Consumer technology naming

AgileTV needed a product name for their voice-activated TV remote. We developed a couple thousand names (many forged from foreign words, Latin roots, and morphemes) before winnowing the list. The name Promptu could apply to voice prompts, yet its associations were also broad enough and layered enough (impromptu, speed) to allow the product to morph over time. Which is just what it did: it became the company’s name and now offers cutting-edge voice recognition software for everything from apps to automotive.