What do Fortune 500 companies and Hollywood studios know about name branding? The names fulfill one or more of the following criteria:
* They don’t have more than 4 syllabus.
* They rhyme to specific vowels or sounds (Coca-Cola, BlackBerry, OshKosh B’Gosh, Humpty Dumpty, SimpSons, RugRats).
* They end with ‘-er’ (equalizer, submitter), ‘-or’ (terminator, predator, generator), ‘-us’ (plimus, janus, del.icio.us) or ‘-o’ (pro, commando, manifesto, studio, audio, video).
* When the marketing pros run out of English, they turn to Greek and Latin expressions!
There are some good websites that explain the meaning of Greek and Latin words. Incidentally, you may already know some Latin words as the English language significantly derives from them. However, don’t expect to find literal translation for specialized words(!) like ‘viral’ or ‘affiliate’, but keep hunting and you will find interesting terms to play around with.
1) In this English-to-Latin translation tool by University of Notre Dame, I am able to find meanings for ‘list’, ‘auction’, ‘design’ and even ‘advertise’. The Latin word for ‘advertisement’ is ‘proscriptio’. You might as well name a product as a ‘proscriptor’!
2) Another version of UoND’s translation tool.
3) “Words For Our Modern Age” is a comprehensive list of prefixes and suffixes with roots in Greek/Latin origin. Great to surf through when you have little ideas on what to search for.
Because the Greek language by itself has its own set of characters, it’s harder to find another English word as a direct expression of a Greek meaning (forget about googling “english to greek translation”). You are likely to turn to “Words For Our Modern Age” for reference most of the time. More often than not, we have seen businesses naming products and services and even our planets after Greek gods and other people. Here’s a page profiling thousands of gods and goddesses from various cultures. If only you can find the name of the “god of riches”…
* Sly combinations of prefixes and suffixes.
About this last point, as an example, Jolly has reserved the following 2 domain names:
1) finggle.com: It’s a combination of ‘finger’ and ‘google’.
2) xagora.com: ‘agora’ is ‘marketplace’ in Greek and is in popular demand. Not to be outdoned, he put an ‘x’ in front and registered his very own agora.com!
So the truth is we are really hardly in short supply when it comes to names. The competition is not going to heat up just because more people are reading this post. Fanciful names or not, they are not be-all-and-end-all. I’d come across a good number of fantastic domain names that lay dormant either because the webmasters have no idea how to position them for business or they are just squatters waiting to make a quick buck.
Of course, the long term requires that you find a way to position a name with the selling angle. Twentieth Century Fox registered simpsonsmovie.com on April 22nd, 1997, nine years before the movie finally was green-lighted. The important fact is they hold fast to it and did not abuse it while Fox concentrated on the series. In this respect the studio demonstrated foresight towards the long-term goal which is the movie.
At the end of the day, which is more important: a name or the business? This is no trick question, for the answer is already known to those who can append a value with a ‘name’, provide that value and get paid for it.
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