August 30, 2016
As you no doubt have noticed by now, Catchword’s got some new digs on the old interwebs. After a thorough redesign process, we are very proud to roll out the shinier, prettier, more powerful model! We believe the new site is the best in the company, product, and services naming biz and want to make sure […]
September 30, 2015
This blog originally appeared on Brandchannel on 9/25/15 The past two years have seen a dramatic expansion of domain-name alternatives. Before the rollout of hundreds of generic top-level domains (gTLDs) that began in 2014, new businesses looking to secure a web address typically faced the gold-standard (but often expensive or unavailable) choice of .com or […]
September 23, 2015
Yogi Berra may have been one of the game’s most accomplished catchers, but he was without a doubt the most clever wordsmith of baseball. He was known for his charisma and wit, which inspired the popular cartoon Yogi Bear, and which are embodied by his hilarious and often paradoxical epigrams affectionately known as Yogi-isms. With […]
October 13, 2014
Anyone who has tried to name something will tell you, naming can be a battle, a chore, a quagmire, or all three. But here at Catchword, 16+ years in the industry has allowed us to develop a process that gets results, regardless of whatever trademark hurtles, subjective reactions, domain name requirements, indecision, and looming deadlines […]
January 7, 2014
Today Agilent unveiled the name for the electronic measurement company it will spin off later this year, and it’s one of ours: Keysight Technologies. Naming a company spinoff like this is always an interesting challenge for us. In addition to the usual naming considerations (such as fit to brand, memorability, etc.) we typically want the […]
May 7, 2012
This blog post originally appeared at the DuetsBlog. Being a Make Mine Marvel type, I am of course very excited to see the Avengers movie, which will feature all of the Marvel heroes together! In one place! With Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) there to help them save the world. I was disturbed, however, to find […]
January 6, 2010
(A version of this article appeared recently at Marketing Profs.) Like the internet phenoms they trumpeted, internet company names of the last decade have been, by turns, wildly inventive, deeply troubled, breathtakingly silly, serviceable (if dull)—and occasionally, brilliant. As a bicoastal naming company that’s christened more than our share of internet phenoms, Catchword looked back […]
August 5, 2008
Catchword recently named a new bottled water from Canada (Eska). Like most of our names, this brand has an interesting tie to the key differentiator of the product: namely that the water is filtered by an esker into super-pure drinking water. But enough about the name… What’s really cool is that the company was just […]
July 30, 2008
So putting aside the atrociousness of the name (seriously, this could be the worst company name ever launched), this new “Google-Killer” is not ready for prime time. I had to check it out, what with all the publicity it has received. Alas, the folks at Google can still rest easy. The folks at Cuil aren’t […]
July 14, 2008
You should involve all key stakeholders from the very start of your naming project. Ask yourself, “Who has veto power?” Then include them on the naming project team. Even if it’s the CEO, do your best to include her/him in as many stages of the naming process as possible. We’ve heard it time and again: […]