Seattlest Interview: The Name Inspector

When you're working with a client, how often do you end up with a radically different opinion about a name -- loving something they hate, or vice versa? And how do you resolve that tension?

It happens, but not that often. I don't get overly attached to any names that I suggest to people. That's a road to heartbreak. But it's more common for clients to have no idea what to think about name ideas--they want someone to tell them what the best names are.

Can you think of any real-world examples of bad names that killed (or seriously hurt) an otherwise good brand?

Well, the whole Incubus thing didn't help Reebok's brand. In the late 1990s they named a women's running shoe Incubus, which is the name of a demon from Medieval folklore who rapes women in their sleep (they didn't know that). Naming gaffes like that do not make companies look cool.

Very recently someone came out with a new online music service. Reviews of the technology are pretty positive, but the site is called Fairtilizer, and that has already attracted ridicule. Fairtilizer doesn't have an Incubus-like embarassing meaning--it's just a terrible name. In this case, however, I think it's early enough in the process that they might actually change the name.

Conversely, are there good names that have bolstered the success of a brand, or gave it a competitive edge?

This, I think, is most noticeable when there's a previously unbranded product category that gets its first brand. Pentium was the first microprocessor to be branded. The name Pentium is brilliant, and of course the product was wildly successful. But how much of that success can be attributed to the name? We'll never know.

What are the best-named companies in Seattle? And do you want to commit yourself to identifying some of the worst-named?

I'm going to limit myself to tech-related businesses, because those are the ones I think the most about. There's the business networking site Biznik which is just a peach of a name. It's funny and distinctive, it sounds and looks good, and it perfectly captures, in six letters, the idea of a business network for independent and "alternative" businesspeople. Farecast is everything a pun name should be--it sounds natural and it makes perfect sense.

A bad name I've written about is LiftPort. It's boring and redundant. There are some startups with troublesome names. I certainly don't want to saddle any of them with the "worst name in Seattle" label--I'll just mention a couple to illustrate what I see as problems.

Versionate is redundant because version is already used as a verb (programmers "version" their software).

Openomy is awkward because people will probably want to stress the second syllable, like taxonomy, but the FAQ on the website tells them they're supposed to stress the first and third. It's a bad sign when you have to explain on your website how to pronounce your name.

Knouen, because people won't know how to say it when they see it, and they won't know how to spell it when they hear it.

What naming project from the past 10 years would you love to have been involved in?

Well, it would have to be the naming of the iPhone. The product has generated such enormous hype, and it does seem really amazing, yet it has a sort of boring late 1990s dotcom kind of name. So generic, with that little "i" tagged onto the front.

The city of Seattle was originally known as New York, then New York Alki, then Duwamps, before Doc Maynard's suggestion of "Seattle" won favor. I assume you approve of the change. Any other contenders you think might've been even better?

Now that Seattle is Seattle, it couldn't possibly be anything else. That's the retroactive inevitability of names. Besides, it would take too much research to come up with a good alternative!

Your favorite Seattle nickname: Emerald City, Queen City of the Pacific Northwest, Gateway to Alaska, Jet City, Rain City, or something else? And if you had to come up with a new nickname for the city, what would you pick?

My favorite nickname is Emerald City. It focuses on something positive and vivid--the lushness of the Pacific Northwest--and the sound is lovely. I also get a kick out of the random connection to the Wizard of Oz.

If I had to make up a new nickname, it would probably focus on the cafe culture of Seattle. Beantown is already taken, of course. Maybe Javatown. That's a name some people, like the folks in the Javatown Swing Orchestra, already use for Seattle. It's also a little nod to the tech industry here.

You have a son, so you've obviously spent at least a little time naming a person. Was that easier or harder than naming your businesses?

My son's name is Tobias. My wife and I wanted something a little uncommon to jazz up Johnson, which is his last name. The task seemed daunting because, well, it was a person we were naming. In a way it was easy to decide on Tobias, though, because it was one of the only boy's names we both loved.

How did your approach to naming a person compare to naming (or helping name) brands?

It was a pretty different process. We chose from a list of names that have already passed the test of time. We consulted the Social Security Administration's database, using a really cool interface called the Name Voyager. We didn't want a made-up name, like Moon Unit or Dweezil, because we like the whole historical dimension to given names.

It was also different because we didn't have to be worried about securing a trademark or domain name, and we didn't have to try to put a friendly face on a complicated technology.

On the other hand, we wanted to come up with something at least a little distinctive that sounded good. The qualities that make a name roll off the tongue are the same no matter what you're naming. We didn't want to alliterate, so we avoided names starting with J, and we also avoided names with weak syllables ending in n, because that would echo the least appealing phonetic property of Johnson.

For the next few questions, I'll name a brand category. You tell me the standout names qua names: Movie theaters.

Well, for Seattle movie theaters I'd have to go with Grand Illusion Cinema. It's both a poetic description of movies in general and the title of one of the greatest movies ever. And it's kind of charmingly old-fashioned.

Social networking sites.

There are so many different kinds of things that get called that. I'll focus on the ones that are mainly about having profiles and connecting to people, rather than those that are mostly about sharing media or collaborating.

I've already mentioned I like the name Biznik, for a Seattle business networking site. I also like the name LinkedIn. It's actually more interesting than it seems at first. It combines the two main spatial metaphors for positive social relations--connectedness (Linked) and containment or inclusion (In). The participial form alludes to expressions like being "connected", or even being "made" in the world of organized crime. The name really gives you the feeling that it's a mistake not to join. Despite the fact that Facebook is so much hotter right now than LinkedIn, it has a pretty boring name. It's so static-sounding.

Prescription medications.

The trick with these is to make them unintimidating but still sound like drug names. One of the best is Ambien, for a sleep medication. All the voiced and nasal consonants give it a very calming sound. There's also the connection to the word ambient, which is nicely allusive--you get the sense of environmental annoyances receding into the background.

Another good name is Prozac. The drug has done a lot to make depression seem like a normal medical problem rather than something mysterious and shameful. Whether by design or not, the name nicely reflects that by evoking the word prosaic. Both of these names are short and easy to pronounce, which is always good.

A name that goes too far in the friendly direction, perhaps to the point where it no longer seems like a medicine name and loses our trust, is the antihistamine name Allegra. It's too lovely--it could be, and in fact is, a woman's name.

Fast-food restaurants.

Fast food names should be fun. Alliterating names really work in this category, while they sometimes seem too cute in others. Dunkin' Donuts. Krispy Kreme. Jamba Juice. All very memorable. Seattle has ricenroll (is that fast food?).

Burger names I like: Fatburger, because it's so evocative and turns a negative (burgers contain a lot of fat and make you fat) into a positive. In-N-Out Burger, just because it's such a ridiculous double entendre.

It's hard not to like an endearingly retro name like Tastee-Freez.

Some bad ones: Schlotsky's (they had a contest to see who could get the most consonants into a two-syllable name), Togo's (I keep thinking of the West African country, but this is not a West African restaurant), Chick-fil-A (a confusing and unmotivated spelling)

Superhero teams.

I'm not really very up on these. I like the the way the name X-Men kind of hides the meaning 'ex-men' i.e. 'formerly human', in what looks like nonsense sci-fi alphanumerics. And you've got to love the pun of Powerpuff Girls.

You: Prescriptivist or descriptivist?

I'm a descriptivist the same way that all linguists are: I believe all varieties of language are interesting manifestations of the human genius for language. This is a view that some people call "politically correct" in a disparaging way, but it's pretty hard not to believe it if you look into the issue in any depth.

Prescriptive rules are a strange mish-mash of sociolinguistic prejudice, relics of historical attempts to make English more like Latin, rules of politeness, and genuine (but sometimes dumb) guidelines for achieving clarity and standardization in writing.

People get worked up about prescriptive rules because they're insecure about language. They want someone to tell them what's right and wrong, because they don't want to look stupid. When they learn a rule, they're reluctant to give it up, and often look down on others for not following it. So people run around saying you shouldn't split infinitives (based on a historical attempt to emulate Latin), or you should never use passives (an absurd overuse of a guideline that's helpful in certain limited contexts). Hell, Microsoft Word even tells you not to use passives.

So I'm a descriptivist in the sense of thinking a lot of prescriptive rules are not worth the breath people waste to scold you about them. But then again I have a PhD. You don't get one of those without following a lot of prescriptive rules. It would be hypocritical to say I'm completely against rules that I've been playing by all my life. And of course I'm very prescriptive in the sense of having strong opinions about the aesthetic properties of names.

The bottom line is, if you want to have a scholarly or scientific understanding of how language works, be descriptive. If you need to appear educated in order to get a job or succeed academically, it pays to be prescriptive.

And finally, Seattlest: good name or bad name?

It's an OK name. Clearly it was stamped out of the mold used for all the Gothamist sites. There must have been a little trouble deciding how to spell it, since it's the only one that ends with -est instead of -ist. That makes it seem a little bit like a superlative form--"This site is the Seattlest!" I'm not sure if that's intentional. Or desirable. But the name does kind of stick in my mind with that spelling, so I guess it's pretty good.