Why corporate names shouldn't sound like terminal diseases

"My Consignia is getting worse every month. What about your Endesa? Well, it's benign. Thank God!"

More and more corporate names created these days sound like they were picked from the latest list of incurable diseases in The New England Journal of Medicine. Obviously, this is not the intention of the consultants and creative people who seek to create names that are distinctive. But how do you create unique, ownable names when all the good ones are taken? And how do you avoid cryptic, almost ominous sounding monikers?

True, the name game is becoming increasingly difficult. There are more than six million words in the English language and nearly all of them are registered. Between 250,000 and 300,000 trademarks are filed each year in the U.S. alone. But is this a reason to appeal only to the fans of Greek and Latin?

Endesa, Consignia, Envisia and Axeda are all recent examples of this latest trend. Many of the occidental languages have roots in Latin and Greek, so a Latin-based name will be fairly easy to pronounce, write and understand in English, French, Spanish, etc. Don't get me wrong; some of today's great brand names have Latin roots-Volvo, which means "roll," for one. Even our own company name, Nomino, is a Latin word for " to name and make famous." But some companies have gone overboard. What has happened to the current-and living-languages?

With the economic slowdown in the U.S., stories of misappropriation of stockholder equity and the burst of the techno bubble (which carried more than its fair share of cool and stratospheric-sounding names), the public will tend to look for brands that are more conservative and down-to-earth in nature. We will probably see more "real," less frivolous names in the near future. So how can marketers reconcile the desire for "real" names with the fact that they are probably all already trademarked?

A "real" name is not necessarily taken directly from the dictionary as is. There are options to create names that look, sound and feel like real names, but in fact are original fabrications. And, real names don't need to be in English. Today, a brand name not only has to be memorable, distinctive, easy to pronounce and enduring, it has to work globally. And guess what? Although English is the business version of Esperanto, other languages can be used to create names.

Borders are a blur. Our population is multi-everything. We welcome 200,000 immigrants each year in Canada, so our two official languages are only a starting point. There is a school near my house with children of 65 different nationalities, yet few brand names take the multicultural route. If you want a name that is cross-cultural without sounding like the latest lab discovery, borrowing from foreign languages is a great avenue. Only a handful of this type of name exists, including Ariba and Tiburon (both Spanish in origin), but I believe that this will become the next big naming trend. In addition, foreign-derived words or names can take advantage of the particular image attributes of their native cultures. French for refinement, German for efficiency, Scandinavian for purity of design, etc.

"Reinvented" names like Acura or Agilent are derived from real words and are a great way to find a name that can be registered and is truly unique.

Another naming strategy is "arbitrary" names. It is as old as naming itself and fairly easy to do. Typical examples are Apple computers and Orange telecom. A real word paired with a descriptor or industry term is what makes the name real. The only downfall of this strategy, and not a minor one, is money. It takes a lot of it, along with a good dose of patience, to build the brand you want and need.

Another strategy to create a real name is based on word composition. Names like jetblue, Swatch, laserjet, powerbook and Nortel fall into this category. "Composite" names are the result of smashed real names, a process that makes them easy to understand and recognize.

These are a few examples of naming strategies to create corporate and brand names that don't sound like something contagious, and that will get you around the registerability challenge. There are many more.

No matter which strategy a company chooses, a good name should first and foremost communicate the brand attributes, be distinctive and memorable, unique and credible. It should also be linguistically appropriate, easy to pronounce and write, short and enduring. Last, but not least, it must be free of any legal constraints and ideally have a URL that is available.

ANTOINE CLÉMENT is the founder of Nomino Consultants, a naming consultancy with offices in Montreal and Toronto.