Secrets of naming: history and useful tips
“As you call a ship, it will float in the same way” – popular wisdom, which works in all spheres of life, including business. It is not surprising that a whole area of knowledge, known as naming, is devoted to the problems of proper names for brands and companies. Moreover, there are quite a lot of companies in the world that specialize in developing the right in terms of success and attracting the attention of the audience for the names of brands, enterprises, brands, etc. About what is naming and how to use it correctly, we will tell in our material.
Naming: how it all began
Issues of catchy and appropriate names for business have been worrying entrepreneurs for a long time, because it depends on this whether the company will be lost among competitors and whether it will be able to attract the attention of potential customers. Moreover, some tend to believe that it is on the name of the brand depends on its success. It is very difficult to say how this is true. But, having rummaged in the depths of world business, one can come to the conclusion that almost all world companies that have earned success have rather bright names with a certain subtext:
Steve Jobs called his company Apple, because he loved apples. He suggested that partners find the best option, but they could not offer anything;
the Canon trademark also has a certain meaning. The company is said to have received a slightly modified name for religious reasons and in order to simplify the perception of the name in honor of the Buddhist god of mercy Kwanon;
Adobe has this very name because the Adobe Creek river flowed behind the house of its founder John Warnock;
Larry Page and Sergey Brin at first wanted to call Googol, which in translation means a number with 100 zeros, its search engine, which in just a few years could become the most visited resource not only in its own country, but also far beyond its borders. But then, whether by virtue of a certain error, or specifically, the name was modified before Google;
Kodak became the market leader with this name because the favorite letter of its founder George Eastman was “k”, which is why he tried to pick a word that begins and ends with this consonant.
It is worth noting that, before making naming into a separate science at the beginning of the 20th century and even later, businessmen did not pay close attention to the names of companies and used abbreviations of their names for this purpose. According to this principle, for example, the Casio brand (in honor of the company’s founder Casio Tadao), Honda or HP (Hewlett Packard) appeared.
Secrets of successful people: How to start a business
Today, quite a lot of companies and agencies specialize in naming and branding issues. Among the leaders are the following:
Landor has been developing and promoting brands for over sixty years. Among the regular customers are companies like Sony, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, Philips, etc. The appearance of Landor in 1941 caused a real upheaval, and its success provided a non-standard approach to work and communication with customers. For a long time the company’s office was located on the river ferry and became a kind of symbol. Landor is known for using its own naming techniques, based on focus group research, market analysis, thorough product research, and some of its own innovations. The company’s specialists guarantee one hundred percent success.
One of the offices of Landor, located in the USA
Interbrand is one of the most well-known brand consulting companies with offices in more than twenty countries around the world. Employees of the company use the concept put forward by its founder at the dawn of formation and asserting that there is a great idea behind each brand. Interbrand tracks all trends in a developed brand, name or brand, analyzes the position of consumers and creates memorable names.
Lexicon is a company that specializes in naming only. Founded in 1982. In the course of their work, Lexicon employees form a list of possible names for a business or product and provide it to the customer. The latter should choose from the list the most suitable option. The methodology of the company was formed with the assistance of leading philologists and sociologists, it is based on five principles of naming – “design”, “use of already existing”, “creation of neologism”, “classical allegories”, “reduction”.
