What naming is, or as you name the boat, so shall it float

Naming is the process of coming up with a name for something. The word most often means a ser­vice: find­ing a good name for a trade­mark, say.

The “offi­cial” name for the sci­ence of names is semone­mics. Whoever came up with it can’t have been very good at naming ;)

A project’s name cer­tainly affects how well it does. But does a beau­ti­ful name really matter, and will it bring us more customers?

It’s clear what adver­tis­ing people will say. Mikhail Lityuga, for one, insists that names should be left to pro­fes­sion­als, and that names dreamed up “by the com­pany direc­tor over a cup of coffee usu­ally have no com­mer­cial value”.

It’s equally clear that a good name can help a busi­ness and a bad one can kill it. The only ques­tion is what counts as a good name. Besides, a name is often just neu­tral and barely affects the busi­ness or its suc­cess, and such names are prob­a­bly the majority.

The web is full of exam­ples of bad names. I’ll add a car anti-theft system called Sprut (“The Octopus”, the Soviet title of an Italian mafia series), a real-estate agency called Anna-L and a gro­cery store called Black Rose. Odesa exam­ples, by the way.

I think naming should stick to one rule:

a mean­ing­less but short and easy-to-remember name (the sim­plest exam­ple: Apple) is better than a name that describes the prod­uct or ser­vice (what could be worse than a shop called “Groceries”?).

Probably my most suc­cess­ful naming was for a Ukrainian Digg-like news site, chuv.com.ua. Chuv is Ukrainian for “heard”. Admittedly, the good name didn’t save the project from dying.

Ukrainian-language naming is fas­ci­nat­ing in general. Again, Mikhail’s port­fo­lio has great examples.

Here are a few Ukrainian names of my own:

• for a Web 2.0 ser­vice for trav­el­ers, mandr (from mandry, “trav­els”, in the manner of Flickr and the other ser­vices of that wave)
• for a mag­a­zine about cul­ture, zlam (“break”)
• for an online store sell­ing PDAs, na doloni (“in the palm of your hand”)

There’s even a ded­i­cated name exchange, VotImenno (“Exactly”), for those who need a name for a project and those who like invent­ing names. If I’m not mis­taken, it’s a prod­uct of Dmitry Davydov, who is well known on the Russian-speaking internet. Though maybe it’s a dif­fer­ent Davydov.

P.S. Škoda Auto: shkoda is Ukrainian for “harm” and “what a pity”. Don’t you feel sorry for your car?