The Name Kings
 ....The upshot of all this was that driven by dot-com mania and the current trend towards "brand building," a new breed of naming specialists appeared. They offered their customers the promise that they would create names that are memorable, descriptive, powerful, appropriate, sexy, sober, strong, sensitive, universal, unique, non-scatalogical, trademarkable, and bankable. And a bargain at between $30 to $150K, on average.
How did these mavens of the moniker work their magic? Well, by using powerful and proprietary techniques that, uh, they used. For instance, Rick Bragdon of Idion, a powerhouse naming firm, described their methodology as "an imaginative series of turbo-charged naming exercises, including Blind Man's Brilliance, Imagineering, Synonym Explosion and Leap of Faith…." Yes. Other companies used computer software that cuts and parses vowels to a fare thee well. Some used their imaginations to take a more expansive approach. Australian wild life crawled on the scene (Quokka). Then went extinct; marsupials didn't fare well during the dot.com bust. Nuclear fruit burst on the scene (Atomic Tangerine). The Godfather even made you a naming offer you can't refuse (Mob House). And the Hawaiians sailed onto the scene (Akamai).
And, despite their claims to create unique names, the naming specialists are as prone to run with the herd as anyone else. A few years ago we suffered through the Italian craze with Infinia, Achieva, Aptiva, Facteva, Factiva, Presario, and Figaro (just kidding). Now, having tired out the Italians, we've resurrected their ancestors, the Latins, with Agilent, Aquent, Aquilent, Lucent, Levilant, Telegent, and, of course, Malevolent (just kidding). Late in 2003, a British web site put up a joke site that automatically created nonsense Latinate names. Several were promptly trademarked by eager visitors.
In the post Internet-bubble era, things have calmed down considerably. This is because, as we have said in all four editions of the Handbook, it is rare to find instances where a product's name, by itself, leads to marketing success. It is much easier to find examples where a naming mistake has led to major product and corporate headaches. For example, consider "Windows NT." Now, as you probably know, "NT" stands for "New Technology." This is rather nifty, and if you were a Microsoft systems programmer coding away on NT in the late 90s it must have felt good to be working on the latest and greatest. Of course, if Windows NT was new technology, it logically follows that anything else, including Windows 98, was, well, "Old Technology." And who wants to work on or buy old technology? The key to naming success is to focus less on the creative aspects of the process and more on the trademark, translation, and positioning issues, as our focus story further illustrates....
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