June 18, 2010
I’m a big fan of using proper grammar. But I’m also a big proponent of keeping up with trends, both technological and vernacular. Thus, when I read about the New York Times banning the use of “tweet” by their journalists, I viewed their decision as yet another way they’ve fallen behind the times and are […]
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 […]
April 11, 2008
Saw this fun little piece on naming today. It mostly talks about “Googlegängers” (folks who share the same name finding out about each other through Google). But the reference to people subliminally liking names that are similar to their own is fascinating. I’ve experienced a slightly different, but likely related tendency in my years as […]
March 31, 2008
We really enjoyed naming Vivaty, the newest 3D virtual world experience that launched today. The product is truly amazing, and we had a lot of fun exploring the creative naming directions inherent in such a rich technology. Vivaty is like Second Life, but better, much much better! It doesn’t require downloading clunky software onto your […]
March 27, 2008
In his column today, tech guru Walt Mossberg expresses high hopes for Dash. He has been using a beta version of Dash, and preliminarily he says it’s great. We’re so happy that Dash is getting well deserved accolades. It was a fun project, a great product, and a clever name (if we do say so […]
March 13, 2008
Amazing how popular the topic of baby naming has gotten in the last few months. Here’s the latest entry from the New York Times. One of my “golden rules of naming” is that parents shouldn’t tell their friends what names they are considering before they name the baby. (You tend to get mostly negative feedback […]
August 28, 2007
Catchword’s own PR darling Burt Alper was recently featured in a New York Times piece by Stuart Elliott titled On 10th Anniversary, ‘Dianabilia’ Takes Over . The article explores the phenomenon of Diana, and Burt discusses how ‘Diana’ functions as a brand name: “If you think of her as a product, she was able to […]
August 16, 2007
Did anyone else catch Stuart Elliott’s piece in yesterday’s NYT on TIAA-CREF promoting their .org status as a differentiator? I guess now that saying “.com” is assumed, those people with something else to say might as well try to capture the moment. We naming consultants were not so impressed. They overlooked the fact that .org […]
May 24, 2004
“‘Torture is torture is torture,” Secretary of State Colin Powell said this week in an interview on “Fox News Sunday” with Chris Wallace. That depends on what papers you read. The media in France, Italy and Germany have been routinely using the word “torture” in the headings of their stories on the abuses in the […]
March 23, 2004
“”Names are perhaps the single-most important issue of corporate communication today,” said Naseem Javed, founder of a corporate naming company called ABC Namebank International. ”With millions and millions of product names clashing in cyberspace, a name is no longer something people can sit around a kitchen and come up with.” A company can no longer […]