Big Ahha

Choosing the right name for a new product, service, or company can be very difficult, frustrating, and time consuming. Choose the right name and people may immediately be interested and identify with what you are offering. Choose the wrong name and your customers may not ever find you, or if they do, they might not even give your product or service a chance.

When Darryl and I first set out to start our company, we struggled with what we wanted to call ourselves. We developed a list of potential names, but nothing really sounded right. We wanted a name that was short, memorable, and could potentially describe what we do (or the benefit of working with us). But, we didn’t want a name that would limit the scope of our business to just web design or just the web. While we did like all of the names that had the word ‘monkey’ in it, we knew that probably wasn’t the best idea for our company name.

The whole time Darryl had the name Big Ahha in the back of his mind. He had the idea to use the Big Ahha name for another project, but it seemed to fit with what we wanted in a name and what we wanted people to get out of our name. And, it just happened that Darryl already owned the domain.

Whenever we have gone through the naming process, some questions continually come up:

• Is the name memorable?
• Is the name easy to spell?
• We’re online, is the .com extension of that domain available?
• Does the name describe the product or service? Does it need to?
• Is the name catchy and/or clever? Should it be?
• What sort of image does the name portray?
• Is the name distinguishable from competitors?

Depending on your product and your market, it can be argued whether you need to answer yes to those questions, but you should at least think about the name and its ramifications. Ivory soap was originally to be called P&G White Soap. Would it have lasted a year, two years, or the 125 years that it’s been around with the name P&G White Soap?

Don’t let too little thought go into your naming process. This is what might happen (from Naming Pranks and Blunders on BrandingStrategyInsider.com):

• PwC announced in 2002 that it was to demerge its consulting division and rebrand it ‘Monday’ at a cost of $110m. Barely a month later it cancelled the rebrand.
• In 1982, Mitsubishi named its latest SUV Pajero after the wild cat Felis pajeros. After discovering that the word was a commonly used Spanish term for ‘wanker’ it renamed the car in Spain, the Americas and the UK.
• In 1994, telecoms firm Orange had to change its ‘The future’s bright … the future’s Orange’ ads in Northern Ireland. In that area, Orange is synonymous with the Orange Order; the implied message was that ‘The future’s bright … the future’s Protestant Loyalist’, which didn’t sit too well with the country’s Catholic population.
• When Starbucks opened in Germany its latte coffee caused amusement as ‘latte’ is a well-known German word for an erection.

Likewise, you don’t want to put too much thought into the name. Don’t let the process bog down other areas of development. If you are trying to come up with the perfect name and you are stuck, move on to something else. Get input from other people. Just don’t let it keep you from moving to the next step of developing your product or service.

If you need help in naming your company, product, or service, Names that spark on the Spark This blog has some good recommendations and references.

For a slightly different perspective on what is in a name, check out The Name Inspector. The Name Inspector is a linguist who has a PhD in linguistics and

takes a close look at names and tells you what makes them tick (or tank) from a linguistic point of view. He does not offer marketing treatises on branding strategy or corporate nomenclature. He is concerned with the linguistic essence of names: how they feel and sound when spoken, what they look like when written, and the meanings and moods they evoke in their contexts.