How to Make a Business Name Memorable

Kathy (host):
Well, hello there and welcome back to another episode of “Help! My Business Is Growing,” a podcast where we explore how to grow and build a business that is healthy and sustainable. I’m your host, Kathy Svetina, a fractional CFO and founder of Newcastle Finance, a company where we believe that everything you do in your business will eventually end up in your finances. To get to healthy finances is to have a healthy business. How do you get there? Well, this is where this podcast comes in to help.

Kathy (host):
Have you ever wondered why some business names are more memorable than others? Some stick with you, while others are completely forgettable. This is something that I’ve been pondering for a while now, and it’s interesting how a simple name change in a business can sometimes make or break it because the business name carries incredible weight. It leaves a lasting impression that can either draw customers in, confuse them, or maybe even repel them. And it’s just so fascinating to me.

Kathy (host):
So, we’re going to be talking about this in this episode. We’re going to be talking about what are some of the secrets to a name that clicks. Is there anything like that, that we can use in our own business, as maybe there’s a framework? So we’re going to be exploring that, and how do you choose the right name to drive the business forward? And what’s in a name? Could it be the key to success? Like, what are some of the things that we need to look for when we are picking a name for the business, whether it might be a business name, where there might be a need for a product or a name for a service? So we’re going to be looking at that.

Kathy (host):
As a quick reminder, all of the episodes on this podcast, including this one, come with timestamps for the topics that we’re going to be discussing, and each one has its own blog post as well with the transcript. So if you want to read versus listen, you have that option too. And you can find all the links in this episode’s show notes.

Kathy (host):
My guest today is Alexandra Watkins. She is a leading and outspoken authority on brand names with buzz. For nearly 20 years, she and her naming firm, Eat My Words, have created love-at-first-sight brand names for countless companies, including Amazon, Coca-Cola, Disney, Twitter, and Google. Her breakthrough creativity book, “Hello, My Name Is Awesome: How to Create Brand Names That Stick,” was named a top 10 marketing book by Inc Magazine. Her name Hall of Fame includes the Wendy’s Baconator, Neato Robotic Vacuum, Burger King’s Mac and Cheetos, Spanish language school Gringo Lingo, and a frozen yogurt franchise, Spoon Me. Join us.

Kathy (host):
Alexandra, welcome to “Help! My Business Is Growing” podcast.

Alexandra (guest):
Thank you, Kathy. It’s so nice to be here.

Kathy (host):
It’s so nice to have you here. You know, every time I pick up a product, or I hear about a new business, the name of it always gets me curious. It’s almost like a cover of the book; it sets the mood and it kind of draws you in. But you know, some of the names immediately click while the others follow that kind of leave your head S.C.R.A.T.C.H.ing, right? And you have found a formula that creates the names that click, and you even wrote about it in your book, “Hello, My Name Is Awesome: How to Create Brand Names That Stick.” I’ve been working my way through it. It’s been super helpful, and I highly recommend it because I’m also launching a service, and I’m trying to name it, and I’m trying to name it right. So that actually clicks versus S.C.R.A.T.C.H.ing people’s heads. Right. So first, I want to ask you, what are some of the most common mistakes that businesses are making? And what are they doing wrong when they’re trying to name things? Are there any common things that you see happening all the time?

Alexandra (guest):
Yeah, there are a lot of mistakes that people make that are easily corrected. One is, well, oftentimes when people are coming up with names, they’re starting in the wrong place. They are looking for available domain names. And that’s the last thing that we do. Nobody expects you to own an exact match domain name anymore. You’re perfectly fine adding modifier words like my website is eatmywords.com. But if we wanted to be eat my words naming or eat my words, brand names, eat my words, names, it’s fine to add any word like that. And it will help you with your search engine optimization as well. If you have those keywords in your name. But another really big mistake that people make is spelling their name in a way that’s not intuitive to spell it. So I did a podcast yesterday where this guy was asking me about the name Krispy Kreme, and that’s a great example of a name that it’s just, you know, look, we all love Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. I think most people do, and the name, you know, the K for crispy and cream, it’s kind of it’s silly and maybe that’s their brand personality. But yeah, anytime your name looks like a typo, or your name shouldn’t look like a typo. So a lot of people do these misspellings to get an available domain name, but it might save you some money. But ultimately, it’s not going to save you time, and it’s going to be painful for your customers, painful for you. There’s going to be email bounce backs, people aren’t going to be able to find you, you’re going to say your name to Siri. And, you know, like find this, and she’s not going to be able to. So yeah, there are all kinds of problems. And if you have your own personal name is like Kathy, your name. I mean, obviously, Kathy can be spelled two different ways. And I’m sure people do spell it wrong. It’s not an egregious example or anything, but Svetina.

Kathy (host):
Yeah.

Alexandra (guest):
I’m sure people butcher your last name all the time. Right?

Kathy (host):
They do. Yes. They even butcher my first name too. Like it can be anything. Yeah. So a lot of the mistakes that people usually make with spelling my name or the K, they would make it with a C. So that’s really easy. Or they would do it with KE thie I’ve seen that. So you’ll be surprised. I think it’s pretty easy. But you’d be surprised that people do end up misspelling it.

Alexandra (guest):
Yeah, I’m always surprised. Yeah, it’s rare that I meet someone that has a name that’s not misspelled ever. My friend Jim Box, he’s like the only guy, and no one’s ever misspelled his name, or the first box can help you X’s on it. I want people to know that when you’re naming something, think about all the pain associated with your own personal name. Whether it’s hard for people to spell, or hard to pronounce, or hard for people to remember. And names are hard for people to remember, which is why we wear name tags or, you know, we’ve all tried to whisper a person’s name, you know, and like, so think of your own personal name when you’re naming your brand, or your product, or your service. And don’t give your, you know, whatever you’re naming, don’t give it any of those disadvantages. Because just get in touch with how painful it is. And each are frustrating it is for you. Nobody wants to pronounce your name wrong. It’s painful for you and them. So yeah, just try to remove all of the friction points from your name.

Kathy (host):
Yeah, and I see some people trying to be really creative with the names. And they come up with like a couple of the same type of letters in a sequence. And it just gets so hard. It really gets hard to not just write it, but also to remember it. Yeah. And then you always have to remember, okay, did I spell it right? And it’s usually what ends up, people end up doing is, at least what I do, is I just Google it. I see, you know, can I find that person? Can I not find that person? So I can definitely relate to how painful it can be if you’re not naming this right. So you have a process about naming it. And I know it can be, it’s a science, but it’s definitely an art. How did you come about this process to begin with? And you lay it out very well in the book. But let’s talk about the process that you came up with. How did you figure this out?

Alexandra (guest):
Well, my process is more of a name evaluation filter, I think, and it’s called the smiling S.C.R.A.T.C.H. test. It’s based on my philosophy that a name should make you S.M.I.L.E. instead of S.C.R.A.T.C.H. your head. And S.M.I.L.E. is an acronym for the five qualities that make a name strong. And S.C.R.A.T.C.H. is an acronym for when to S.C.R.A.T.C.H. it off the list because it makes people S.C.R.A.T.C.H. their head. So there’s seven there. And yeah, when you’re familiar with the process, and you can run your name through it, it will really help you keep the winners and ditch the losers.

Kathy (host):
And let’s talk about this S.M.I.L.E. and S.C.R.A.T.C.H. process. So the S.M.I.L.E. is the one that’s the winners and the S.C.R.A.T.C.H. and

Alexandra (guest):
So the S.M.I.L.E. is the one that’s the winners and the S.C.R.A.T.C.H. and right loser S.M.I.L.E. of that essence milestones first suggestive you want your name to suggest something positive about what your brand is or does. And metaphorical names are good examples of names that are suggestive. So for instance, Amazon suggests something very large, and that’s what Jeff Bezos was going for when he named it. The M stands for memorable. Everyone wants a memorable name, but so few people know what that, you know, how do you even figure out if something is memorable? And by the way, I think naming is an art not a science. There’s science involved in some of the things that I talk about. So with, with memorable, what we know is that people things are easier for people to remember if they already exist in our knowledge base. So for instance, the bike lock company named Kryptonite, we all know Kryptonite from Superman. Yep. And that Kryptonite repels Superman. So when Kryptonite the bike lock company was naming itself, I’m sure they figured out “Oh, this is something that’s, you know, as repelling Superman, then we’re gonna evoke that Kryptonite locks are repelling bike thieves, right?” They’re really strong and powerful. So that’s a great example of a name that’s memorable because we already know it, versus something that’s unfamiliar to us. Yeah, that we don’t have anything to grasp onto in our brain. And so we’re gonna have to, like, you know, work harder at it. So that’s, you know, try to come up with like, like the name of my company, Eat My Words. That’s a phrase that people already know. So that makes it easier to remember. Does that make sense?

Kathy (host):
Yeah. So you’re always looking at it. What you’re trying to find is a naming convention, does it have a context associated with it? And what that context is correct?

Alexandra (guest):
Yeah. Then the I in S.M.I.L.E. stands for Imagery. It helps if your name when people hear it or see it, if they can picture something in their head when that happens, because it’s going to make it easier for them to remember later on. We named a GPS for dogs retriever. And of course, when people hear retriever they can picture a golden retriever. Again, making it easier to remember. The E in S.M.I.L.E. stands for legs, and legs means your name lends itself to a theme. And this is just the very best thing you can have for your name because you can really extend your brand. An example I have is, let’s eat my words. Right? We’re a service industry. We have, you know, a menu of services. Our blog is called the kitchen sink. So you know, the food and beverage theme. We have, you know, packages like supermarket special the whole enchilada. So that’s those are examples of how you could extend your brand. Jimmy Buffett, who I’m sure a lot of people now know, he he lent his name. He didn’t lend it. I’m sure he charged a lot of money for it. Smart guy, very successful guy. He has these retirement communities and they’re called Latitude Margaritaville. Right? And the Jimmy Buffett, right. And his fan base are called parrot heads. You know, we all know the song Margaritaville. It’s a way of life. Right? So so smart to do these retirement 55 Plus retirement communities targeted people that you know, are in his already in his audience. Like, who wouldn’t want to retire at Latitude Margaritaville, right? True. So they have names like, the street names is so brilliant, the street names are like, flip flop core and cheeky terrace. Yeah, that’s an example of legs. The E in S.M.I.L.E., stands for emotional. And it’s really important that your name makes an emotional connection with people, or it’s going to go right over their heads. And a really great way to make a connection with someone is to make them S.M.I.L.E., right? Because that’s when you know, it’s gonna resonate with someone, they don’t have to laugh, but just give them a S.M.I.L.E. in their mind. Like when when you hear a name like a retriever for the GPS for dogs, you know, that’s gonna make you S.M.I.L.E. So those are the names that people, you know, tweet and repeat.

Kathy (host):
So that should be the goal for the name, obviously, S.M.I.L.E. But how do you get there? Like, what is the process to get there? Because obviously, you know, the, if you’re not used to that, how do you come up with something that will fit that S.M.I.L.E. criteria? I mean, do you just kind of brainstorm? Do you open a dictionary? I mean, we know all of those.

Alexandra (guest):
So people start brainstorming, but they’re just staring at a blank piece of paper brainstorming or they’re, you know, you’re sitting around, right? We’re all in our conference rooms. So you’re sitting in a white room, staring at a whiteboard and expecting colorful names to materialize, turn. That’s not how names happen. That’s not how good names happen, because you’re limited to the knowledge base in that room. So whoever’s around the conference table, whatever’s in their brain is all they know, where I believe the best place to brainstorm is on the internet because there’s so many resources there. You know, whether you’re looking at an online thesaurus or a dictionary, or, you know, rhyming dictionary, those are good places to brainstorm. You can use chatGPT. I think ChatGPT is good for like kicking off a brainstorming. But it’s not going to get you to the final name. And it’s also not going to help you determine which is the best name. I mean, that’s where I come in. And that’s where my expertise is really valuable. But another thing that people do is they’re just kind of throwing things at the wall, seeing what sticks, but they don’t have a roadmap. So what we do is we give everyone a creative brief to complete, and in the brief, we’re gonna find out about your company, your target audience, what’s the tone and personality of your brand? And what do you want people to feel when they come in contact with your name? Do you? Do you want them to feel happy? Or, you know, like a sense of trust has been instilled? Do you want them to feel empowered, powerful, you know, we name a lot of wellness, fitness products, so anything like that, anything that can help inform like the mind of the customer, like, what are we trying to get into, that will help. And then like in the brief, we also have an acid test sentence where you’re showing us how the name would be used in a sentence. So then we have something to compare it to, when we’re coming up with names. But yeah, we look at all kinds of things. We look at stock photo libraries for ideas, because those are all tagged with keywords. So if we were naming something fast, like a new microprocessor, we might Google you know, fast, or we might go to, you know, iStockphoto, or Shutterstock, and type in fast. And we’ll see all kinds of pictures of things that are fast. So imagine we were naming a fast running shoe. Maybe that’s where the name Puma came from. So if you think of like, “Oh, these metaphorical names”, and those are my favorite kind of names, because I think they’re familiar to people. And they say they can communicate a lot. So yeah, those are some of the things that we do.

Kathy (host):
And how long does that process typically take you? Like, for example, if someone says, I need a name, and we need to have a name for this product or service? How long does that usually take? And what is for you? Obviously, it will take shorter than someone who has not done this so many times. But what is the acceptable level of time that it should take you? Obviously, it shouldn’t take years to do this. But what’s the most acceptable timeframe for this?

Alexandra (guest):
You know, for us, we like to spend a couple of weeks working on the first round of names, then get feedback on those, and then do a second round, which takes like two more weeks. So it depends on we can accelerate things. But I can’t tell you how many times a client has come to us that’s in a hurry, but then all of a sudden, like, they’re like, “Oh, no, we need to push the meeting out a week, we’re busy.” So you know, things happen. And that’s fine. We’re dealing with that right now. But you know, we can wait, we always have other projects going on. But we try to come up with, we come up with a lot of names internally, and then I kind of toss out the ones that I don’t think are strong enough, and we get the list down to 100. Maybe if you’re in a supersaturated trademark class, we will give you more names just because we want you to be able to have a lot to choose from because a lot we’ll get knocked out in trademarking. We don’t knock out all the names. We don’t run everything through trademark game before we show you the names because we want you to be able to react to something. So for instance, we were naming a reverse mortgage product for Wells Fargo, and a name that they really liked on our list was golden ladder. When we ran golden ladder through trademark in it got knocked out. However, because we knew they liked the word golden, we were able to ideate around that we came up with a name golden bridge, and ultimately, that became the name of the reverse mortgage product. So that’s our process is bunch of names in the first round. Let’s see what we react to because people sometimes don’t know what they want until they see it. So you know, we do all those names, you know, you pick what you want to go to trademarking. We’ll screen those, then we’ll come back. And if you want more, we’ll do more. And then based on those results, we’ll look at like, okay, what clearer trademark in and then how can we help you rank those, and then you go on and bring them to your counsel.

Kathy (host):
So I guess the process would be to come up with as many as you can. And then as you’re going down the list, you pick the favorites. And after that would be to figure out whether there’s a copyright or anything on them.

Alexandra (guest):
A trademark?

Kathy (host):
Yeah, yep.

Alexandra (guest):
Yeah. And it’s really important to trademark screen your names, trademarks, screen them in the beginning and just to make sure there’s no immediate knockout, you know, really obvious knockout conflict of interest, so then you’re not paying them I need to an attorney to go down, like pursue a name that we can tell very quickly. Yeah. Now what was I doing yesterday? I we’re working with some Navy SEALs right now naming some autonomous surface drones. And yeah, one of the names that they like, it was too close to a name, another name. And we saw Raytheon is who registered the trademark? We’re like, Yeah, don’t even go there. Right. So yeah, we’re just able to determine that. But then it’s really important to protect your brand with the trademark. And it’s never too late. If you haven’t trademarked your brand, or your product names. It’s never too late to do that. We know someone who just after 11 years, just got the trademark on their name. So yeah, you can do it. And especially if you have been using it a long time at that point, then you can show Yes. Now this is you, then you have a much stronger case. So yeah, that’s and I’ve great trademark resources, if anyone needs a resource for that.

Kathy (host):
And we’re trademarks, it’s better late than never. Yeah, yeah. And we actually just had an episode about the trademarks and copyrights.

Alexandra (guest):
So was it with was it with Joe Vitale?

Kathy (host):
No, it was Aaron Austin, and we had a really great conversation about how do you actually do that in the small business space? So if you’re interested in that episode, definitely go check it out. Because if you’ve been using this, and it’s might be worth it to trademark it. Her advice was, if you feeling like if someone was to use the same word, or the same type of naming convention, and you’d be completely devastated, and it would make a significant impact on your business, then it’s time to do it. Like you got to do this.

Alexandra (guest):
Yeah, the last thing you want, because people don’t really think that through, but the one I think about is rollerblade. Right? So they had to really go in and protect their brand, because everyone was calling their inline skates, rollerblade and rollerblade mix the super high quality product. And there was a lot of companies coming in making really inferior products compared to theirs, but they were being called rollerblades you know. And so rollerblade didn’t want these other companies calling or anybody else calling them rollerblade. So in that just became this like generic term and let’s call generic aside when something becomes just like a common term for things, so they had to protect their brand and be you know, rollerblade in line skates. Kimberly Clark did it with Kleenex, Kleenex tissues. Xerox photocopiers, yeah, they were the first really big one, because we would all say, “Oh, just make a Xerox and then they realize like every copier, people are just referring to it as a Xerox, Kimberly Clark.” Also, they own the trademark to onesies. So if you have a baby onesie, that’s not a Kimberly Clark onesie. It’s technically called a baby jumpsuit. And if you’re using onesie like on eBay, if you’re selling onesie I’m making the quotation marks if you’re just listening and not watching the video, I’m making the air requests, if you’re selling onesies, but they’re not technically Kimberly Clark onesies, they’ll find you and shut you down, not shut you down, but you’ll get a cease and desist and like, like no business owner wants to get a cease and desist letter. And like there’s so many sad stories of businesses that have been, I don’t know if they’ve just been operating blindly, or just kind of thinking, “Oh, it’s okay.” And this is also a really common mistake where our clients will say, “Oh, it’s okay. I don’t care.” It doesn’t matter if you care. It matters with the patent trademark office things and they are here to protect consumers, right? So like with a consumer, a consumer wants to buy, you know, the Rollerblade brand, because they want a superior quality product. But if somebody is confused thinking something else “Oh, that’s made by rollerblade but it’s not that it’s going to be bad for the consumer. Maybe it’s it’s something dangerous.” So yeah, it’s important. It’s all done for consumer protection, more than brand protection, but you need to protect your brand.

Kathy (host):
So we talked about S.M.I.L.E. Let’s talk about S.C.R.A.T.C.H.. So that’s something that you S.C.R.A.T.C.H. off the list because you know, it makes you S.C.R.A.T.C.H. your head and it’s it’s a S.C.R.A.T.C.H.ing head type of situation with an AMI that you obviously want to avoid. So what is S.C.R.A.T.C.H. stand for?

Alexandra (guest):
That essence S.C.R.A.T.C.H. stands for a spelling challenge, and we talked about that, right? Like with Krispy Kreme, the ‘C’ firsthand S.C.R.A.T.C.H. stands for copycat, and look, nobody likes a copycat, right? Like as kids, right? Copycat or like, nobody likes a copycat. Why be somebody else when you can be yourself? So when you are a copycat, you know when somebody sees your name, like the example I always use is Pinkberry is a kind of a well, very well-known frozen yogurt franchise. And there are so many Pinkberry rip-offs: Yo Berry, Bliss Berry, Young Berry, Cool Berry. I mean, that sounds like 25 of them. And when somebody sees a name like that, the first thing they do is they roll their eyes and like, “Oh, they just copied Pinkberry.” Right? And like, really? Do you want that to be somebody’s first thing they think about you? Is there a copycat? No. So don’t be a copycat because when people roll their eyes, they won’t respect you. It shows a lack of originality. You’re riding on someone’s coattails, but also, it opens you up to trademark infringement. So be really careful there.

Alexandra (guest):
Yeah, the ‘R’ in S.C.R.A.T.C.H. stands for restrictive, and that’s where your name locks you in and limits future growth. So an example is there’s a web app called Hotel Tonight. And when it started out, you could get a hotel for the night. So aware of hotels, they sell off their unprinted rooms at a discount, right? So as a consumer, you can just get a last-minute deal. And it was great in the beginning, but then they decided to expand. So now Hotel Tonight, you can reserve hotels up to 365 days in advance. So the name Hotel Tonight, it’s really limited now. Right? And a better name. So when you’re starting out naming something, look into your crystal ball. And imagine what you might be a couple of years down the line. And if you start to feel your business is changing, and you’re very different now, where you’ve outgrown your name, change your name. It’s never too late to change your name. So Hotel Tonight, I think a better name for them would have been Get a Room. Because I think the original, you know when you’re getting a hotel just for the night, you know, we like? Yeah, get our room, right, like so I think it would have been fun and playful, and then Get a Room would have scaled to 365 days a year. So yeah, that’s really think it through. And there are countless examples, you know, the company Fast Signs, and it started out as a sign, they made signs. But their tagline for years now has been more than fast, more than signs, like that’s a waste of a tagline, just change the business name.

Alexandra (guest):
And we recently renamed a bank that was more than 100 years old. And their original name was First National Bank of Syracuse, which should be okay if they were in Syracuse, New York. But they were based in Syracuse, Kansas, which is a tiny little town an hour from the closest airport. And like people in Kansas, they don’t want to do business with New York companies. They want to do business with local companies. Right. So in they were an award-winning regional bank; they were really mavericks, and the name, the name was kind of stale for them. They wanted something that was more modern and fresh. And their tagline at First National Bank of Syracuse was helping dreams come true. So we leaned into that, and we rebranded them Dream First. So it’s much more aspirational. It’s positive and upbeat. It still has the word first in there. But it’s nice. It’s very different for a bank. It’s very fresh.

Kathy (host):
Yeah, it’s very, it sounds very modern for a bank. Yeah. You know, this old-school type of First Bank of whatever. So I think we’re at it A.

Alexandra (guest):
Yeah, the ‘A’ stands for annoying, and annoying means that your name frustrates customers. You know, maybe it’s spelled backward. That’s frustrating. Maybe it has a number, a numeral in it. Right? So if your business name was Coast to Coast, and the ‘Coast Two’ was the numeral two, you would forever have to spell that out for people. “Oh, yeah, it’s, you know, Amy at coasttocoast.com.” We’ll put that two as the numeral two. Like, anytime you have to explain your name, you are essentially apologizing for it, and that devalues your brand.

Kathy (host):
Yeah. And T stands for.

Alexandra (guest):
And T stands for team, and you can’t afford for your name to be tame and be a wallflower because you need to stand out in a sea of sameness. And in a crowded marketplace, whether you’re a B2B company or a consumer, direct to consumer-,, there’s just so much noise, right? All the online stuff, all the apps. I mean, look at how many ways there are for us to get messages, right? In like all the distractions we have. So you want your name to be something that just jumps off the page at people.

Kathy (host):
So is there such a thing as like, you want it to be witty and something that jumps off the page but is there a line like how far can you push it?

Alexandra (guest):
Well in business or business, you want to be clear. If you’re in a creative business or you’re trying to attract cool clients, then I think it’s okay to be a little more fun. You know, eat my words. Obviously, we’re a creative firm. So our name shows off our creativity. And even though we have a playful name, and you know, we started out naming things that make people fat and drunk. I named the Wendy’s Baconator. That’s my claim to fame. I sent it to someone the other day who had never heard of the Baconator. And he said, the bacon hater. “Oh my gosh, I focus groups that could have easily been killed in a focus group if someone said that. So yes, creative services can have cool names, but we worked with naming a law firm. The founding partners name is Leila Emma Jamali. And she knew that her name would be you know, hard for people to spell pronounce. And remember, so they worked with startups in the San Francisco Bay Area, helping them get their foundational documents. And the name that we gave them was bedrock. And it’s you know, bedrock. And that pink the tagline is where it all begins, which is so great. So what happened is after they change their name to bedrock, and I write about this in my book, Hello, my name is awesome. After they changed the names about rock, she said that they started attracting their business went up in there, they started attracting the type of clients that they wanted to work with. And that’s the magic of having the name that fits your brand personality. So like eat my words, you know, we might not be for everyone. But you know, what we’ve been for, you know, Google, Twitter, Amazon, like, you know, big companies have hired us. So the name like they want to work with creative people. And I think with bedrock, they were attracting, you know, the young startup crowd, and it was perfect for them.

Kathy (host):
That’s awesome. Yeah. So we’ve talked about T is for the team, what about C?

Alexandra (guest):
The second C in S.C.R.A.T.C.H. stands for curse of knowledge. And that’s where you know what it means. But you forget that other people don’t know what it means. A lot of people do this, when they, in a good way to think about this is foreign. Is your name a foreign word or expression circle atop the kitchen store? It looks like a sirloin table? And like how would you know it was unless you speak French, you wouldn’t know that it was a sirloin top because it looks like circular table. Right? And like we don’t, you know, I’m the first to admit, I don’t know how I figured it out. But I used to work in a building where that was in the basement of the ad agency where I worked. And so maybe I learned it then. But yeah, people call it Sarla table. So that’s an example of a curse of knowledge of a foreign phrase. If something means something in Swahili, and like, you’re not going to be there to explain it to people. And then also if it’s just foreign, being unfamiliar, also get ambiguity. I’m just gonna jump back to annoying for a bit. There’s a laundry company called Third Love. And the founder said that she likes the name is ambiguous, like nothing about your business should be ambiguous. Nothing, you know, and I just I was appalled at that. Honestly, like, who says that like, in like, every time I go speak, and I show that example, especially if I’m speaking to students, like at Stanford or another university, I’ll say what do you think third lab is? And if you already know what it is, don’t say anything and like, people give the strangest answers, and they’re always sexual. And none of them are a lingerie store and like yeah, where does third love come from? Like, sometimes I’m like, what happened? They did somebody own that domain name and they just decided like, “Oh, let’s just make this our company name.” I always try to like dissect a name like how did this come to be? So yeah, that’s a curse of knowledge.

Alexandra (guest):
And then finally H and S.M.I.L.E. stands for hard to pronounce. Don’t make your name difficult for people to pronounce. No one wants to embarrass themselves pronouncing your name think of a time you’ve been in a foreign restaurant and there was something on the menu that you wanted to order you could tell based on the description, but you can’t pronounce the name of the dish so either you didn’t order it or you pointed to your menu when the waiter came by or you attempted to pronounce it and completely embarrassed yourself in front of your client that you are with your spouse, you know anyone that your table mates you know what if you were to pick client dinner and that happened? Salad nice wha right like that’s all French I butcher but like, you know, I’m sure everyone calls it a salad. Not everyone but me Koi.

Kathy (host):
Yeah, I think that that’s why I originally called it, and then my husband who knows French he’s like, No, that’s bad. Right?

Alexandra (guest):
Like, how would you know that, right?

Kathy (host):
Yeah.

Alexandra (guest):
So yeah, French is the one language I just get really hung up on. And so yeah, you don’t want your name to be hard to pronounce. There’s a chocolate company, and it’s spelled tch Jo, and people pronounce it to Cho. People pronounce it. Tch Mo, which is what I call capital punishment because their logo is all capital letters. And if you have a short word, that’s all capital letters, people will pronounce it. Yeah, just letter by letter like Thx. So yeah, tch, oh, and it’s pronounced Cho. And the chi is silent. But like, how would you know that? And like, you wouldn’t know it was a chocolate company. And also, if you were having a phone conversation with someone, and they were coming to San Francisco when I live there, people would come and say they wanted to check out some local chocolatiers. And if I said, Oh, make sure you go to Cho. How would they know it’s spelled Tch, Jo? Right? So you have to think about that, too. When somebody’s hearing it. What are they hearing? And is that goes back to spelling, is it spelled the way it sounds? But yeah, your name should only be able to be pronounced one way. Otherwise, it’s going to sound like three different brands. Like if you’re, there’s a brand of like green protein, like vegetarian, like you put it in your smoothies. I think it’s vegan or vegetarian. And it’s V G A. So it can be pronounced that Jah like vegetarian, Viga like vegan or Vega, like the car from the 70s. My friend Janice is telling me about, oh, this great protein powder, she adds to her green drink, called Vega. And someone else is telling me about Viga. And someone else is telling me about Vieja. I might not realize it’s all the same product.

Kathy (host):
Yep. And how should you be taking into account like if you’re in another country? And you’re selling in other countries? Like how does the naming convention impact that type of you know, in that culture? How do you think about that when you’re coming up with something that it’s more global versus just in the US?

Alexandra (guest):
Yeah, we work with translation service companies. So if someone is going global, we’ll do disaster checks to make sure the name doesn’t mean something bad in a foreign language. I mean, we’ve all heard horror stories of things that have happened. They’re not all true. The Chevy Begawan is pretty much an urban legend. But yeah, bad things have happened. And then you don’t want to do it. Like, oh, my friend speaks Japanese, I’ll just ask them. No, you can’t just run it by one person. And you should probably run it through some professional linguists because they might see things that, you know, this is what they do for a living. And it’s not super expensive to do. But I do recommend doing it if you are going global.

Kathy (host):
Yeah. So Alexandra, this has been absolutely delightful. And you give us so many good examples and advice and everything. But if someone is trying to name their product or service that company or whatever it is, what is the one thing that you would tell them that they can do in the next, you know, month or so to get them closer to actually having a good name for what they try to name it.

Alexandra (guest):

Well, try some of the techniques that I talked about, like, you know, looking at stock photo libraries, or going to a thesaurus or a rhyming dictionary. I’ll just give a quick example with a rhyming dictionary, naming a blow-dry bar that we eventually named bounce, you bounce in, bounce out, and get some bounce in your air. A couple of blow-dry bars, but we were naming them. When was coming up with names, I put the word blow into a rhyming dictionary. It sorts them by syllable, so you know one syllable two syllables. So I got down to Chateau and like Chateau below that’s perfect. It’s like it’s fun. It’s whimsical. It sounds like a house like a place you would go with the client when like a really opulent interior with royalty and everything. It just worked out really well. But the Merchants Association didn’t like the name. So yeah, they Yeah, so Shout Joe Blow is yeah, there’s always a story like that. I have so many stories like that, like the one that got away. Or like the runner-up name. I could read a book just on the runner-up names or the ones that almost saw the light of day. They were so good. Yeah, lots of those.

Kathy (host):
I hope that is your next book because I will definitely read it. That’s for sure. I like Santa where can people find you?

Alexandra (guest):
I eat my words.com and on our website, you can take the smiling S.C.R.A.T.C.H. test for free just click on Test a name and I’m on LinkedIn at Alexandra Watkins my email is Alexandra@eatmywords.com.

Kathy (host):
And I’m going to put all of these in the show notes too. So if you didn’t catch that, you can go take a look at the show notes. Thanks so much, Alexandra.

Alexandra (guest):
Thank you.