Un name could save us there life, that's what Homer tried to teach usOdyssey. When Polyphemus implores revenge against "Nobody” who blinded him, colleagues cyclops lo they mock. Ulysses he will still meet his punishment because his ego can't stand theanonymity. name is the only ticket for the 'eternity.
Eike Fuhrken Batiste Polka Dots, once theentrepreneur most admired of Brazil and today the most denigrated, used to put a "X" in name of its companies, for say he was capable of multiply il value. It was an explicit quotation from the parable of the loaves and fishes. Up to a point it worked and then it didn't anymore. Better leave religion alone.
Inventory, scientists ed Esploratori have date il name to their inventions and theirs discoveries. We have the Boson and the Higgs field, the Turing machine, Schrödinger's cat paradox and the most famous of all: the Pythagorean theorem, the mathematical proof that everyone has heard of at least once. Archimedes Pythagorean it is one of the most successful adaptations in English Language Italian company of the name of one of the most eccentric comic book characters Mickey mouse. The useless and often catastrophic inventions of the Pythagorean boast hundreds of imitations in cinema, television and fiction.
In United States in the golden age of capitalism the entrepreneurs, then branded as "robber barons”, rather than share their immense assets with the tax authorities, they donated huge capital, tax-free, at schools, university, museums, foundations e cultural institutions with the plea, promptly accepted, of give way their name to the institution beneficiary. Indeed some prestigious American universities they do not bear the name of the place or of the community where they arose, as happens in Europe, but lead il name of the capitalist benefactor. Few remember the name of the contemporary US president a Jane e Leland Stanford, but there are very few who have never heard of the Stanford University in the heart of Silicon Valley.
Netflixed & co.
Some names of initiatives, of services, of companies particolarmente innovative and even of historical events they have become names di common usethus entering the daily lexicon. A business dominant that fails because it can't keep up with a competitor who innovates at a furious pace, it is said that it comes "netflixed”, taking as paradigmatic the story of Blockbuster.
In English photocopy it is said "xerox copy” from the name of the multinational Xerox who built the first copier. In reality it was the company that changed its name to that of the photocopying technique, xerography, invented by an American physicist in 1938.
Redesign i borders of a electoral College in a majority system, for help un candidate, it is said gerrymandering, a word born from free association of Elbridge Gerry, governor of Massachusetts in the early XNUMXth century, e salamander (salamander). Coventrize, which means razing to the ground in a sudden and bloody way, comes from luck touched at city English of Coventry esplanade by the Luftwaffe in 1940.
No is there really no way to underestimate theimportance of a name in modern societies and in market economies. If a name è briefis does not offend no culture or belief but values it, if it is onomatopoeic e remember very well it can become one gold mine for an activity, a person or a community. Today must also mean something in Chinese!
Apple, watch out for that name!
But when yes choose un name for your own business you have to stay careful a not I'll blink i foot to nobody. For example, it lasted many years the cause brought against the Apple Computers (today only Apple Inc.) from the Beatles' music label, the Apple records (Apple Corps). An entire entry of Wikipedia is dedicated to this story. In the end it took the Supreme Court for solve la dispute in favor of Apple Computers.
Una dispute which, however, it is expensive cost to the latter: i Fab Fours, the most commercially viable band in the world and Steve Jobs' favorite, remained outside da iTunes, the busiest record store in the world, till at the November 16 2010. It may seem like a paradox but it happened forstubbornness of English etiquette, a stubbornness that is costata 500 million dollars to Apple in Cupertino; so it seems that this has paid to the other London Apple for the right di use il Apple name. The same denomination ofiPhone ha brought Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), e Cisco on the threshold of a courthouse.
Finally to cut off the bull's head Tim Cook ha deciso di nominate all the products of the house of the apple no longer with the ambiguous and predictable suffix "i", but with "Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC),” so from remove in between every possible dispute on paternity of the name. Here we have today Apple Watch, Apple Music, ApplePay and not iWatch?, iMusic or iPay. A solution deserve it final that Cook has"copied” from the competitor Google that for a long time Incorporates way their name in that of each new service or product. Google it's a name so popular as to be become un verb which, in fact, has expropriated the term "search on the Internet".
However, there are also cases of civic coexistence. In the pharmaceutical industry there are two Mercks, an American Merck (62 thousand employees, 22 billion dollars in turnover) and a German one (40 thousand employees and 11 billion euros in turnover) which peacefully divided the spheres of influence. It is a more unique than rare case (also due to precise historical circumstances), because disputes over trade names and names in general fill the shelves of civil courts all over the world.
Kering
That's why in the business world la choice of a name has become a real puzzle because of the innumerable parameters that must be kept together for to produce un name that can work without harm. The French luxury holding company known as PPR (Pinault-Printemps-Redoute ) has office worker of years and spent million euros to arrive in 2013 to the new one name di Kering, which is the fifth name of the group. Undoubtedly an apt name. The reasons for choosing Kering are summarized in an 11-page document that should become a textbook in business schools around the world. It was the Italian of the Milan branch of Interbrand to conduct the study that led to the identification of this name. On the his site (of Interbrand) there are important contributions to understand how to approach the matter of the name.
"The Economist,”, with the wit and humor recognized by the London weekly whose major shareholder is now a well-known Italian family, dedicated a article entitled "Nine billion company names” to the difficult work to find a name to a business. We offer our readers a summary, edited by John Akwood, of the article.
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Inspiring names and sad names
The Nine Billion Names of God (1953), by science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, tells the story of a group of Tibetan monks who intend to discover all the names of God combining together no more than nine letters of an alphabet of their own invention. Monks follow a belief that the world will become extinct when will accomplished this mission. They have been working on this project for 300 years and more are needed 15mila for to complete by hand the nine billion possible combinations. So they decide to rent one computer to do sooner. The computer gets to work and when elaborates thelast name possible, without much fanfare, the stars begin to go out: The IT world; ha started a become extinct.
One day we may discover that a similar fate could touch the business world, when all the slots available for i names of the companies will taken. In Western economies, in fact, the creation & di start-up happens at a frenzied pace. Even the emerging economies they are becoming global. THE companies si merge in dizzying combinations: The impending merger of beverage giants ABInBev/SABMiller will bring together dozens of subsidiaries including Anheuser-Busch, Interbrew, AmBev, South African Breweries and Miller Brewing.
Le companies they dedicate a lot of energy to find gods effective names. The name is in fact the first element to make a good or a bad impression. THE big names, as Google, Yes they can transform in verbs and enter the language vocabularies. THE depressing names with “Monday” (briefly was the name of a consulting firm) are a funeral drape on reputation.
Find un name can give however the torment, because it is just the overcrowding to have transformed the Research of a name in one mission Impossible. She even got there copyright law a complicate things: extreme care must be taken that no one can claim anything on the chosen name. The responsible major is, however, Internet: all the better names and even remotely imaginable ones have been sign up like web domains by speculators.
Invented names and surrogate names
A very recognizable brand like Guinness has been watered down in Diageo
The business of names has developed in four directions which all have the same limitation: expand theassortment of the names available without add originality. The first is the fashion of the invented names without any meaning in any known language, but have a few classical resonance. An example is totvs, a Brazilian software house, with the Latin “v” for “u”. The trends è started with Zeneca when in 1993 it spun off from Imperial Chemical Industry, a UK chemical company, to become a biopharmaceutical house. Zeneca was also coined by Interbrand who worked on a name that it was between letters di start e maintenance ofalphabet (or vice versa), no longer than three syllables and that it was easily remembered. Two recent additions to the genre are Mondelez International, maker of Oreo cookies, formerly part of Kraft, e Engie, the new name of the French utility GDF Suez. These name surrogates, while preferable to a random cocktail of letters of the alphabet, in the end they get theoutcome contrary to what they intend: losing each meaning blatant, show la lack di soul when instead they would like to show the human face of the company. Diageo imprisons one of the brands with more history as Guinness in a password completely not significant.
Il technological boom gave the industry a name momentum huge with an incredible introduction of neologisms: Google he took his name from the mathematical term 10 to the hundredth (a googol) to Tesla (the electric car manufacturer) fromunit of measure of the magnetic flux density. But there are also a lot of baloney in the name of technology companies. Too many have a weird name (Yahoo!) or sickly (PayPal). Tech businesses are plagued by terminological imitation or from product mimicry like the trend of embedding the word “buzz” (from BuzzFeed) or the “-ify” suffix (from Spotify).
Creative names that half would be enough
The third direction sees the iinflation of the creative names, somewhat the equivalent of beard fashion among young maverick hipsters. Yes from for discounted is are the opposite of the names that companies generally have: concrete rather than abstract, catchy rather than lame. Instead like the hipster beard not they increase il value of who wears them. Orange was probably thelast feat to be named as a fruit. There are now a lot of businesses of financial services that they give seductive names (Wonga and QuickQuid) just to let to regret the beautiful times gone when the banks took the name their founders (Lloyds) or banal acronym (HSBC).
La globalization not ha brought to that rinascimento of the names that could be expected. Mark Lee of Watermark & Co, a clever name for a branding consultancy, points out that four of the ten more big business of the IT world; they have the password "China” in their name (e.g. PetroChina). To the Latin Americans like the "X”, as in Cemex and Pemex. Eike Batist has an "X" on all of her businesses to signify that she has the ability to multiply the value of her invested capital, but then went bankrupt.
Extremism and common sense
Businesses are resorting to mezzi ancor more desperate for go out bycrowding of names. We arrived at assemble letters in a cauldron verbal (PingStamp) or ad alter passwords user common so as to make them look like mistakes (Kabbage), or ad stick words disconnected semantically (Digital Marmalade). The most irritating fashion is that of to coin of the names they seem writings from a illiterate: the letters are jumbled up so arbitrary (Flickr). It also comes to use la and commercial (&) without any criterion obvious: Booz & Company, a consulting firm, was acquired (by PwC) and changed its name to Strategy&.
In Clarke's story, the computer programmer hired by the monks designs "circuits suitable for eliminating ridiculous combinations". In the business world the top defense against nonsense is the common sense. There is still a long way to go to exhaust the equivalent of nine billion names. There are still many good names to choose from: Google chose a clever name, A, for its holding company. But having come to give a name to the Alphabet website, they came across the "nein" of the Bavarians of BMW, the former owner of the non-transferable Alphabet.com domain. What did Google's jokers do? They bought the domain name abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.com to which the more reasonable abc.xyz was then preferred.
There are actually still a lot of words in all languages that are good and still don't offend anyone. It's better to be old-fashioned than absurd: better Smith & Jones than something just to fill the Scrabble boxes. The best companies can survive lame names, but a good name cannot save a lame business.
