{"id":397,"date":"2007-06-28T20:43:24","date_gmt":"2007-06-29T01:43:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/devinreams.com\/2007\/06\/28\/whats-in-a-name\/"},"modified":"2007-06-28T20:43:24","modified_gmt":"2007-06-29T01:43:24","slug":"whats-in-a-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/?p=397","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s in a name?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/okdork.com\/author\/andre\/\">Andre<\/a> wrote <a href=\"http:\/\/okdork.com\/2007\/06\/27\/how-to-name-your-product\/\">an interesting article on naming products<\/a> yesterday. This is where I  step in and argue the opposite: <em>names don&#8217;t matter<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>I was talking with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chriskjennings.com\/\">Chris<\/a> one morning and we stumbled into an interesting discussion. <strong>What do you think of when you hear of some famous company names for the first time?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Burger King and McDonalds<\/strong> &#8211; If you heard these two for the first time which would make you think &#8216;delicious&#8217; and which would make you think tools or something?<\/li>\n<li><strong>Maceys and Forbes<\/strong> &#8211; Would you know the difference between a clothing store and a business magazine? Using a last name tells me nothing about a company. <strong>Wal-Mart<\/strong> and <strong>Sam&#8217;s Club<\/strong> are awesome extensions of Sam Walton&#8217;s name.<\/li>\n<li><strong>General Motors, Ford, Toyota<\/strong> &#8211; Hmm, I&#8217;d think General Motors is probably something to do with motors. Cars though? Perhaps. Ford and Toyota? No way.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Safeway<\/strong> &#8211; First aid? Airbag manufacturer?<\/li>\n<li><strong>Flickr<\/strong> &#8211; Something to do with light. A camera flash.<\/li>\n<li><strong>meebo<\/strong> &#8211; Something about myself but I&#8217;d never think instant messaging.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Pandora<\/strong> &#8211; Something bad, cluttered, uncontrollable. Wow, isn&#8217;t it all about the opposite?<\/li>\n<li><strong>Google &#8211;<\/strong> I know everyone in elementary school was fascinated by the word &#8216;googolplex&#8217; I&#8217;m sure I&#8217;d think of &#8220;a lot&#8221; and maybe math. Search, though? Never.<\/li>\n<li><strong>OK Dork<\/strong>&#8211; Uh&#8230;.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It&#8217;s amazing how many companies actually use family names. Check out the <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/magazines\/fortune\/fortune500\/2007\/full_list\/index.html\">Fortune 100<\/a> list: Wells Fargo, Sears, McKesson, Morgan Stanley,  Time Warner, Walgreens, Lockheed Martin, Lowes, Archer-Daniels-Midland, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Merrill Lynch, Walt Disney, etc.<\/p>\n<p>So, when you&#8217;re spending hours coming up with a name for your new company, product, service or feature maybe it&#8217;s not worth your time. If it&#8217;s good the name will follow&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>\tFeel free to prove me wrong&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>\t<em>Note: <a href=\"http:\/\/okdork.com\/2007\/06\/28\/whats-in-a-name\/\">Article cross-posted at OKDork.com.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Andre wrote an interesting article on naming products yesterday. This is where I step in and argue the opposite: names don&#8217;t matter. I was talking with Chris one morning and we stumbled into an interesting discussion. What do you think of when you hear of some famous company names for the first time? Burger King [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[60],"class_list":["post-397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet","tag-marketing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}