Different name styles have clearly emerged over the years, exemplified in the evolution of high-tech brand names. In the 1980s, names were pseudo-scientific, full of qs, xs and zs (think Xerox). In the 1990s, names went to the other extreme, exuding more personality but less description (think Yahoo!). In the later 1990s, names became more descriptive but less original with the use of what naming company NameLab calls "technoid nouns"--words with parts like like com, net, tech, power, data and web.

The naming process
How does Lexicon arrive at names like Pentium, PowerBook and Zima? Here is the typical sequence. First, one or more Lexicon associates meets with the client to grasp a sense of the product and its target audience. With the client, they develop the essential messages to be communicated in a name. Then, these associates brief the entire Lexicon staff, and in these briefings, participants discuss different angles and build on these differences (sometimes in highly structured (and proprietary) ways), and different individuals or teams then assign themselves different parts of the conceptual spectrum for their creative work. "We do that because diversity is very important in the creative business, and if we gave everyone the same briefing, we'd get too many of the same ideas," Placek told Computerworld.

These teams work for a week or so, and then reconvene to discuss and make preliminary eliminations. At this point there are thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of candidates, since one of the techniques used is computerized name generation which works by concatening word parts from pre-existing lists. The remaining names are checked against preexisting trademarks, usually leaving the team with 100 to 200 candidate names. These names are given to a group including a team of linguists, who assess the strengths and weaknesses of each name. The final 100 names are then prioritized and the bottom 50 to 75 names are eliminated. The client is presented with these 25 to 50 remaining names, which are narrowed down to three to five for the client and Lexicon to agree upon.

Naming strategy
"Names don't fail for lack of raw material---there are some 600,000 morphemes (the smallest meaningful linguistic unit) and a huge number of combinations", giving birth to names such as Sony (based on "son", globally understood as "sound") and Acura (based on "acu", to represent "precisely" or "with care") (from "Make A Name for Yourself", Oct/Nov 1996). On the other hand, Placek and others are wary of simply piecing together names from these preexisting morphemes; names with roots such as pro-, global-, ultra- are already overused and perhaps overrated.

Lexicon takes the application of linguistic factors one step further by taking into account sound symbolism, or the theory that some sounds and letters do a better job of communicating particular attributes than others. For instance, Lexicon's team of linguists found that names starting with the consonants V, F and S sounded the fastest, while names starting with B, D and P suggested dependability.

An example: "'In the case of Nuon, the word starts with an n and it ends with an n. That's called consonant harmony. It has a quick start and a quick stop to it. Nuon. And that, we felt, gave it precision. So we started working with that n in front and the n on the back. And we wanted to open it up. O is one of the fullest sounds, so we started experimenting with that. And we took a look at that 'nu' for newness there, which is quite appropriate and convenient, and we to that 'on', as in interactive, as in playing a game, and we put them together. And interestingly enough, there's a very tiny elementary partical called a muon. And then there's neon, which is a bright class. And then you also have things like proton and neutron. So we felt that it would deliver performance.'

"In that respect, Nuon is a phonetic sibling to Xeon, Intel's high-performance workstation chip, which Lexicon also named. 'You have a faster thing there,' Mr. Placek explained… 'You have the x there, pronounced like z, so it's fast. It's got a lot of power there. That was about power versus-you can see how Nuon was more interactive, a little subtler, a little more approachable." ("A Name So Smooth, the Product Glides In", New York Times, Nov. 26, 1998.)

For more information, visit Lexicon's webpage on sound symbolism here.

To see the anatomy of another of Lexicon's successful names, click here.

A recent Wall Street Journal article about naming, with further examples and analysis from Lexicon.

For lists of product names, go to our product name page.