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One trick I've used is to listen & prompt youngsters to talk. Early speech requires mimicry of sounds. But listening to words for the first time doesn't always yield results. So you get a sort of 'human understandable babble' that sounds like a word, but isn't.

The result is unique, understandable. Sometimes it works, other times it might sound like something straight off the Teletubbies. It's better than trying to make one up out of thin air.



Thanks! Now at last I understand the source of the current crop of incomprehensible business names ;-)


'... incomprehensible business names ...'

Cruel but pretty close to the mark. Never thought of it that way. Of course you could use the total utilitarian method favoured by Chinese companies ( I've observed this on industrial equipment & stores direct from the Chinese manufacturers ) of "Stamp Mill #14" or "Foundry #4".

The real problem is the broken domain name system. If you have a company you need a domain name that matches. Yet domain name companies create tools to let you buy names that are similiar to squatters who buy them up. This ties up domain names and hence the problem in name choice.

My favourite geeky product naming technique was Andrew Tridgewell of Samba, RSync who had to think up a word for his new SMB (Server Message Block) protocol. Solution? Simply grep for smb against the system dictionary on his system. Samba was chosen. ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samba_software#History




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