

The Name Game (1999) - hernan7
http://dir.salon.com/media/col/shal/1999/11/30/naming/print.html

======
egypturnash
Wait is this Salon or the Onion?

> It seems that when Altman and Manning presented the name Jamcracker to a
> client recently, the reception was not everything they had hoped for. "I put
> the name up in front of their creative people," Manning says. "There were a
> couple of women sitting in. One of them got up and said, 'Oh, that's
> disgusting.' Another said, 'This is really sick.' I said, 'Excuse me, what
> are you talking about?' They said, 'We can't explain it, but that name is
> just creeping us out. We don't know what it is, but could you take it off
> the wall, please?'" Manning remains mystified by the incident. "There's
> apparently some strange, uncomfortable meaning attached to it in the minds
> of some women," he says. "God knows what that could be."

Seriously, I can't stop giggling at this whole article, especially gems like
this!

------
rwhitman
Note that this article is from 1999, which was probably the all-time peak for
corporate identity consultants like this.

Quoteth the article "Naseem Javed, president of ABC Namebank in New York,
speculates that someday, historians will look back on the late '90s as a low
point in the annals of naming."

Yup, sounds about right.

~~~
BerislavLopac
I think that naming consultants provide quite a valuable service -- but one
must remain realistic. This story depicts everything that can be wrong about
that industry, especially the fact that most participants don't even realize
how silly they are: [http://www.igorinternational.com/clients/wynn-luxury-
hotel-b...](http://www.igorinternational.com/clients/wynn-luxury-hotel-brand-
name.php)

------
jrockway
I like HP better than Agilent. HP reminds me of playing with dusty and
obsolete but once-really-expensive electronics, like atomic clocks and
multimeters accurate to 10 decimal places (I have one in my apartment!).
Agilent reminds me of white people wearing white bunnysuits in white clean
rooms playing with brand-new overpriced (and off-white) electronic devices,
developing weapons of mass destruction to wipe out humanity once and for all.

But hey, that's just me. I can't afford their products anyway.

~~~
loumf
I read somewhere a while ago, that the most enduring names were just surnames.
Ford, McDonald's, HP, Dell, etc.

------
mynameishere
When Ford decided to make a new division decades ago, they had to give it a
name (alongside the low-end "Ford", middling "Mercury", and high end
"Lincoln"). The first suggestion was old Henry's son Edsel's name. No one
liked that so they brainstormed endless names, and brought executives into
dark rooms with projectors, flashing one name after another. Eventually they
flashed, "BUICK" to see if anyone was awake. Nobody was.

Then they asked poet Marianne Moore for suggestions. She came up with such
names as "Utopian Turtletop", "Pastelogram", "Turcotinga" and "Mongoose
Civique".

Eventually they just went with Edsel.

~~~
BerislavLopac
Actually Civique sounds like a very nice option for a car brand...

------
fnazeeri
I bought the domain iCapsule.com for an idea I had a few years ago but never
pursued. This post reminds me that someone could use this without paying
squatter fees. Ping me if you're interested...

------
jorgem
So funny, there is a real tech company called JamCracker -- we used them on a
project years ago. I don't think these companies should recommend names if the
domain is taken.

~~~
Umalu
This article is from 1999. The JamCracker mentioned in the article is probably
the same JamCracker you worked with.

------
jbyers
(1999)

