Baby names

Never having gone through the birthing process myself, other than when I cried myself into the world as my parents’ pride and joy, I still appreciate the excitement, thought, and detail that goes into baby names. Do you want your kid to be a Thor or a Nathaniel? Despite the fact that I’m sure there are quite a few Nathanials who wind up being Thors (and vice-versa), parents tend to see names for future children as their futures themselves. I want my little girl to be wise (Sage, Mackenzie), or I want my son to be strong (Aaron, Emery).

However, that tends to be a little different from how products and services are named. Typically, positive and descriptive attributes are combined to create a name that evokes positive emotions and/or conjures up some image of the product or service. iPhone – my phone. Juicy Fruit – taste of the gum. Quaker Oats – historical context and description. Typically, we don’t go around naming our kids things like Marlboro or PepsiCo.

However, in China, they do. Take the current Chinese president, Hu Jintao, for an example – as explained in Branding Strategy Insider.

“’Hu’ is his family name, but his first name ‘Jintao’ “is the combination of two characters, Jin and Tao. Jin is ‘brocade’ or ‘bright and beautiful.’ Tao is ‘big waves.’ By putting them together, Jin-tao means ‘enchanting waves’ or, metaphorically, ‘splendid success’ since brocade is associated with richness and success and big waves are strong and unstoppable.”

What’s interesting about the way they create baby names in China, is that it mirrors the exact same way one should create company or product names. The process goes even deeper. More than just actual translation (a name changed to retain its meaning) comes transliteration (a name chosen primarily based on a meaning derived from its sound).

A good way to understand this process is to consider how Chinese usually try to remember an English name – by converting the sound into Chinese equivalents. With transliteration, the goal is to “create a Chinese name that sounds closest to the original name and has positive associations.” Examples of this are fascinating. Hui-Pu is Hewlett-Packard’s Chinese brand name because it not only sounds like “Hewlett-Packard,” but Hui is “kindness” and Pu “universal,” so Hui-Pu can mean “benefit to all.” All of the sudden naming has a whole new dimension.

GroupOn

GroupOn is a new company that just came on the scene 2 years ago. I remember when GroupOn was only in 5 cities in the States, just 1.5 years ago, when I thought I was an early-adopter! Now, in addition to turning down multimillion dollar deals from Google and Yahoo, they have expanded to 35 countries in just the last year.

A question relevant to this discussion that has always come to mind when I hear about their dizzying growth and acquisition strategy, is how does the name GroupOn work in Russia, Europe, and Asia? One of the most attractive things about it in English is that it’s a play off of “coupon” that brings to mind “coupons” as in a whole “bunch.” How does the name play overseas and does that matter?

To facilitate their burgeoning growth, Groupon has done something perhaps smart initially, although potentially very challenging down-the-line. They have acquired local companies, allowing them all to retain their local identities. Their European service is MyCityDeal. They’ve taken the same approach in each new locale. In South America the service is ClanDescuento, in Japan Qpod.jp, and in Russia Darberry.ru. Clearly, they’re using the same CMS, web design, everything. They’ve standardized except on the name – which is odd, given the intentional local feel of their daily deals. This divorce might impact their relationship with their clientele.  If they are willing to tailor their brand name, why not also their web site, messaging, etc.?

Embrace or circumvent?

So, is it worth the headache of exploring new languages, cultures, and identities as you expand, or should you just circumvent the whole challenge via acquisition or a similar parent-brand/sub-brand strategy?

Honestly, one brand name (or derivations of it) that means one thing across languages and cultures is far simpler to communicate than a host of brands, even if they live under one parent brand. The thing about brand naming is that memorability is key. It’s easy to get from Hui-Pu to HP. It’s not very easy to tie a MyCityDeal or ClanDescuento back to GroupOn.

Building a strong brand seems paramount. Do you want to spend more money educating your market on your different brands and their relationships, or would you rather spend a little more time and money up front and have a strong, memorable, and meaningful brand name that works across multiple countries and cultures? We certainly advocate the single brand name strategy, as it more effectively leverages your brand building dollars and is simpler to execute and manage over time.

Apple Tablet PC

As the January 27th announcement of Apple’s new tablet PC fast approaches, many have speculated on its name.  While the inside favorite seems to be the iSlate, others are offering up alternatives like the iTablet, the iPad, etc.  Regardless of what is announced on the 27th, here are some of our thoughts regarding the iSlate name, both the good and the bad:

THE GOOD:

• It does continue to leverage Apple’s branding around the “i-” names (iPhone, iPod, iMac…)
• It relates well to the physical appearance of the PC while also distinguishing it from the many other tablet PCs on the market
• Slate is a “cooler” word than Tablet or Pad … especially if the actual product is thin and slate-like in appearance
• It is controversial which, in this case, is a very good thing.  Just the amount of discussion and blogging on the name has raised the awareness and interest in the product launch tremendously
• It is easy to say, spell and remember

THE BAD

• It may not be registrable as a trademark.  While Apple was able to register iPhone in spite of Cisco’s and Teltronics’ pre-existing trademark rights in the name, the same may not be true of iSlate.  There is already a company, Slate Computing, using ISLATE for computers and a whole lot more, with pending trademark registrations in the U.S. and Canada.  There is also an application for the iPhone called iSlate, and Fujitsu reportedly has some IP protection around SLATE.
• It may not be as distinctive or differentiating as needed for building a strong brand.  ESLATE is already used for for a computer voting system.  INFOSLATE in a registered trademark for a mobile computer. NETSLATE is a pending trademark for a tablet PC and the list goes on and on.
• It has some off-color and inappropriate slang meanings.
• The domain name may be expensive. A quick check on Network Solutions shows that just about every top level domain starting with iSlate is already registered.  Good luck buying the dot-com, dot-net, dot-org, etc. rights in the name for a less than six figures.

However, Apple has consistently proven itself to be very savvy when it comes to brand building. We certainly wouldn’t bet against their ability to build strong brand identity around their new tablet PC, regardless of what it is called.

Even in the United States words are not pronounced the same way around the country. In the North Carolina mountains “Car” is pronounced “Kah-Ahr” in two syllables. The same word is pronounced “Kah” in Boston. Coincidentally, I was recently talking about this exact issue over lunch with Ed Shelton, owner of Shelton Winery. He joked that when his wife, who hails from the NC mountains, pronounces “Ed” it has THREE syllables: “Ay-yuh-duh”.

So, it is impossible to create a name that will be pronounced the same way worldwide. Not even Nike, with all of their marketing clout and dollars, has been able to achieve this. Having said that, Choice Translating has a product called SayItWrite(TM) that helps clients make branding decisions by demonstrating how candidates will be pronounced in designated target markets. This is standard for our clients that focus on pharmaceutical branding, but it has value for other industries too. We deliver sound files with the most likely way a name will be pronounced in each target market. The recordings are made by in-country linguists. In addition, for non-Roman languages such as Japanese, Chinese or Korean, we can provide a phonetic transliteration of the name in the non-Roman alphabet, and then the phonetic representation of that pronunciation using the Roman alphabet.  For more information on SayItWrite, visit the Choice Translating web site.