What's in a Name?

A one followed by a 1000 zeros. Single words that mean nothing. Fruit. Nouns that become verbs.

I grew up in the 70s and 80s and there were no shortages of hippy, rock star, celebrity children who couldn't wait to get to 18 and change their names by deed poll. As the world population explodes, original names must be harder to come by as witnesses by the spelling craze and the creativity people use to try and make their kids and themselves stand out from the crowd. My favourite at the moment, comes from New Zealand where parents named their child "Talula Does the Hula from Hawaii" but thankfully Judge Rob Murfitt deemed it inappropriate and thought it was setting her up for social disability and handicap and ordered the parents to reconsider.

The shortage of great business names also seems to bring out the creativity that sometimes works and sometimes set you up for failure. Sure the "Bologna Boutique", "Drain Surgeons" and "Dick Wood Hardware" may get you into the funny signs on the net but what does it do for your business?

The net has spawned a million names for a million sites but few make it into the vernacular and become verbs of recognition. What means something to you means nothing to the rest of the world, so how do you come up with that magical monicker to make you stand out? The noise can be incredible and just because you shout loudly doesn't mean you'll be heard. Do you remember Whooping Goldberg and flooz.com, DigiScent iSmell, Beenz, neither do I but they had millions spent on them and their names disappeared as quickly as their companies.

Business experts concentrate on the obvious and say your name should identify you and what you do and how you do it. That works for Sam's Deli but if you offer other services than making, baking or building, the search for that hook becomes more difficult. Other experts say names need to be memorable, easy to spell, have a visual element with a positive connotation along with information on the business.

Okay then what was Google, Virgin, Bing and Apple thinking?

Whenever a new company starts and decides on a business name, marketing campaigns to grow awareness are used so people try them out but if the product does not deliver, no amount of marketing will save you. To stand out from the crowd your product has to be singularly spectacular or swimming in a blue ocean where you are the only one offering that product or service. Both difficult to achieve but even harder if you can't find that special identifying monicker.

The last word from the experts Is to remain short, so I'm thinking of copyrighting "O" for any future business ventures that may come my way, what do you think? I wonder if I copyright it in every country, will they have to take the letter out of the alphabet or even better, I get paid every time it's used.

The last word should come from our friends across the Tasman where Judge Murfitt used common sense with "Talula" but the system was okay with naming kids "Midnight Chardonnay" or worse, "Number 16 Bus Shelter".

What happened in that shelter is nobody's business.