What is this Sh1t? Why is it here? What does it mean?
Adventures in (re) naming your business: Fire up the 4-syllable random name generator
Our goal as a company is to get hundreds of millions of our smart devices out there, in the hands of Joe Public. Saving money and carbon, and mental energy for the things in life that normal people actually care about. But, as I’m learning, we can't do it all at once: "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" …
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Monday 10th October 2016 10:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: agreed
We took the keywords that you supplied and combined them into a brand which we think, and we're sure you will agree, conveys the whole concept of a dictionary in a single, marketable, name.
The three primary concepts you wanted to convey were: Book, Look-up, Lexicography...
which we combined to produce BoLLex.
I think we can rest assured that if you take us up on our BoLLex suggestion, then you will see this reflected in your sales figures.
Of course, this is only one product from your company and so you will need a name following in the footsteps of e.g Webster's Dictionary, Miriam's Dictionary etc.
We feel that, as a publishing company, the name Utter converts that sense of brief and cogent verbal communication and will serve you well in relating to a modern, younger audience who may rebel against the authoritative tone that a surname or university name may convey. Cf. Uber, Yammer etc.
We also note that you wished use to consider possible premium versions of the product, such as the Concise version and the Complete version. We feel that our naming strategy allows for this, and for many future generations, the first product that will spring to mind when thinking of the definitive lexicon will be Utter Complete BoLLex.
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Monday 10th October 2016 11:11 GMT Pangasinan
Re: agreed
which we combined to produce BoLLex.
I think we can rest assured that if you take us up on our BoLLex suggestion, then you will see this reflected in your sales figures.
That name or very similar was used by a home movie camera company from Germany (?).
Back in the days or Super8 films. (or the 70s as we knew them.)
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Tuesday 11th October 2016 10:15 GMT Glenturret Single Malt
Re: agreed
Yes, "The Chambers Dictionary" does just that for me. First off, a definite article is a must - no name is really complete without one; then the actual name combining as it does memories of my old Latin teacher with the hint of allusion to the legal world and a touch of Russian Roulette; and finally, the clincher, "Dictionary" - punchy and right to the point. Couldn't be bettered.
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Monday 10th October 2016 09:26 GMT TRT
Re: agreed
But it did resonate with recent thoughts I'd had on companies such as Wahanda and a few others whose names escape me, but they were meaningless syllabic strings akin to baby babble offering virtual services such as a comparison of comparison sites, yet-another-restaurant-review site and being able to buy something you don't really want at a price you can't really afford from someone that you don't really like (a bit like Starbucks operating under a shill name).
Anyway, Wahanda has rebranded as Treatwell. Meh. Bonus - no more annoying guitar singing adverts. But so many others are doing this, it makes me wonder what the point of the name was in the first place.
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Monday 10th October 2016 10:53 GMT Dwarf
Re: agreed
Its a bit like the file sharing thing called 'wuala', which always makes me cringe, given that the french word being copied is 'voila'.
For some reason when people start saying nonsense words, the turbo encabulator always springs to mind.
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This post has been deleted by its author
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Monday 10th October 2016 17:34 GMT Crazy Operations Guy
Some additional rules:
* You also have to drop the 'e' if the name ends in 'er'.
* Domain name must use idiotic 'domain hacks', bonus points for using the ccTLD of an oppressive regime.
* The name of the product you sell and the company name must be the same
* The name must also be a common word, making it completely un-searchable.
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Monday 10th October 2016 09:47 GMT David Harper 1
Choose your company name carefully
I'm reminded of a story that I heard thirty years ago about the Italian government's plan to set up a genetics research centre. They were going to name it by prefixing 'gen' (to signify genetics) to the name that Italians give to their own country. I'll let you figure it out. Suffice to say, they went with a different name.
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Monday 10th October 2016 09:51 GMT Dabooka
Re: Choose your company name carefully
Story in these parts goes that when polytechnics became universities, the former Newcastle Poly were well along the road to renaming themselves City University of Newcastle upon Tyne, before a u-turn and going with Northumbria University instead.
I need to believe this is true.
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Monday 10th October 2016 12:15 GMT Dan 55
Re: Choose your company name carefully
There was a Powergen Italia, although it wasn't the Powergen we all knew and loved.
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Monday 10th October 2016 11:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Brand names are tricky
Names mean different things is different places - there's a nice little open source program built by some European academics called "Biomechanics Tool Kit" - abbreviated to BTK - it did not go down to well in the US where BTK was the sign-off for a mass murderer aka "Bind, Torture and Kill".
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Monday 10th October 2016 12:52 GMT TRT
Re: Brand names are tricky
You know why certain American country music radio stations never took off in the United Kingdom?
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Monday 10th October 2016 13:42 GMT Anonymous Coward
You would think that coming up with a name is the easiest thing in the world
And so did I, having coming up with various product and company names before.
Until this time around, when we came up empty handed after MONTHS of trying everything, from brainstorming, to asking friends, family, and strangers, to using scrabble, to using /usr/share/dict, to opening industry-related books at random and finding words/phrases, to resorting to /dev/urandom |strings.
Some industries are not the sort where a remotely silly name would go down well, speaking over a dozen languages between us made it even more difficult (a good-sounding word in any given language is guaranteed to be offensive in some other tongue), and Google searches destroyed whatever hope we had left of having thought up something unique.
In the end we said fuck it, let's pay someone a couple grand and get it done and over with.
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Tuesday 11th October 2016 11:49 GMT Securitymoose
Wot no journalist?
Has everyone at the Register forgotten how to write news stories? Catch our attention with a headline and then the next paragraph is supposed to tickle our intrigue, not irritate the bejazus out of us. Get rid of the ramblers back to their musings over a pint of Old Stodgy, and wake your editor up. Hang it all, I'll do the job if you can't find a decent one. I'm sure we'd rather have no news than a load of whatever this was.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
