Picture this: You walk into Pottery Barn on a Saturday afternoon to browse their ceramics collection. Maybe you’re thinking about a new fruit bowl for the kitchen or an artisanal vase for the mantle. Instead, you’re greeted by $2,000 sectional sofas, reclaimed wood coffee tables, and throw pillows as far as the eye can see. Not a single hand-thrown pot in sight. And yet — this doesn’t surprise you in the slightest.
Or take the traveler who hops on a Southwest flight from Fort Lauderdale to San Juan without batting an eye. Meanwhile, Crate & Barrel hasn’t displayed merchandise in actual shipping crates since the Johnson administration, and their customers couldn’t care less.
These examples illustrate the strange alchemy of brand equity. Our brains perform remarkable gymnastics once a name achieves enough cultural penetration, divorcing the signifier from what it originally signified.
Some brands recognized early that, as they evolved, their names were holding them back and made bold moves to break free. Others, whether intentionally or not, accumulated so much equity that their name’s literal meaning simply evaporated into pure brand recognition. Both strategies can work — but here’s the real question: why box yourself in the first place with a name that’s going to require an expensive, risky strategy later?
The Brands That Broke Free
Some brands that recognized their names had become straitjackets are legendary for making bold moves to escape.
Dunkin’ Donuts → Dunkin’ (2019)
When you’re trying to position as a beverage-led brand, it isn’t helpful if your name suggests your focus is on sugary bits of fried dough. This was the challenge for Dunkin’ Donuts when coffee, not pastry, became the primary business.
The solution? Dropping the “Donuts” and “moving to a first-name basis with America,” as the company billed it. The genius was that Americans were already calling the shops Dunkin’ colloquially anyway; the company simply made official what was happening organically.
The result was that this coffee chain successfully modernized without alienating donut devotees. Brand equity intact; future unlimited.
Restoration Hardware → RH (2012)
As Restoration Hardware evolved from selling vintage doorknobs to offering $10,000 Italian linen sofas, the word “Hardware” started to seem laughably inaccurate.
The solution was elegant: the monogram-like abbreviation RH. The rebrand moves us beyond our hardware store beginnings, officials said, while keeping enough connection to avoid confusing loyalists. The brand universe now encompasses Design Galleries, rooftop restaurants, and even a boutique hotel.
Initials also signal luxury and minimalism — think LVMH, YSL. From humble hardware to haute design — it’s been a wildly successful pivot.
RadioShack → “The Shack” (2009): The Cautionary Tale
In 2009, the word “Radio” suggested the tech-gear shop’s inventory might be about as current as buggy whips in the automobile age. RadioShack attempted to solve this by rebranding as The Shack — a move it believed would convey a hip, of-the-moment sense of fun, youth, and accessibility.
Instead, the company lost brand equity and gained nothing. The name conjured beach shacks, tool sheds, or discount outlets. It didn’t suggest cutting-edge electronics.
A rebrand only works if you know what you’re rebranding to, not just what you’re running from.
The Shack stumbled into bankruptcy first in 2015, then again in 2017. Today, it exists as a zombie brand living mostly online. Ironically, the company eventually brought back RadioShack, The Shack episode having been all but forgotten.
Kentucky Fried Chicken → KFC (1991)
Another successful brand pivot occurred when Kentucky Fried Chicken dropped the “Fried” to sidestep the growing public interest in healthier eating. Everyone already knew the acronym, and KFC became globally scalable without translation headaches.
The lesson here is that timing matters. Make the move early enough that it feels organic, not desperate.
The Brands That Stayed Put
Other brands built such fortresses of equity that the literal meaning of their names essentially evaporated from consumers’ minds.
Pottery Barn
This retail brand’s founder stumbled upon barns full of pottery in upstate New York in 1949. Today, Pottery Barn sells $2,000 sectionals with nary a pot in sight.
Yet it works. Decades of brand equity mean people don’t hear “barn full of pottery” — they hear “sophisticated home furnishings.” A moniker that once described the business literally now works metaphorically, evoking artisanal curation and warm, livable spaces.
(A Friends episode — the one where Rachel lies about furniture being from Pottery Barn — only reinforced its aspirational positioning.)
Southwest Airlines
Having the word “Southwest” in an airline’s name suggests it operates only in the southwestern United States, but in fact, Southwest Airlines now flies to over 100 destinations across 42 states, plus Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. This is a dramatic evolution from the carrier’s origins in 1971, flying only between Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. When the airline started expanding nationally in the 1980s and 1990s, the geographic limitation in its name became increasingly apparent. Yet five decades of operations mean the name signals reliability, value, and a distinct brand personality rather than a regional constraint.
When you’re that established, literal meaning fades away.
Crate & Barrel
Gordon and Carole Segal actually displayed European housewares in crates and on barrels in their 1962 Chicago store. Today’s Crate & Barrel offers sleek, modern furniture with zero shipping containers in sight. The name carries a retro-cool charm that conjures artisanal curation rather than a warehouse-like shopping experience. It’s distinctive and memorable and stands out in a sea of bland home furnishing names.
There’s an uncomfortable truth behind these stories of successful metamorphosis. These brands succeeded despite the semantic limitations of their names, not because of them. They had decades (and, let’s not forget, massive marketing budgets) to build equity before the disconnect mattered.
Most companies won’t be so lucky.
The Smart Money: Don't Paint Yourself into a Corner
Names that suggest rather than declare, that evoke rather than define, give your venture room to grow. On the other hand, broadening a too-specific name could require a costly rebrand or decades of equity-building. It’s risky to assume your company will have the money or time to go that route.
Consider Catchword’s portfolio of strategically flexible names:
Upwork (not “FreelancerHub”) — flexible enough to encompass everything from graphic design to executive consulting. Upwork elevates independent endeavor without limiting what kind of work that might be.
Asana (not “TaskManager”) — evocative and category-agnostic enough to grow from simple task lists to enterprise workflow solutions. The Sanskrit word for a yoga posture conveys balance and flow without declaring specific functionality.
Vudu (not “MovieStream”) — distinctive and mysterious, accommodating pivots in content and technology without requiring a rebrand.
Denim (not “FreightFinance”) — versatile and durable, a name that works for freight payment solutions while suggesting reliability. The unexpected metaphor is memorable and accessible to trucking-industry customers.
These names are springboards, not cages. They’re strategic assets that accommodate growth, pivots, and market evolution. Because the alternative — hoping you’ll become as established as Pottery Barn or investing millions to rebrand like Dunkin’ — is a gamble not many companies can afford.
Give Your Brand Room to Breathe
Today’s entrepreneurs and brand managers can learn from decades of naming mistakes and successes. While it’s possible to transcend a limiting name if you build massive equity over decades, why take that risk? Don’t paint yourself into a corner when you could build a brand with room to breathe from day one.
Smart naming means thinking beyond your current product line, market, or business model. In other words: Your name should be a launchpad, not a straitjacket.
The best brand names aren’t just clever. They’re strategically bulletproof.
