Caavo is a device that unifies all the doodads plugged into your TV. It’s a home entertainment bundler, connecting your TV, DVR, videogames, streaming channels, laptop, yada yada yada.
I’m flipping through channels, trying to find a reason they named it Caavo, and the reception is pretty fuzzy.
At first I thought it could be a strange corruption of cavort. And then maybe a rearrangement of avoca from avocation or avocado. In Latin, cavo comes from the root that means hollow, or to excavate. The latter is more plausible, but to me the product is much more concerned with ease and streamlining than discovery.
And then I was informed that in Italian, cavo means wire. That’s likely it. In essence, the Caavo channels all of your devices down the same wire.
Suffice it to say, they could have done better. Part of the allure of names derived from a romance language for English speakers is that they usually sound fancy. But in this case, the two As are unsightly and unwieldy, and do not suggest elegance.
Further, English doesn’t have a standard pronunciation for the rare double A; Aaron, aardvark, and naan all have slightly different vowel sounds. That means that English speakers won’t be confident in saying Caavo out loud.
And lastly, if indeed it does come from the Italian for “wire,” it certainly isn’t a root English speakers can recognize easily. Throwing an extra A into an Italian word that has no English crossover pretty much ensures that the origins of the word won’t be traced by English speakers.
It’s hard naming a startup. Naming can sometimes be the very last thing you want to focus on. And I know you want a cheap, exact .com domain name. And I know you want to sound cool. But please, take a little time and read our handy naming guide. There’s so, so much to be gained with a good name, I guarantee it is worth your while.
