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Igor’s very own Wordlab just passed the 80,000 pages of content mark. Lesser known than the current Wordlab Wordboard is the old Wordboard, where you can search 8 years worth of naming suggestions. The new Wordboard discussion forums are broken down into tidy categories, depending on what you need named, company names, product names, taglines, fashion, clothing and footwear names, restaurant and bar names, etc.
[ More posts about naming products | More posts about naming companies ]
[ More posts about company names | More blogs about company names ]
More frat boy humor naming, Dogfish Head Golden Shower Beer. They know their target. Ugh.
Reminds me of the time a friend said he wanted to make round (as in donut shaped) corndogs and sell them to drunk people at ball games. He wanted to call them “Round Hounds”. I immediately told him that “Dog Nuts” was a better play on donuts + hotdogs, and would have greater appeal to drunk people.
John Hessler never did launch that business, so “Dognuts”– that’s freebee number two, Samsung!
[ More posts about naming products | More posts about naming companies ]
WiBro? ‘Cause it’s funny. Samsung’s WiBro (wireless broadband) is one of those names that’s just as funny the millionth time you see it. Rare bird, a company with a sense of humor.
Or perhaps it’s just that they or some dim consultant they hired never thought of Wibbi (wireless broad band internet). That’s a freebee, Samsung. Run, don’t walk, to the trademark office.
Still, it’s better than a company that has lost its humanity and judgment, and demonstrates it via a name, a la Sprint and Embarq.
[ More posts about naming products | More posts about naming companies ]
Revolution Renamed Nintendo Wii.
Here's the
official Nintendo video announcing the name of their newest game system, formerly code-named Revolution.
Trash Talk, the gaming news and talk show, already has an
amusing video parody of the new name.
Is Nintendo playing the name game? No, really folks, it's Wii.
Or, is it? Stay tuned...
When Google announced their new Interbrandian-Landoresque name and rationale for the Chinese market, “Gu Ge”, we told you why it was a terrible, unnecessary move.
Now we are officially on Gu Ge name drop watch. Google is too smart not to realize they’ve been duped and WILL dump Gu Ge. Let the games begin.
Gu Ge Deathwatch: Day 1.
[ More posts about company names | More blogs about company names ]
I've got
writer's block.
So, instead of trying to write something brilliant, here are a few
snippets.
Tony Snow was named White House Press Secretary. He's the
perfect man for the job.
FEMA is fubar. We knew that was an anacronym, and that the name FEMA was history, months ago.
There are now 3125 users registered in
Wordlab's Wordboard naming forum. So far, the most users ever online was 335, on Thursday, April 27, 2006 at 2:17 PM. It must be fun.
The
Oxford English Corpus contains over 1 billion words of real 21st century English.
And I'm at a loss for words.
Nintendo just announced that the name of their newest box, code named “Revolution”, will be Wii. And we think it is brilliant. Via CNN (just ‘cause they need the link):
Nintendo officially ditched its long-used codename for its next generation machine Thursday, revealing Wii as the final name for the product. Pronounced like “we” (or “whee,” I suppose), the name is meant to emphasize that “this console is for everyone,” Nintendo said in a flash video which introduced the name change…
…The unusual spelling is meant to symbolize both the unique controllers and the image of people gathering to play…
…The core gaming community is already making its opinion known – and it’s a resounding thumbs down.
“Here, I’ll do it: Worst console name ever,” wrote Chris Remo, an editor at Shacknews.com, whose sentiments were immediately echoed by dozens of users. Forum members on Gamespot.com, IGN.com and other gaming sites expressed similar thoughts…
…The Wii will make its public debut a little less than two weeks from now at E3 (the Electronic Entertainment Expo), the annual trade show of the video game industry. At that same show, Sony will unveil more details about the PlayStation 3 and Microsoft will talk about its future plans for the Xbox 360.
So why announce the name now and not at the show?
By letting the gaming community vent now about the name, they will be less distracted as launch titles for the system are announced and initial reports about what it’s like to play the games begin to come in.
Also, said Kaplan, “We want people to understand our approach before we get to E3. [Also], it’s really noisy at E3 and I don’t think we would have had the chance to explain how we came to the name.”
Wii has got to be the most savvy name announcement we have seen in many years, and it could be the most viral name announcement since Yahoo! Sure, the buzz is a all negative ( News, Blogosphere) but that’s part of the beauty. Because we don’t believe that Wii is the real name. We think Nintendo is setting you all up to be Punk’d at E3, generating a massive amount of positive buzz when the scam and the real new name are announced.
Crazy? Here is the first clue, “By letting the gaming community vent now about the name, they will be less distracted as launch titles for the system are announced and initial reports about what it’s like to play the games begin to come in.” Allowing your audience time to vent is not SOP in a name announcement, and also telegraphs that Nintendo knows what a stinker this name would be. Second, it’s not possible to engineer a worse name for this product.
Third, and this is a big one, there are no trademarks registered by Nintendo nor by any dummy corp in the U.S or over there for Wii. This is unprecedented for Nintendo and it is not possible that his is an oversight. If Wii were the name, they would have registered it. In fact, no new trademarks have been registered by Nintendo at all. This leads us to conclude that Nintendo has in fact registered the real name under a dummy corp, which is SOP when trying to keep a name a secret prior to launch.
Given that their video game audience is the same demographic as Punk’d, the whole campaign is perversely elegant. Except of course for failing to make the illusion complete by registering a TM for Wii.
And yet, some “naming experts” just don’t seem to get it.
[ More posts about Wii | More blogs about Wii ]
"Curiouser and curiouser!" cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English); "now I'm opening out like the largest telescope that ever was! Good-bye, feet!" . . . Just then her head struck against the roof of the hall: in fact she was now more than nine feet high, and she at once took up the little golden key and hurried off to the garden door.Size Matters. Not just for navigating foreign lands, but also when it comes to copyright infringement. Bill Heinze at I/P Updates considers Prof. Justin Hughe's most recent work, Size Matters (or Should) in Copyright Law, which sagaciously notes that "The problem with small phrases is not that they always lack originality: The problem is that they are always too small." Bill takes this concept of smallness and applies it to problems in music and text. Insisting on originality at this granular a level might be more of a moral issue (which is treated quite disparately in the musical and word worlds) rather than an intellectual property issue
"Cheshire Puss," she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. "Come, it's pleased so far," thought Alice, and she went on. "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat. "I don't much care where--" said Alice. "Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat. "--so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.
Have you checked out the blogroll in the left sidebar of this weblog? Good stuff. Here's a few of the interesting blog posts that caught our attention recently:
Cool Hunting hunts down
Social Suicide, a new line of men's jackets and suits, "hand made from the finest materials and each of the 10 styles has a subversive and sometimes in-your-face message stitched, flocked, embroidered or painted on."
Amit Bendov, a technology entrepreneur in Israel, whose
Spark This weblog is full of great ideas, writes about
names that spark.
John Moore, of
Brand Autopsy, presents
jumboSHRIMP Marketing Video on YouTube.
Whenever you're hungry for creative thinking, it's a good idea to check out the blogroll at Wordlab, which always contains something fresh. And if there's an extraordinary weblog you think should be added to our blogroll, please send us your recommendation in an email and we'll check it out.
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