Nothing’s In a Name

After a recent Facebook post I made – “I wish I had a band so I could name it Penguin Prison” – it got me thinking. You see, this year has been a lot of firsts. A lot of market research for new products and services which take the form of logo design and taglines, and a lot of naming.

What’s in a name you ask? Nothing, except yourself. Seriously. It needs to represent who you are at the end of the day, if you’re ever going to have a shot at making it memorable. I see too many people coming in who name their company after what they think their audience will understand. For example, let’s name a new communication platform….drumroll……Connected.

What’s a girl to do? Make her point known…and then work with what you’ve got. It’s funny, I get ‘I love your company name’ a lot more than I get ‘what does it mean?’. But while we’re here, I named it after my mom’s amazing way of intuitively putting just enough of the right kind of sugar in Taiwanese desserts. I mean, there’s nothing like real rock candy in a good bowl of oatmeal (OK, that’s not Taiwanese but you get the drift). At the young age of 10 I decided I’d have a clothing (of course) store named Rock Candy.

Now my sister on the other hand, the more meticulous one of us wanted to name her store ‘My Sister’s Closet’. She was 6. And if she reads this she’s going to kill me. Because she’s been in the NYC advertising world, and in advertising a few year longer than I. And now that she does naming, and only naming for a living (as in new ‘brands’)–she’d name her ‘store’ something different altogether, whether she admits it or not (she won’t BTW). My appeal to you is this: If a word or a combination of words makes sense to anyone that knows you, and the words feel like  you–by all means, I can’t and won’t argue with that.

Annie Liao Jones