How To Create Names Like Facebook, Instagram & Snapchat

 

Instagram and Snapchat are identical constructions. Each simply substitutes new words from an accepted utility name: Instant Message. Insta & Snap are synonyms for Instant, and Gram & Chat are substitutes for Message.

Since Instant Message is already a universally adopted name, you know that Instagram and Snapchat will be accepted as well. If what you’re naming doesn’t map to a two-word generic, break it down into one first.

You can do this by re-purposing an unrelated, well-known compound word, as in Apple’s Wi-Fi base station being called “Airport” – a port accessed through the air. It’s easy to remember and readily embraced because everyone knows the word Airport already.

Proposing a name like Airport to a committee will be met with immediate pushback such as, “Everyone hates the experience of an airport” or, “Last time I was there they cancelled my flight, I had to sleep on the floor and I missed my child’s birthday” or “The first thing I think of is stress, long lines and bad service”- as if any of this will make the name less successful, which of course it doesn’t.

As soon as the name Airport is applied to a Wi-Fi device the primary definition disappears, your audience puts the clever double meaning together in their heads in an “aha!” moment, and they smile at the warmth & humanity you’ve brought to the game. Airport contains all of the ingredients of an unforgettable, best of breed name.

Because this simple concept is inherently difficult for bureaucracies, names like Airport are rare indeed – but they do happen.

 

“Vanillacide”: How Radical Concepts Are Destroyed By Too Much Consultation

From the book “Shoot the Puppy: A Survival Guide to the Curious Jargon of Modern Life“, by linguist Tony Thorne, Head of the Language Centre at Kings College London:

Vanillacide  

I first heard this bizword when I shared a microphone recently with a Californian, Steve Manning. The occasion was a BBC radio discussion of the ongoing craze for re-branding companies, something Steve, boss of the US naming agency, Igor (as in the doctor’s assistant in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein), is an expert on.
Vanillacide is an updated version of the old notions of death-by-committee, or the death-of-a-thousand-cuts by which new and creative proposals are diluted and diluted until they become universally acceptable – and wholly unoriginal.
Agencies like Igor pitch new names to companies looking for a change of image. In Steve’s own words, ‘The best way to get 100 people to sign off on a name is to come up with something that has no meaning and offends no one – the surest pathway to vanillacide.’
This example of what used to be called a ‘portmanteau word’, known to linguists as a ‘blend’, is formed by bolting together the suffix of ‘suicide’ (if you think of it as self-destruction) or ‘homicide’ (if you think it’s a crime) and the slang use of ‘vanilla’ meaning insipid, conformist or harmless, which probably began with the gay and feminist movements in the late 1970s.
It’s not only progressives such as Steve Manning who perceive a general tendency in global corporate capitalism towards a deadening uniformity. Insider ironists now refer to ‘blanding’ and ‘blandwidth’. Timid, over-systematised decision-makers are accused scornfully of ‘blanding out’.
Doubts about conformism coincide with growing doubts about the value of using focus groups to test new names, products or services. There is, however, a trick for getting round the play-safe herd instinct displayed by committees or focus groups: it’s sometimes referred to as ‘wild-carding’ and consists of giving your client a list containing your favoured suggestions, plus at least a couple of ultra-radical, even crazy solutions.
In rejecting the most extreme, they are likely to ‘compromise’ on something that is still fairly daring. It might not work for everyone, but the Californian corrective to vanillacide is to junk consensus-seeking and embrace go-with-the-gut antimethodology, or, to use another trendy biz-term, ‘corporate voodoo’.

Double Dutch

When you are in Holland you are always in The Netherlands, but when you are in The Netherlands you are only in Holland about half of the time. Many people make the mistake of using the two names interchangeably, which is considered an insult to the locals, depending on the circumstance, as is clearly explained here:

Calling the Netherlands “Holland” is like calling Great Britain “England”. Holland is the old name of the western provinces North-Holland, South-Holland and the small province of Utrecht. About half of the Dutch population lives in this region, where you can find the “four big cities” Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht.

In summary, Holland is a “Nether Region“, not a country. It’s an area within the country of The Netherlands.

Next time we’ll let you know where all things Dutch fit into the naming architecture, including, but certainly not limited to:

dutch-elm, dutch-elm beetle, dutch-kentucky syndrome, dutch-process cocoa powder, dutch-processed cocoa, dutch-type, dutch 200, dutch and flemish literature, dutch antique marble, dutch arch, dutch art, dutch auction, dutch auction preferred stock, dutch barn, dutch belted, dutch binding, dutch bob, dutch bond, dutch borneo, dutch boy, dutch cap, dutch capital, dutch case-knife bean, dutch case knife bean, dutch chair, dutch cheese, dutch chile, dutch clinker, dutch clover, dutch cocoa powder, dutch colonial, dutch colonial style, dutch colonization of the americas, dutch comfort, dutch concert, dutch corner, dutch courage, dutch cupboard, dutch curacao, dutch cut, dutch disease, dutch doll, dutch door, dutch door bolt, dutch east india company, dutch east indies, dutch elm, dutch elm beetle, dutch elm disease, dutch elm fungus, dutch euro coins, dutch famine of 1944, dutch flat, dutch florin, dutch foil, dutch football league, dutch football league teams, dutch genever gin, dutch gilt papers, dutch gleek, dutch gold, dutch golden age, dutch government in exile, dutch guiana, dutch harbor, dutch harbor–unalaska, dutch hip hop, dutch hip roof, dutch hoe, dutch iris, dutch island, dutch john, dutch kentucky syndrome, dutch language, dutch lap, dutch leaf, dutch leonard, dutch limburg, dutch liquid, dutch literature, dutch lunch, dutch marble, dutch master, dutch metal, dutch mineral, dutch monarchy, dutch monetary unit, dutch music, dutch myrtle, dutch national flag, dutch nazi party, dutch new guinea, dutch nightingales, dutch oil, dutch oven, dutch oven furnace, dutch paper, dutch parliament, dutch people, dutch pink, dutch politics, dutch process cocoa, dutch process cocoa powder, dutch processed cocoa, dutch pudding, dutch railways, dutch reformed, dutch reformed church, dutch republic, dutch revolt, dutch roll, dutch royal marines, dutch rush, dutch school, dutch schultz, dutch settle, dutch sewing, dutch shepherd dog, dutch terms using, dutch tile, dutch tilt, dutch treat, dutch type, dutch uncle, dutch war, dutch war of independence, dutch wars, dutch west india company, dutch west indies, dutch wife, early dutch renaissance, east India company dutch, fancy dutch marble, first anglo-dutch war, first anglo dutch war, fourth anglo-dutch war, fourth anglo dutch war, german or dutch brass, go dutch, going dutch, high dutch, hope dutch, in dutch, isle of hope-dutch island, isle of hope dutch island, kitchen dutch, klm royal dutch airlines, low dutch, middle dutch, my old dutch, old dutch, old dutch marble, pennsylvania dutch, pennsylvania dutch language, royal dutch shell, second anglo dutch war, south african dutch, the dutch monarchy, third anglo dutch war, united dutch provinces, upsee dutch…etc.