Whether you prefer to call them private security firms or just plain old mercenaries, these companiesdo a terrible job at naming themselves. The connotation of Custer Battles is obviously awful. But how about Triple Canopy, a phrase that gained currency in the 1960s to describe the jungle landscape of South Vietnam? (Now that sets off a train of associations you don't want to follow: Vietnam, quagmire...) Or the new name for Blackwater, Xe, which sounds like our new alien overlord?
While I don't have a lot of sympathy for these particular companies when they choose stupid names, I do feel for tech vendors that seize on unintentionally silly or embarrassing names for their companies or products. Here are a few examples:
- Tsunami regularly appears, for reasons that escape me. Why would you choose a natural disaster as a moniker? Undeterred, companies continue to do it, including one enterprise software company that shall remain nameless, who chose it as a code name for a project not long before the 2004 tsunami killed approximately 230,000 people.
- Another recurring name is Rolling Thunder. It might make you think of an Apache warrior, but it's actually the code name for a human disaster, the failed US bombing campaign against North Vietnam. (Again with the Vietnam War!)
- Small companies seem to be especially prone to bad name choices, such as Gianus, Ebone, Wayne Kerr Electronics, Bookgoo, ISOARS Web Design, and ExchangeP.
- For every bad company name, there are 10 bad product names, such as iSmell, TheGIMP, Vergatorio (look it up), LappyMats, Popuload, and the Tonium Pacemaker (not what you think it is).
- And if you're not careful, your innocent-sounding name may make a disastrous URL.
While these names are funny, they're also sad. People stake their careers on catchy branding, or they sink their life's savings into a business venture. And then, someone points out that your life's work is named Phartronics.
The moral of the story is, the technology business is like any business. The problem isn't that some people are so stupid that they should not be given naming authority, but that, unchecked we all have the capacity for stupidity. We all have our blind spots, and we all commit the occasional brain fart.
Pack a bunch of very smart people into a room, and they'll come up with something—a company name, a new product, the next market to pursue—that makes complete sense to them. However great that Big Idea seems, someone needs to do a reality check before committing a very costly mistake.
Comments