Welcome to Igor's Naming and Branding Meta Blog,
aggregating posts from the other blogs we publish – Snark
Hunting and Wordlab – along
with occasional notes from Igor's lab.
Are your company or product name brainstorming attempts long on storm and short on brains? Igor has over 1000 brains in stock, ready to help you name whatever needs naming — most have very low milage, are hardly ever driven during the week, and are used only sparingly on weekends to scan refrigerator contents and such. Our collection of brains can be picked through at the Wordlab Forums, our free naming and branding brainstorming resource. Jump in and pick the brains!
Tips for picking a brain:
1. Do not pick if the skin is too green–it’s not ripe yet.
2. The brain should be viscous and phlegmatic, yet hold up to a good thumping. Not too firm, not too soft.
3. The end that was twisted from the brain stem should be pliable when you poke your thumb through the outer membrane. If you can’t break the membrane with your fingernail, the brain was picked prematurely.
4. Smell is the most reliable indicator of freshness.
I was briefly watching the local news a couple of nights ago, which I rarely do, and I caught a glimpse of this interview during a story about Southern California wildfires:
Now that’s a great name! Like a Bond Girl. And kudos to Chardonnay for not being shy about having it and putting herself out there. And good luck battling those wildfires!
For the rest of us who aren’t so lucky namewise, here is a Bond Girl name generator to help spice up our personal nomenclature. My Bond Girl names are Tawnie Small and Yoko Dos, both of which I quite like.
“They couldn’t have been spies…Look what she did with the hydrangeas.
Spyburbia, baby — you heard it here first!
How do you fool so many in suburbia for so long? “She said they were from Canada.”
Yes Virginia, there really are spies everywhere, even in your neighborhood. Especially in your neighborhood, most likely. And if they say they’re from a mysterious blank spot on the globe called “Canada”, call the FBI immediately. [In Ordinary Lives, U.S. Sees the Work of Russian Agents]
Anyone remember that ’70s Charles Bronson B-movie classic, Telefon? As Wikipedia reminds us,
During the Cold War of the 1950s, the Soviet Union planted a number of long-term, deep-cover sleeper agents all over the United States, spies so thoroughly brainwashed that even they didn’t know they were agents; they could only be activated by a special code phrase (a line from Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” followed by their real given names). Their mission was to sabotage crucial parts of the civil and military infrastructure as a precursor to a possible US/USSR active conflict or war.
I think ol’ Bob Frost was probably one of those secret agents as well. Just look at this video — something just doesn’t look quite right:
We get a lot of inventors here at Igor looking to name their new inventions, and we’re always studying the language of patents and trademarks. So, as a reference tool, here are Igor's Top 12 free online patent search services:
Air Colbert
Airplane 2.0
An Airplane Named Desire
California Dreaming
Chic Mobile
Contents May Be Under Pressure
Dark Horse
Entourage Air
Fog Cutter
Gogo Dancer
Jane
Jefferson Airplane
Let There Be Flight
Mach Daddy
Midnight Ride
Moodlights, Camera, Action
My Other Ride’s A Spaceship
Red, White & Blue
Runway Angel
San Fransico Pride
Superfly
The 1-Year-Old Virgin
The Tom Clark Express
Three If By Air
Tubular Belle
Unicorn Chaser
Virgin & Tonic
Youtube Air
Next time you get on a plane, ask what its name is.
At Igor we deal with intellectual property rights every week as we search thousands of trademarks while naming products for our clients. It’s not enough to have a good idea, you need one you can legally own.
Kevin Costner’s much publicized Ocean Therapy Solutions company developed a soon-to-be-implemented oil and water separation machine. BP has ordered 32 of them thus far to help deal with their latest environmental disaster.
Steve Jobs just announced at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference that they are dropping “phone” from the name “iPhoneOS” to become, simply, “iOS”. This is a smart move.
Uh oh. Seems like Cisco Systems runs a big chuck of the Internet on some thing called iOS. It’s deja vu all over again: you may recall back in 2007 when the iPhone was announced that Cisco owned the trademark for the name “iPhone”. Once again, Apple rolls out the strategy of “name it what we want, get legal to make it happen later”. Cool. If every company operated like this, it would make the job of naming companies much, much easier. And put more lawyers to work, recharging our economy in the process.
UPDATE: Kudos to Apple for making a legal deal with Cisco this time before launching the product. Says Cisco: “Cisco has agreed to license the iOS trademark to Apple for use as the name of Apple’s operating system for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. The license is for use of the trademark only and not for any technology.”
ip.com (as in “intellectual property”) just launched a feature where you can add a Patent Search Box to your blog sidebar, so your visitors can search patents right from your site.
Posted: August 25th, 2010 |
Category: company names, identity, name changes, product names, taglines 
Steve Jobs just announced at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference that they are dropping “phone” from the name “iPhoneOS” to become, simply, “iOS”. This is a smart move.