics, who buy your products. People like you.
35. Rise up, zombie mall rats, rise!

The word "consumer," meant to describe your audience or the people who buy your products, is demeaning and should be banished. In the old days it made sense: you put out a product, advertised it, and then the "consumers" would come along, shell out their money, and consume your product. Today, the pool of people who mindlessly "consume" brands is ever shrinking. With so much competition, people expect a deeper emotional connection and dialog with brands. Ignore this at your peril.
36. Tell a good story.

Stories are how we connect with each other, and how people become emotionally engaged with brands. Successful brands tell the most and the most compelling stories. Since your name is the face of your brand, names that tell stories are much more powerful than names that don't. Part of that story value comes from what is inherent in a name before you adopt it, and part of that value comes after, with the stories you create and invest in your brand.
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Storytelling never ends it's how you turn a name that might belong to any company or product into a brand that can only belong to you.
Epilogue. Coda. Last words. And a call to action.

Great names are not a given. They don't just happen. They have to be created, advocated for, argued about, pushed through corporate resistance. They tend to polarize naming committees, who are adept at coming up with powerful and persuasive arguments why they should be rejected. All valid reasons why there are so few really outstanding brand names. But also an opportunity. We created this Manifesto to empower everybody who is interested in creating powerful names. It is a living, breathing document that we will revise and update whenever we have more to say. We invite you to join the conversation and help bring great names into the world. To be continued...
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Naming Case Studies

Below are quick snapshot case studies of select Zinzin naming projects. You can read all of Zinzin's case studies in their complete form in the Portfolio section of our website: http://www.zinzin.com/work/.
GOGO
When Aircell was ready to name this revolutionary new service, they hired us to make it happen. The name had to be memorable, fun (kids will use it to play networked electronic games), short (to be printed on and in the planes and airline collateral material), universally known, easy to pronounce, and map if possible to both the travel experience and the Internet connectivity experience.
ARIA
The name "Aria," from the world of opera ("an elaborate song for solo voice"), perfectly captures the sense of art and elegance that this resort represents, and maps to the concept of a performance by a star that is nonetheless part of an ensemble. Aria is the star turn within the CityCenter opera, and is deftly positioned as, in many ways, the antithesis of the stereotype Las Vegas experience. Think cool and classy, not cheap and trashy, with nary a hint of "themishness," of pretending to represent some other place or time in the world.
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GROOVE
CamelBak hired us to name an amazing new product, their first water bottle with a built-in filter, allowing users to fill the bottle quickly with tap water and enjoy pure, filtered water wherever they go. We delivered with the name Groove, which captures the spirit of life in motion, of being "in the groove," "getting your groove on" and "feeling groovy." It also maps nicely to the physical attributes of the product, with the filter slipping into a "groove" within the straw chamber and the patented CamelBak "bite valve" mouthpiece playing off the phrase "tongue and groove."
AUDIENCE
DirecTV hired us to rename their 101 Network of original programming. We came to the conclusion, in conjunction with DirecTV, that here was an opportunity to create a television brand that was different, a name that was about the audience rather than about the product, and thus the Audience Network was born. To our astonishment, though the word "audience" appears in virtually every movie review and every article about a television network, it had never been used as a name in the television / film production industry or in the entertainment business. It had been hiding in plain sight, overlooked. "Audience," the essential element of all entertainment.
JUPITER WELLS
One of the most successful online retailers for blinds and window treatments hired us to name a new brand of upscale online window treatments. The new name had to be evocative, and stand out from the crowd of boring, mostly descriptive names in the window treatment space; rise above "blinds;" be charming and disarming; emphasize style; have some
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familiarity/meaning; be available for trademark AND exact match domain name; and if possible sound vaguely like it could be both a designer's name and/or evoke a nonspecific sense of place. We created the perfect name for this company in Jupiter Wells, a name derived from a very small, very remote Australian Aboriginal settlement. The name Jupiter Wells creates its own mystery. It is very unique among the competition, and people will naturally want to know more, which creates connection and emotional engagement with the consumer. Jupiter Wells demonstrates, rather than explains, a unique, entirely new perspective.
FIREFLY
The leading process server legal services company, Amicus, came to us in search of a new brand identity. They were looking for a name that expressed their vanguard corporate culture filled with bright people and bright ideas, and differentiated the company from all other legal firms that almost universally have either cold, legalistic names ("Amicus") or sound-alike strings of multiple partner surnames. The name needed to support the brand positioning of openness illuminating and demystifying an area of the legal profession that many people did not understand. It also had to be broad enough to work with any direction the company might take it in the future. Our new name for the company, Firefly, perfectly supports the brand positioning in the warmest, friendliest, most human and illuminating way possible.
ARTE
We worked with Nokia business units all over the world to name new mobile phone models for various global markets, including this gem, the latest incarnation of Nokia's legendary top-of-the-line 8800, which we named Arte and Sapphire Arte, two phones that are truly works of art, among the most beautiful consumer objects available.
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ANTIDOTE
Medical World Conferences, providers of continuing medical education (CME) for primary care professionals, hired us to create a new company name, positioning and tagline during a major corporate re-branding. The company was rightly concerned that the name Medical World Conferences limited their ability to grow their business beyond the medical sector and was tough to distinguish from the crowd of sound-alike competitors. The new name had to be warm, human, distinctive, eye-catching, memorable, and yet map back to medicine and the core service of continuing medical education. It also needed to work outside of the medical sector. And of course it needed to be a metaphor for all the company's brand positioning messages. Antidote has it all. It is positive, proactive and works on several levels for both the CME audience and future audiences. Antidote is, as the tagline we created says, "The cure for the common CME," meaning that Antidote is unique and remarkable in the world of CME providers. Antidote is also the remedy for medical professionals who dread the thought of compulsory CME. Further, because Antidote literally conveys "cure" and "remedy," it is an aspiration shared by all medical professionals indeed a big benefit of CME is to learn about new cures and treatments.
truTV
We were hired by Turner Entertainment Networks to create the new name for Court TV as part of an extensive branding initiative that also included a new look, new logo and expanded line-up. The new name? truTV. This new name reflects the networks popular line-up of series that offer first-person access to exciting, real-life stories, and is no longer restricted to court-themed shows. TruTV launched with great fanfare on January 1, 2008, and has been a great success for the network.
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PULSAR
For this naming project one of many we've done for Seagate we were tasked with creating a new name for not only a product but and entire product family: Seagate's initial foray into solid state drives (SSD), which "differ from other products within the Seagate enterprise portfolio because [they] leverage non-volatile flash memory rather than spinning magnetic media to store data." Seagate needed a name for this breakthrough product family that captured its futuristic essence and conveyed key concepts of speed, small footprint, power, capacity, durability and reliability. We created the name Pulsar, perfectly capturing these characteristics with a metaphorical, evocative astronomical term meaning "one of several hundred known celestial objects, generally believed to be rapidly rotating neutron stars, that emit pulses of radiation, esp. radio waves, with a high degree of regularity."
PRIMORDIAL
Soldier Vision, a defense contractor that developed vision systems for soldiers, police officers and firefighters, came to us for help with a name change. While their initial product was vision enhancing equipment for soldiers, it became clear that their customer base and product range was expanding beyond both the military and the field of vision. The old name was just too descriptive and limiting. At the core of their positioning, the company provides simple interfaces to complex technology with a minimalist design. The result is ultra high-tech systems that work with the operator in an intuitive, visceral, organic and primal way. Clearly, Primordial was the best word to capture all of those ideas in an interesting, never-been-done way, provide the company with clear separation from their competitors in the defense industry, and be a strong competitor in the consumer market. Primordial is also a great counterweight to hi-tech, the distance between the two being as big as it gets, making the pairing of concepts compelling and engaging.
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STREAMLINE
We have worked with DuPont on a variety of land and crop protection naming projects, creating whole families of names for products that control brush, weeds or pests for different crops or parts of the landscape. For this selective brush control herbicide product, we created the name Streamline, underscoring the precision with which this product attacks only invasive brush, not native plants.
EVOLVE
We have worked with Nokia business units all over the world to name new mobile phone models for various global markets. For their breakthrough new eco-friendly phone, Nokia wanted a name that would describe the environmental benefit of this particular model, but also serve as a rallying cry for environmental awareness both within the company and among consumers. We created the name Evolve to perfectly express this dual mission as a phone name and a call to action.
MONKEYBAR
Hasbro needed a name for their kid-targeted web destination, serving up online games, programs and activities across various consumer segments and brands. The name had to appeal to a range of kids, from 4-8 year-old boys and girls to Tweens aged 9-12, but still work for the secondary audience of Preschoolers aged 2-4 surfing the 'Net with mom or dad. We created Monkeybar as the perfect name to communicate a place for kids to come and monkey around.
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TheWit
Real estate development company ECD Co. hired us to name a new upscale urban business hotel for Doubletree, which opened in 2009 at the historic corner of State and Lake in downtown Chicago. The qualities of keen perception, sagacity, intelligence and humor invoked by the word "wit" perfectly fit the positioning of this new hotel experience, which we dubbed theWit.
JULY
Texas Pension Consultants engaged us to help them re-name and re-brand their financial services company, which provides business services such as payroll, pension and human resource management to businesses of all sizes. One of the key positioning points the name had to capture is "the freedom to focus on your core business." The name also needed to be fresh and different, yet fall within the parameters of the types of names associated with the financial services sector. That's right, the name had to be both intuitive and interesting, a pretty tall order. Financial companies are most often identified by names that conjure nature, stability, or longevity. July is much more than the name of the month that Julius Caesar named after himself. It is a name that covers all the established financial services cues, is fresh and different, and infers rather than shouts "Freedom," making it infinitely engaging.
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LANDSLIDE
SalesGene created a revolutionary new sales / CRM software platform and needed an equally revolutionary name for it. We created the name Landslide for this new product, a name so powerful and successful that in fairly short order SalesGene changed their company name to Landslide! The key positioning strengths of the name Landslide include: evokes overwhelming success (landslide victory) all-encompassing great energy, a force of nature, powerful and unstoppable software and service to prepare you for the changing (shifting) landscape depth, multiple meanings negative meaning adds depth and interest connection to the service (power, force, success) Landslide is a strongly evocative name that does it all. It's not the first time one of our product names has gone on to become a company name as well, and we don't expect it to be the last.
ZOUNDS
We have worked on a number of technology and medical / healthcare industry projects over the years, and one of the most gratifying was naming a new advanced-technology hearing aid and audio products company. The brand positioning we developed with the client required a name that would help the company own the idea of sound, carry some excitement, and somehow imply a bit of European / Germanic hi-tech audio expertise. There was only one name that could capture all three of these core ideas, and that name is Zounds.
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TWINE
"Web 2.0" is all the rage in media and technology circles, but when Radar Networks hired us to name its revolutionary new personal and group information manager web application, they were touting their product as "Web 3.0." What? Web 3.0, AKA the "semantic web," promises the next generation of web intelligence and advanced data mining, connectivity, and meaning. The mission of gathering all this information and "tying it all together" led us to the perfect name for Radar's new kind of personal and group information manager product: Twine. An elegant word for a deceptively simple physical object, Twine also contains the verb form, meaning "to twist together; intertwine; interweave."
THE ADDRESS
Emaar Hospitality Group is renowned for building master-planned communities such as the $20 Billion Downtown Burj Dubai development, which comprises Burj Dubai, the world's tallest building; The Dubai Mall, the world's largest entertainment and shopping mall; Burj Dubai Boulevard with retail shops and restaurants; Burj Dubai Square; The Lofts; the Old Town and Old Town Island; man-made lakes and landscaped parks and gardens. Emaar hired us to help it create the name for a new 5-star hotel and global luxury lifestyle brand, with hotels to be located throughout the Middle East and in key feeder markets in Europe and Asia. The new hotels cater to intra-regional leisure travelers throughout the Middle East. However, the brand needed to accommodate business travelers and long-haul international travelers to the region, primarily from Europe, Asia and India. The chosen name, The Address, captures the sense of spectacular location advantage, that this is where it's happening, this is the place to be.
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SHOWCASE
Seagate hired us to name a number of new digital storage products, beginning with a new external box optimized for recording highdefinition movies and TV programs. The name Showcase elegantly maps both to the experience of "showcasing" selected content by recording and archiving, as well as the functional attributes of being a "case" for holding "shows."
FIREBRAND
The Training Camp, a UK and Germanybased IT training company, decided to go out on its own and become independent of the American company that shares the same name. Going independent required a new name, and the company wanted a powerful name that captured its spirit as philosophical and tactical disruptors within the IT training industry, pioneers of an intense, immersive, accelerated approach to IT learning that is far ahead of its competitors in the European market. So they hired us to make it happen. The new name had to work specifically in the UK and Germany, as well as across the whole of the European IT community that the company serves. We created the name Firebrand with the ethos of the company in mind. The definition of a concept, idea or person that challenges outmoded beliefs and methods suits the way Firebrand Training delivers industry-leading training as well as embodying its approach to the industry.
ZENO
A startup company based in Thailand hired us to name a revolutionary new advertising display media five years in the making that we had to see to believe. So we did, and were blown away, and by the end of the naming project we had crafted the perfect name for such an enigmatic paradox of vision: Zeno. The name
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also had to have global availability, reach and pronounce-ability, which we made sure of by running linguistic connotation screens in twenty-four languages. Zeno of Elea, of course, was the famous Ancient Greek philosopher (circa 495-430 BC) who formulated paradoxes that defended the belief that motion and change are illusory. Zeno is a unique new advertising display medium that delivers moving ads to moving people. Still frames from short video clips move optically with the viewer, following and responding individually to each and every viewer, without the use of any electronics or moving parts. The "motion," of course, is illusory. A paradox. A Zeno box. Zeno is a uniquely personal interactive experience, coming soon to a public space near you, worldwide.
OASIS
For our second magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) device naming project for Hitachi Medical Systems, we were tasked with naming a breakthrough new open MR product. Open MR devices are not fully enclosed, and therefore are more comfortable for patients (less noise and confinement); open MR devices also have a greater imaging range than traditional, closed systems. The positioning goal was to highlight the idea that this device, rather than being a source of patient discomfort and physician frustration with scanning limitations, is instead a refuge from such drawbacks of the past, a haven where the physician can more accurately diagnose a patients medical problem without causing the patient to suffer more discomfort in the process. Thus, Oasis was born.
MOJO
iN DEMAND Networks hired us to create a new name for a high-definition television channel to feature original programming for men that would eventually replace the company's flagship INHD channel. One consideration was keeping the name short so it could work easily as a "bug", the logo that TV networks place in the corner of the television
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screen, yet be differentiated from the plethora of be-acronymed WETVs, METVs MTVs and BETs that saturate the TV Guide. And having the name of this men's channel start with the letter "M" would be a nice bonus. They concurred that the perfect name for the channel is MOJO. Of course, the word "mojo" means personal magnetism, life force and magical power. It came to the English language from Africa over one hundred years ago, but reached the status of pop culture phenomenon as the source of Austin Powers' manly powers. Get your MOJO working!
PREVATHON
We have worked with DuPont on a variety of crop protection naming projects, and for this product, made for rice and vegetable growers in the Asian market, we created the invented name Prevathon, a name which conveys the key product attributes of "prevention" and "long lasting" in a way that is easily understand across diverse global markets.
LUNA
When the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer decided to begin aggressively branding its products with evocative names in addition to the alphanumeric model numbers they have traditionally employed in product naming, Nokia hired us to help them out on a variety of projects. We named the Nokia 8600 "Luna," named after the Roman goddess of moonlight who was often represented as a mysteriously captivating beauty encircled in a soft, yet radiant light. Like this phone.
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FREESTYLE
The EA SPORTS division of Electronic Arts hired us to name a new sub-brand aimed at a growing, more casual sports gaming audience. The new brand features games that, while based in sports, are playful, inclusive, casual, and easy to pick up and play for kids and parents, women and men, and casual and hardcore sports fans of all ages. Jump in, have fun, anybody can play, express yourself, and bend all the usual rules. That's what it's all about. Freestyle takes sports gaming to a whole new level, for a vast new audience.
HEARTSTRING
When Guidant's cardiac surgery division, now owned by Maquet, hired us to name their breakthrough new proximal seal cardiac surgery device, they wanted a name that would be as elemental as the new product, and help them dominate this market space. Our assignment was to come up with a name that would achieve common, default usage. A name that would spread, pardon the pun, virally. And thus "Heartstring" was born, and it has done just that. The Heartstring device is a coiled string that is used in place of a clamp when making a graft to the aorta during beating-heart open heart surgery. Besides being descriptive, we chose Heartstring because it has a secondary emotional meaning ("tug at heartstrings"), and because when the procedure is complete the surgeon literally "tugs on the Heartstring" to uncoil and remove it from the aorta. Since the name has three points of connectivity with the audience, we knew the chances were great of it attaining the Holy Grail of default usage. And it has.
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CROSSFIRE
After creating the new company name Rivet Software for the leading provider of internal and external financial reporting and analytics solutions, we created several software product names, including this one, Crossfire, a powerful name that maps to the enterprise crossfunctionality of this breakthrough integrated XBRL product. When corporations fire up Crossfire, they can be assured of the highest quality financial reporting every time, in full compliance with the SEC, in a user-friendly package that makes it all much easier. That's powerful.
VENEER
We created the name Veneer for a fullservice interactive design studio, specializing in web development, identity design, and social media. Anybody can make a pretty website, but Veneer goes deeper, focusing first on the visual and interactive foundation of a brand, then mastering all the geeky details that make their beautifully designed websites actually work. What better way to create a conversation between front-end design and back-end power, between surface and depth, between form and function, than with the name Veneer? Because great design is more than just a pretty picture, and the beautiful surface is only as strong as the underlying structure that supports it. Plus, Veneer is a cool, mysterious, playful name whose value no designers outside the simulated wood grain industry seemed to recognize.
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GROOV
Momentive Performance materials, the spinoff of General Electric's advanced materials business and still partly owned by GE, hired us to name GE's breakthrough caulk product. What makes this product revolutionary is an entirely new chemical technology that combines the long-lasting durability of silicone with the drying speed and ease of use of acrylic. Clean and easy to apply, this amazing caulk stays in the groove you lay it down in, and so we created the name Groov, a name with many layers of literal and metaphorical meaning, as the perfect name for this product.
MOSAIC
Fontana Lithograph/Affiliated Graphics was the name of one of the biggest, most respected and innovative printing shops in the Washington D.C. area. But for a variety of reasons it was time to rebrand the company. The strategy behind Fontanas choice of a new name dictated a finely nuanced, pitch-perfect result. The most basic task the new name had to fulfill was to eliminate the distractions inherent in their one company being known by two distinctly different names, Fontana and Affiliated Graphics. Simple enough. Things got really interesting when the client told us that they wanted to define an entirely new business segment, Corporate Print Collateral Consulting, while retaining their core identity as printers. Also critically important was that the new name not suggest that they were muscling-in on the territory of their client base that includes advertising agencies, branding consultants, and graphic design shops. Their new consulting business is all about managing and strategizing the printed collateral that a large enterprise produces to establish their image. Mosaic is the one name capable of conveying the idea of arranging many visual pieces into the most effective presentation possible, while at the same time capturing the idea of printing and walking the razors edge between all of Mosaics communication concerns.
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PIPELINE HD
Seagate hired us to name a new internal hard drive optimized for recording high-definition movies and TV programs, which we named Pipeline HD. The drive is featured in Seagate's new Showcase external enclosure, which we also named, as well as in OEM DVRs and other media center products. The name Pipeline HD conveys the "fat pipe" of high bandwidth and massive storage required by high-definition content, as well as evoking the legendary Banzai Pipeline surf reef in Hawaii as a metaphor for "channel surfing." Adding the descriptive appendage "HD" conforms to company functional requirements to clearly differentiate this as a specifically high-definition product, which also conveys that it is designed and optimized for home DVR and media center use.
ORIGIN
We created the names Echelon and Origin for Hitachi Medical Systems' next generation magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine and the operating software that controls it. Hitachi has a great reputation for reliability and customer support, and they were looking for easy to remember names that positioned the products to stress their excellent image quality, speed and performance, along with efficient, easy operation, reliability and strong ROI. Origin, Echelon's operating software, speaks to its primacy as the beginning of the MRI process, of being integral to the analysis of the MR images, and the "origin" of the diagnosis that leads to healing the patient.
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THE SIGNATURE AT MGM GRAND

MGM Grand Las Vegas hired us to name its new three-tower high-rise luxury condo-hotel. These towers are on the MGM Grand property, but have separate check-in and guest services, representing a new standard of luxury in Las Vegas hotels, and the ultimate that MGM Grand has to offer. The name had showcase both the location and the aura of the MGM Grand hotel brand, and our solution, The Signature at MGM Grand, perfectly expresses this positioning.
MIRAGE
We have worked with a number of different Nokia Business Units throughout the world, including the United States, where we created names for several striking new phones for Nokia's CDMA division that will be carried by Verizon. The central positioning theme for this family of phones, from the entry level to the high end, is mystery, illusion, paradox, transformation, and "more than meets the eye." The first phone in this family to be released with one of our names is the sleek, compact, entry-level Mirage fold phone.
RIVET
Aucent Corporation hired us to rename and reposition their company and to name several new products. Aucent's core business is XBRL business reporting and financial data analysis. XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is the new standard to prepare and analyze financial information. The company's new name, Rivet, covers all primary brand positioning requirements, and more:
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Strength, reliability, dependability. Old-fashioned stability in an often fluctuating high-tech environment. Construction metaphors, tying things together, building immense structures (or data reports) one rivet (or "nugget" of data) at a time. Great action verb associations, from riveting your attention to riveting the structure and data together. Frog imagery/icon/mascot, the "ribbit" of frogspeak evoking the name Rivet. While the majority of Rivet's competitors are positioned merely as companies or service providers, Rivet has the potential to become a strong, memorable, and top-ofmind brand. The opportunity here is to build a solid brand, create pathways for brand recognition, and lay the groundwork for brand loyalty. Just by having a well-defined brand, a key differentiator from the competition is already in place.
WHOOP
When a company called XOsphere hired us to re-name them, it was clear to us from the very beginning that here is a company that "gets it," as in truly understands where their invented start-up name fell short as a brand and what a great name could do for their business. XOsphere had created a powerful new mobile content platform that was truly phoneand carrier-agnostic, and they wanted an exciting, exuberant name that would match their vision and serve as a lightning rod for companies and the public to adopt this content platform. The name ideally had to be a short verb, as well as exciting, inspiring, fun to say, memorable and extensible. Naming a groundbreaking new company, product or service is always the most fun, and this project was certainly no exception. The name we created for this amazing new content platform is Whoop, and the company is redefining the conversation in the mobile content space.
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TANDEM
Our client hired us to name a new, webbased marketing network portal that serves as a central hub for the purchasing and distribution of advertising and classifieds across multiple newspaper and media properties in Northern Ohio. They wanted a name for it that would emphasize the concepts of consolidating all their media in one place and the synergy of having it all work together seamlessly. The name also had to avoid any local geographical references, as the network might expand in the future to other localities. We delivered the perfect name: Tandem Media Network, mapping to all the various parts of the network working together. Across northern Ohio, businesses looking for the best media advertising opportunities are working in Tandem.
BIGFOOT
The Smartware Group was force by a trademark conflictto change the name of its "Smart Maintenance" flagship CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System) software product. The company had long known that they have a great and loyal customer base, a powerful-yet-easy to use product, and a great helpdesk, making their product the best in its class. What they were missing was the ability to stand out from the pack of other products in the market place with sound-alike names such as SuperMaintenance, Maintenance Boss, etc. So this became a perfect opportunity to re-brand. We created the name Bigfoot to replace the Smart Maintenance brand to convey the depth and breadth of the product over all aspects of a company's maintenance management and to immediately differentiate this powerful software platform from its competitors in a way that's not only very different and memorable, but humorous and intelligent as well.
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TRIDENT UNIVERSITY
TUI, an online university founded in 1998 that serves all members of the U.S. military, came to us with a unique re-naming problem. They needed to differentiate themselves from an old TUI entity they had split off from, and they wanted a more evocative name that reflected their spirit, but they also needed to retain the acronym "TUI" in respect to all their alumni with degrees from TUI. The name we helped TUI choose, Trident University International, perfectly captures their spirit, fits well with their mission and constituent community, and satisfies all the baseline requirements of the project.
ANTHEM
In July 2009, a New York woman became the first American recipient of a new generation of wireless cardiac pacemaker that monitors the patient 24/7 via WiFi Internet connection, and that pacemaker, Anthem, was one of several products we named for St. Jude Medical. St. Jude hired us to create the perfect name for this breakthrough product, and we delivered. An Anthem is a rousing, joyous rallying cry of a song that many people can sing together, just as the Anthem pacemaker "sings" its patient data to the Internet, allowing doctors to monitor patients and catch future heart irregularities before they become critical.
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RADIUS
The biotechnology startup company Nuvios felt their name was generic and unmemorable, as well as a disconnect from their mission statement / tagline, "Improving life from the inside out." So they came to us for a new name. The company is a leader in the discovery and development of drug therapies for treating and preventing osteoporosis and metabolic bone diseases. We created the company name Radius, which maps directly to the tagline and advances the concept of the company as elementally essential and scientifically elegant, with an efficient, expanding drug discovery pipeline in osteoporosis and women's health. The "radius" is also, of course, one of the major bones of the human skeleton. The name Radius also helps to position the company as distinctly different from the mass of biopharma companies with anonymous, invented names, and completes the circle that begins with initial drug discovery efforts and ends with improving patient's lives. In short, the name fits the company to a "".
BAIT & TACKLE

The adult entertainment production company formerly known as PineTree Digital hired us to create a new name that captured the lively spirit, sense of fun and irreverence of this brand. They were all about shaking things up in an industry that usually takes itself very seriously, and branching out to produce adult entertainment for all persuasions, including video content that focuses a little more on "entertainment" and a little less on "adult." We delivered. The name Bait & Tackle perfectly captures the sense of playfulness and irony that this company is all about. And the client was hooked.
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ECHELON
We created the names Echelon and Origin for Hitachi Medical Systems' next generation magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine and the operating software that controls it. Hitachi has a great reputation for reliability and customer support, and they were looking for easy to remember names that positioned the products to stress their excellent image quality, speed and performance, along with efficient, easy operation, reliability and strong ROI. Echelon, with its various meanings a successive troop formation, a hierarchical level of authority maps well to both the physical nature of the machine (repeated scans of areas of the human body) and to its important place in the hierarchy of diagnostic tools available to the physician.
TCX ETHANOL
Global chemical leader Celanese hired us to name its revolutionary new ethanol manufacturing process that generates highquality ethanol from hydrocarbon feedstocks, rather than corn, for multiple economic and environmental advantages. The name TCX ethanol grounds this as new "Thermochemical Celanese X-process," tying it to the Celanese master brand and easily working globally.
CONSTELLATION
For our third naming project with Seagate, we were tasked with creating a new name for a business critical nearline enterprise data storage hard drive. The product is a large capacity drive for deep storage, but housed in a small (2.5-inch disk) form factor. The name needed to support the following positioning points:
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large amounts of storage a collection of important items a central storage repository the concepts of an immensity and magnitude that is both "infinite" and continuous Oh, and since the drive is an example of a "Green" technology by virtue of its best-inclass low power consumption, a natural world connection in the name would be great too. We came through with Constellation, which neatly supports all of the primary positioning requirements and is natural "to boot" (drive pun intended, naturally).
AFFINITY
Lansinoh, the leading breastfeeding brand, hired us to name its new double electric breast pump. The name had to be warm, approachable, and map to the harmonious nature of pumping two breasts at once, as well as emphasize the close connection between mother and baby. The name we created, Affinity, aptly conveys both the literal and emotional cues that represent this product, as well as acknowledging the great affinity between the company and its loyal customers. The soft sound and similarity to "infinity," the symbol for which is curvy and breast-like, are just icing on the metaphorical baby cake.
INTRIGUE
The positioning for this family of Nokia phones included concepts such as hi-tech, futuristic, premium quality, and sexiness, but as these phones combine great music players with the latest in mobile phone technology in packages that reveal their depth through exotic illumination on multiple displays, the concepts of mystery, illusion, paradox, transformation, and "more than meets the eye" were the most central to evoking the power of these phones. We delivered with the name Intrigue for this premium fold phone model.
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CRESCENDO
Riley Genomics, or RiGen, is building a comprehensive network of doctors, laboratories, IT infrastructure and software networks to vastly improve the effectiveness of rheumatoid arthritis diagnostics and treatment. But RiGen needed a new name to differentiate it from the pack of surname-saddled biotech company names and to support the brand positioning of capturing the excitement of "building momentum" toward better treatment and eventually a cure for this terrible disease. So the company turned to us for help. After considering many Evocative and Experiential names that mapped to concepts of momentum, movement, and the amplifying attributes of the network effect, we created the name Crescendo to perfectly convey the sense of power and the upwelling of hope and joy that is the great promise of their new approach to solving the scourge of rheumatoid arthritis and other rheumatologic disorders.
ACROBAT
The long-standing wisdom (fear) that a surgical device needed a "serious sounding" name to appeal to surgeons had been shattered. Medtronic has proven that, contrary to popular belief, surgeons are human. Shocking. Guidant, whose cardiac surgery division is now owned by Maquet, was determined to replace its failed Axius brand name with a warm, human, memorable name that also mapped to the product function and could compete with the Octopus brand. We delivered with the name Acrobat for an entire family of beating-heart stabilizer and positioner devices. The name Acrobat conveys the powerful combination of strength plus flexibility these cardiac surgery tools provide, and has been a winner in the marketplace.
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Zinzin Client List

Aircell Ames International Amway Antidote Audimas Bait & Tackle Bank of America BBC America Big Deahl Broadridge Bunge Cablevision Camelbak Canon Europe Cayenne Communications (Amsterdam) Celenese Cisco Systems Citrix Online City of Sausalito, California Clarity Cole Haan Corus Entertainment Coursekit Crescendo DGUSA DuPont EA SPORTS ECD Co. Emaar Entergaming Family Violence Prevention Fund Firebrand Firefly ForestEthics GAP GE/Momentive Guidant Hasbro Hitachi Medical Systems Houghton Mifflin iN DEMAND Institutional Venture Partners Intel IP.com July Jupiter Wells Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers Korea Stock Exchange Lansinoh Leap Wireless Magna Global Entertainment Medscape MGM / Mirage Microbia MicroTek Mosaic MTV Networks Nike Nikken Nokia Palm ParadyszMatera Perspective Partners Pioneer Primordial Quotezart Radar Networks Radius Raindance Raytheon Rivet SalesGene Seagate Selling Systems Seven Shaw Communications Smartware Group SoftBank Capital SonyMusic
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St. Jude Medical SunGard Higher Education Tegic TextWise The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation The Biography Channel The Boston Beer Company The Learning Channel Tickle Time Warner Cable Trident University Turner Networks UGC Europe USA Datanet
U.S. Oil Veneer Whoop Working Mother WR Hambrecht + Co Wrigley Wynn Las Vegas Xfire Yipes! Zeno Zimmer Zounds
The Compendium of Amazing Names (CAN)

Yes, we CAN! The Compendium of Amazing Names, or CAN, is a large directory we have created and filled with what we consider to be the best company and product brand names in the world. We in the naming industry often talk about what makes a name great, but as far as we know there's never been an attempt to document as many great names as possible, until we began collecting them in The CAN, where we briefly discuss what makes each name magical. Check out The CAN: http://www.zinzin.com/compendium-of-amazing-names/.
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Colophon
This document will be updated regularly with new content. Check for the latest version: http://www.zinzin.com/naming-guides-company-product-names/.
Zinzin
Zinzin 177 Post Street, Suite 650 San Francisco, CA 94108 415.857.5775 contact@zinzin.com
www.zinzin.com twitter.com/zinzinlive All Material 2011 Zinzin Group Inc
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Zinzin

The Naming Guide

v. 1.8 | October 30, 2011

They are advertisements.

Zinzin | The Naming Guide

Zinzin | The Naming Guide

Introduction: Who is Zinzin?

ABOUT OUR NAME

Zinzin | The Naming Guide

The Naming Process

Zinzin | The Naming Guide

Zinzin | The Naming Guide

Zinzin | The Naming Guide

Zinzin | The Naming Guide

Good Characters Word for Word

Zinzin | The Naming Guide

Namix Nomen Nomenon Nomina Nomino

Bizword Comspring Logoistic Macroworks Mnemonic

One Big Roach

Zinzin | The Naming Guide

Zinzin | The Naming Guide

5 4 3 2 FUNCTIONAL INVENTED EXPERIENTIAL EVOCATIVE

Yahoo! Northern Light

Mamma Opera Overture

Alexa Inktomi * Lycos Teoma Thunderstone

goHip mySimon WiseNut

MegaSpider MetaGopher MonsterCrawler SuperCrawler WebCrawler

Zinzin | The Naming Guide

5 4 3 2 FUNCTIONAL INVENTED EXPERIENTIAL EVOCATIVE

Jeep Jeepster Hummer Jackaroo Xterra

Element Avalanche Cayenne Safari

Land Cruiser Overland Range Rover Pathnder TrailBlazer Travelall

Armada Frontier Highlander Matrix Passport Samurai Silverado Tundra Typhoon

Grand Vitara Korando

Envoy Liberty Rendezvous Tribute

Zinzin | The Naming Guide

Bravada Escalade Sportage

Zinzin | The Naming Guide

Zinzin | The Naming Guide

NAMING PROCESS FILTERS

Zinzin | The Naming Guide

Zinzin | The Naming Guide

Zinzin | The Naming Guide

Zinzin | The Naming Guide

Zinzin | The Naming Guide

Zinzin | The Naming Guide

Zinzin | The Naming Guide

Zinzin | The Naming Guide

Zinzin | The Naming Guide

Zinzin | The Naming Guide

LINGUISTIC CONNOTATION SCREENING

Zinzin | The Naming Guide

Zinzin | The Naming Guide

Zinzin | The Naming Guide

Zinzin | The Naming Guide

Zinzin | The Naming Guide

Zinzin | The Naming Guide

The Zinzin Naming Manifesto

1. Let there be names.

2. Grunts, squeals & crude vocalizations.

3. Name, rank and serial number.

Zinzin | The Naming Guide

4. Language is alive and on the move.