Blended Words: Nameforming Session
A name is a word; the definition of that word is the brand. So a good source to find a name is a word: dictionary words — Visa, Discovery, Crate & Barrel, Twitter — misspelled words — Flickr, Lyft, Google — or words from another language — Reebok [antelope in Afrikaans], Jägermeister [master of hunters in German], Roku [six in Japanese], Panera [bread basket in Spanish].
Another good source for a name is … a name. Whether a founder — Marriott, Jacuzzi, Ralph Lauren, Ben & Jerry’s, Black & Decker, Trader Joe’s, Bridgestone [founder Shōjirō Ishibashi’s last name translates to stone bridge, or bridge of stone] — a relative — Monsanto was named after the founder’s wife, Wendy’s for the founder’s daughter, Clif Bar for the founder’s father — a mash-up — P. F. Chang’s is restauranteur Paul Fleming’s initials, and a simplification of the last name of founding chef Philip Chiang — from literature — Starbucks, Warby Parker — from history — Cadillac honors the founder of Detroit, MI — or completely invented — Betty Crocker — a proper name can be a good starting point for a brand name.
A brand name can also be inspired by a place, either real — Patagonia, Amazon, Fuji — or imagined — Lands’ End, West Elm. It can have Latin roots — Vox [the voice], Sony [sonus means sound], Volvo [a verbform: I roll] — or mythological underpinnings — Nike, Pandora, Mercury Insurance. A name can even be built on an origin story — Gatorade was developed as a hydration beverage for the Florida Gators.
Ever present these days are affix names, formed by adding a prefix or suffix to a real word — Spotify, Blinkist, Playster, Owler, eBay, Vimbly. Naming trends, often fueled by widespread copycatting of a successful first use, produce cliché results that immediately feel dated. This particular technique begets names that feel unprofessional, immature, almost childish.
And speaking of where not to look, a wholly uninspired source for a name is an acronym. Founder groups are especially guilty of acronyming, and that is not without irony. The effort to recognize personal identity by retaining the initial letter of each last name actually eliminates the name recognition that each founder would contribute to the enterprise. Imagine an organization founded by Malala, Einstein, Springsteen, and Schwarzenegger. Impressive! But reducing those four mega-names to an acronym is a hot MESS. Changing the order is equally ineffective: ESMS or SMES or MSSE. A disassociated string of letters is meaningless, hard to remember, hard to pronounce, evokes nothing, stands for nothing. Defaulting to an acronym is a wasted opportunity to construct a defining brand name reflective of the synergy of the collaboration.
An exception: if a successful, well-regarded company outgrows its original core competency and/or their market shifts dramatically, an acronym may be one way to bridge the transition. When the telegraph became obsolete, and telephone service became mobile and digital, American Telephone and Telegraph went global and changed its name to AT&T. Similar success stories for 3M, IBM and BVD.
Additionally, a company can earn its acronym organically through longstanding public awareness and trust, and purposeful re-branding — think NPR, CVS, HP.
The draw of an acronym is its brevity — shorter names, all else equal, are better than longer ones. Rising in usage is the backronym — an acronym deliberately formed from a phrase whose initial letters spell out a particular word. Take EOS lip balm. Eos is the Greek goddess of dawn, but the name is a backronym of the evolution of smooth. Or, apparel company FUBU, a backronym of for us, by us. The result is a short, stand-out name — technically an acronym, but without all the acronym baggage.
All of the nameforming inspirations to this point have been grounded in existing words — a solid starting point because these words already have a known, shared meaning. Whether descriptive — Best Buy — or evocative — Gateway — existing words offer a tremendous head start in communicating key elements of a brand story.
Names from words at the descriptive end of the continuum are less memorable and will likely struggle to stand out from the competition, especially early on. And it is often harder to acquire a trademark for these names due to their generic nature. A spelling variation may offer some distinctiveness [or confusion] but will not help in the trademark quest — Kokakola wouldn’t get past a first-level search. Names from words on the evocative side may have a better chance of trademark acquisition, although “obvious” metaphors are as unlikely to be available as descriptive terms.
Further along the meaning continuum, beyond evocative, are names that are completely fabricated — Häagen-Dazs, Rolex, Oreo, Noom. Cadence, tone, and personality are precisely engineered to target a specific audience, yet these empty-vessel terms have no context, no backstory, no shared starting point. On the plus side, trademark acquisition gets a lot easier. But on the downside, it takes a hefty marketing budget to establish definition and meaning.
Midway between existing — harder to trademark — and made-up — expensive to define — are blended words. Screwdriver, mailbox, railroad, sunflower, ice cream, living room, merry-go-round — I can go on forever — are examples of a blended wordform called compound words. Compound words are constructed from two or more complete words.
Compound-word names — PowerBook, Facebook, Mastercard, Crunchbase, PayPal, TurboTax, Vitaminwater, OpenTable — I can go on forever — combine two heretofore unrelated concepts into one new thing. Similar to an oxymoron, the juxtaposition of dissimilar ideas is a very effective way to clearly and quickly describe the brand difference. It’s the shortest possible elevator pitch.
Side note, a coined name can take the form of a compound word. As example, Allbirds — an unexpected choice for a shoe brand given that all birds need no shoes. Though composed of real words, the result is an empty-vessel name needing a full-court press of marketing support to define its meaning.
A second category of blended word, formed by merging parts of other words, is called a portmanteau. Like motel [from motor + hotel] or brunch [from breakfast + lunch]. And, you know, backronym.
The word portmanteau is French for a large suitcase that opens into two equal parts. In English, it refers to a blended-word formation where parts of one or both words are truncated, creating a new word in the overlap. The first usage of the word portmanteau in this context was in 1871, in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass: Well, slithy means lithe and slimy. You see it’s like a portmanteau — there are two meanings packed up into one word.
Portmanteaux are tricky to get right. Well done, they roll off the tongue easily and feel like real words — Groupon, Pinterest, Netflix, Travelocity, Medicare. The meaning is obvious. The overlap is memorable.
Poorly done, a portmanteau feels forced, awkward, often cringeworthy. Though it’s been 20 years since Anderson Consulting rebranded to Accenture, the name still feels tortured and contrived. Though the portmanteau of accent and future — accent on the future — is an on-brand concept, the resulting word is hard to say — unnatural for an English speaker. [The name was submitted by a Danish employee in an internal competition, so maybe it’s easier for Danish speakers to say? Maybe “awkward in English” was a strategic objective, supporting their global scope?]
Another way portmanteau naming can go wrong is inflection. Meaning is muddled and pronunciation unclear if the blended word changes how a component part is accented. For example, an antacid formed from the words prevent and acid sounds like a good idea. Until you say it out loud. Prevacid accents the second syllable of a word that is normally accented on the first — a-CID instead of A-cid.
In this case, however, the mishmash of letters and uncertain pronunciation aligns with pharmaceutical naming — Zafirlukast [asthma], Nalfon [arthritis], Auryxia [kidney disease], Gilenya [MS]. Though these names often signal “interplanetary exploration” more than “health benefit,” consumers are familiar with the naming convention. The perception of the Prevacid brand name is elevated by that proximity.
Well-constructed blended words are powerful because they are descriptive and disruptive at the same time. Real words give meaning, and their unexpected combination captures attention. And that is what nameforming is all about — crafting a name that precisely and unforgettably expresses brand essence. Defining the brand in a word.
This week, we add two new kinds of clues — portmanteau and compound words — to the mindgames mix. Definitely not easy — neasy? — so put on those thinking caps.