Product naming
Product naming is the discipline of deciding what a product will be called, and is very similar in concept and approach to the process of deciding on a name for a company or organization. Product naming is considered a critical part of the branding process, which includes all of the marketing activities that affect the brand image, such as positioning and the design of logo, packaging and the product itself. The process involved in product naming can take months or years to complete. Some key steps include specifying the objectives of the branding, developing the product name itself , evaluating names through target market testing and focus groups, choosing a final product name, and finally identifying it as a trademark for protection. Principles. A key ingredient in launching a successful company is the selection of its name. Product names that are considered generally sound have several qualities in common. Types of names. Brand names typically fall into several different categories. Acronyms and Abbreviations. AFLAC, IBM, M&M (for Forrest Mars and Bruce Murrie). Amalgam. Names created by taking parts of words and putting them together: Nabisco (National Biscuit Company). Alliteration and Rhyme. Fun to say, and particularly memorable: FAT BAT , YouTube, Piggly Wiggly. Appropriation. Use the idea for one thing and apply it to another: Caterpillar, Reebok. Descriptive. Descriptive names ascribe to the product a characteristic: Toys R Us, General Motors. Clever Statement. Names don't have to be just a word or two: Seven for All Mankind, I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!, The Boring Company. Evocative. Invoke a vivid image that alludes to a brand benefit: London Fog, Amazon. Founders' Names (Eponyms). Use the name of a founder or founder family member: Barneys, Hewlett-Packard, and Wendy's. Geography. Chose a name associated with company/product  location: eBay for Echo Bay (a fictional place as well as the shortened form of "Echo Bay Technology Group," the name of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar's consulting company, according to the List of company name etymologies), Fuji for the tallest mountain in Japan, Cisco for San Francisco. HomeNON. For a name with personality: Yahoo!, Cracker Jack. For example, Yahoo comes from "Gulliver's Travels" by Jonathan Swift, where "Yahoo" is a legendary being with the following characters: rude", unsophisticated, uncouth". Later the name "Yahoo" was popularized as an bacronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle". Ingredients. Base the name  on ingredients: Clorox for chlorine plus sodium hydroxide, Pepsi for the digestive enzyme pepsin. Merged. When two companies merge into one, sometimes both names are kept: ExxonMobil, Cadbury Schweppes, GlaxoSmithKline. Mimetics. Use alternative spellings for common sounds: 2(x)ist, Krispy Kreme. Nickname. Use a founder's nickname: Adidas aka Adolf Dassler, Haribo Hans Riegel Bonn, Kinkos. Neologism. A completely new made-up word: Kodak, Verizon, Mimex. Onomatopoeia. Use a sound associated with a product function or other brand idea: Twitter, Meow Mix. Personification. Create a character or adopt an existing personage: Green Giant, Nike, Midas Mufflers. Portmanteau. Name is a combination  of two (or more) words or morphemes, and their definitions, into one new word: Travelocity, Pinterest. Product naming techniques. Linguistically, names are developed by combining morphemes, phonemes, and syntax to create a desired representation of a product. Morphemes differ from words in that many morphemes may not be able to stand alone. The Sprint name is composed of a single word and a single morpheme. Conversely, a brand like Acuvue is composed of two morphemes, each with a distinct meaning. While "vue" may be able to stand as its own word, "acu" is seen as a prefix or a bound  morpheme that must connect to a free morpheme like "vue." Phonemes are minimal units of sound. Depending on the speaker’s accent, the English language has about 44 phonemes. In product naming, names that are phonetically easy to pronounce and that are well balanced with vowels and consonants have an advantage over those that are not. Likewise, names that begin with or stress plosive consonant sounds B, hard C, D, G, K, P or T are often used because of their attention-getting quality. Some phoneme sounds in English, for example L, V, F and W are thought of as  feminine, while others such as X, M and Z are viewed as masculine. Syntax, or word order, is key to consumers’ perceptions of a product name. Banana Republic would not carry the same meaning were it changed to "Republic Banana." Syntax also has significant implications for the naming of global products, because syntax has been argued to cross the barrier from one language to another. (See the pioneering work on Universal Grammar by Noam Chomsky) Some specific product naming techniques, including a combination of morphemes, phonemes and syntax are shown in the graph below. Owning a name: Trademarks, URLs and  beyond. A consideration companies find important in developing a product name is its "trademarkability". Product name trademarks may be established in a number of ways: In addition, protecting a trademark is just as important as the initial process of registration. Trademark rights are maintained through actual use of the trademark, and will diminish over time if a trademark is not actively used. Companies need to consider whether they can own a name in the digital realm. Securing a domain name, particularly with the globally recognized dot-com extension, is critical for some companies. It has also become increasingly important for  firms to interact with their audience through social media websites. Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram all have procedures for acquiring a name on their sites. In modern communication, the trademark is just the start of owning a name. International considerations. Because English is widely viewed as a global language, with over 380 million native speakers, many international trademarks are created in English. Still, language differences present difficulties when using a trademark internationally. Product naming faux pas. Many companies have stumbled across the importance of considering language differences in marketing new products.