Trade MarkedTM A linguistic introduction to brand naming

by

ERIC C. JACKSON April 2015

DEPARTMENT OF SLAVIC & EASTERN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES PROGRAM IN LINGUISTICS BOSTON COLLEGE

Table of Contents

Abstract 1. Introduction…………………………………………………………………. 3 1.1 Branding — HUH! — What is it good for? 1.1.1. Fire-brands 1.1.2. Modern brands 1.2. Why study brands? 2. Phonology…………………………………………………………………… 7 2.1. Sound symbolism 2.1.1. Phýsei or thései? 2.1.2. Modern sound symbolism research 2.1.3. Explanations of sound symbolism 2.1.4. Sound symbolism and branding 2.2. Phonotactic constraints 2.3. Acronyms and initialisms 3. Morphology…………………………………………………………………18 3.1. The American Dream 3.1.1. Brandola 3.1.2. McBrands 3.1.3. Brand-O’s 3.2. “Pre-fixation” 3.2.1. eBrands 3.2.2. iBrands 3.2.3. abcBrands 3.3. “The killer advertising suffix” 4. Syntax………………………………………………………………………. 25 4.1. Compound names 4.2. Anthimeria 5. Semantics…………………………………………………………………… 27 5.1. Descriptive, suggestive, and arbitrary names 5.2. Store-brand sodas 5.3. Lost in translation 5.3.1. Automobile names 5.3.2. Cringeworthy in English 5.4. Naming in practice: An agricultural technology project 6. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………. 31 References

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Abstract This paper examines the practice of brand naming from a linguistic approach. Beginning with phonology in section 2, I discuss sound symbolism, a popular area of interest for professional namers, since consumers tend to exhibit surprising semantic perceptions of sound properties brand names. Section 3 analyzes brand names morphologically. In section 4 I briefly discuss the syntax of brands, and brand evolution in casual speech. Section 5 treats the semantics of brand names, looking at branding techniques related to the association meaning.

1. Introduction

1.1. Branding — HUH! — What is it good for?

Any member of a consumerist society like the United States likely confronts brands on a daily basis; and when I say brands in this paper, I specifically mean brand names, i.e. the names of companies, products, or services. Other components of modern brands include logos, packaging, slogans, and more, but for this study I will use brand to refer to the brand name. While the term brand is likely so commonplace that it needs no explanation, a good origin story is never unnecessary.

1.1.1. Fire-brands

The word brand literally means “something burned,” from Germanic *brando-z from the verb *brinn-an “burn” (OED “brand,” 2015). This sense is still used in agriculture, especially in the cattle industry. Some date the practice of branding further back, even to the beginning of civilization itself (Moore & Reid, 2008), but I will limit this introduction to the development of modern brands.

Despite our common use of the term brand to refer to the names or packaging of goods and services, cattlemen in the United States still use the physical “burning” sense for their cattle brands. In

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some states, brands are under full legal protection, and copying or infringing upon another rancher’s cattle brand violates the law and incurs serious penalty.

Carol Lombard (2015) from the University of the Free State is currently studying American cattle brands in Montana. According to her research on the socio-onomastic role of cattle brands, cattlemen judge the prestige of a brand based on its simplicity: the simpler the form, the older the brand, and therefore the more esteemed the brand. Aged brands are valuable, and so families tend to pass them down through the generations.

Figure 1. How to design a brand (Texas Brand Registration, 2012)

Other states like Texas do not assign legal status to brands, and so such a rigid system of trademarking does not exist. Figure 1 offers examples of brand types from the Texas Brand Registration website. It also shows some of the syntactic structure of the naming of cattle brands. In the same way I can picture the letters of the alphabet when someone sings the ABCs, those who are fluent in the language of cattle brands can picture the exact image of a brand simply from hearing its verbal name.

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1.1.2. Modern brands

Marketing consultant and brand expert Marc de Swaan Arons (2011) wrote a brief article on the history of modern marketing for The Atlantic. Branding as we imagine today began around the early 20th century. Before that time, having a unique brand name was irrelevant; a company only needed to maintain output of a high quality product in order to sell. Most companies simply took the name of the founder, like “Jim’s Snake Oil.” Once production of goods increased and more options became available, companies required a method of differentiating themselves from the competition. When standards of quality increased, consumers no longer had an incentive to choose Jim’s Snake Oil over Harry’s Miracle Elixir. Rising standards of quality towards the middle of the 20th century compelled businesses to investigate new methods of instilling brand loyalty. Hence, modern advertising and brand names arose, and companies like Lipton, Tide, and Kraft executed successful marketing programs, since these old brands are still universal today. The world’s accelerated industrial production of goods and services and more importantly the rising standard of quality of those various goods ushered in the age of calculated marketing.

1.2. Why study brand names?

I propose this survey of brand names on behalf of two specific fields: linguistics and marketing.

For linguistics. Linguists want to know how people use language. As members of a branded culture, we often use trademarks in everyday conversation. Brand names constitute a repository of linguistic data, and thus give insight into how language behaves in the world. Brands especially offer understanding of how the language deals with neologisms, and the creative and productive results that follow. Linguists have pored over the sounds of language and isolated examples of iconic form–meaning

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relationships associated with brand names which challenge some foundational tenets of structural linguistics, especially the signifier–signified dichotomy.

For marketing. Marketing and advertising firms directly benefit from a linguistic approach to brand names, since observation and analysis of the nuances of form and meaning exhibited by brands can equal the difference between a successful product and a failed product: dollars gained or dollars lost. Agencies dedicated to establishing and promoting a brand for a company need to understand linguistic sandbox into which brands are thrown and how they will be manipulated. How will people view this brand? What will they associate it with? Does it offer the appropriate connotations for the business? Is it stable over time? A comprehensive analysis of the linguistics of brand names would only add to the toolkit of marketers seeking to cultivate and extend the roots of a current brand, or creatively strike forward as innovative trailblazers.

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2. Phonology

In this section I survey research on sound symbolism and its effect on brand names, as well as some other sound-related guidelines for naming.

2.1. Sound symbolism

To introduce the concept of sound symbolism, I will start with a test. If I presented you with these two shapes and then asked you to name them with the words provided on the left, which one would you call baluma and which one would you call takete?

Figure 2. The takete/baluma test (cf. Köhler 1929)

I would confidently guess that you assigned baluma to the shape on the right and takete to the shape on the left. It seems obvious, but why?

Wolfgang Köhler, a German psychologist famous for his 1929 work Gestalt Psychology, used this exact test on his subjects. In 2001 Köhler’s test was repeated using similar nonce words bouba and kiki and administered to American college students and Tamil speakers in India (Ramachandran & Hubbard, 2001). The researchers found that in both groups, 95%–98% of participants responded in the same way, i.e. they assigned bouba to the rounded shape and kiki to the angular shape (this specific phenomenon is now commonly called the “bouba/kiki effect”).

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Ramachandran & Hubbard (2001: 19) claimed that “sharp changes in visual direction of the lines in the right-hand figure mimics the sharp phonemic inflections of the sound kiki, as well as the sharp inflection of the tongue on the palate.” In this study, they ultimately wanted to account for origins of language by investigating synaesthesia, the involuntary neurological stimulation of multiple senses. They speculated the existence of a natural bias towards “sensory-to-motor synaesthesia” which links sound contours to certain utterances, just as in dance where the rhythm of motor movements match with the sensory (auditory) rhythm of music.

Basically what sound symbolism suggests is that in some cases, a non-arbitrary link exists between sound and meaning. Other authors have called it phonaesthesia, and individual sound pieces that suggest a specific meaning they have called phonaesthemes (Firth, 1930). For consistency, I will be using the term sound symbolism to describe the phenomenon.

This idea seems to violate the Saussurean dogma of the “arbitrariness of the sign” (1916/1977) since the pieces of language need to be arbitrary in order to permit an infinite, combinatorial, generative system. But since there is empirical evidence for non-arbitrary connections, it is necessary to look critically at this area – which many have written off as trivial – and to determine whether or not sound symbolism is a real, systematic part of language.

2.1.1. Phýsei or thései?

The debate about natural or conventional links between signs and objects does not originate with structural linguistics of Saussure. In fact it goes back much further, at least about 2400 years back to Plato’s dialogue Cratylus.

SOCRATES: Then, Hermogenes, I should say that this giving of names can be no such light matter as you fancy,

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or the work of light or chance persons; and Cratylus is right in saying that things have names by nature, and that not every man is an artificer of names, but he only who looks to the name which each thing by nature has, and is able to express the true forms of things in letters and syllables.

HERMOGENES: I cannot answer you, Socrates; but I find a difficulty in changing my opinion all in a moment, and I think that I should be more readily persuaded, if you would show me what this is which you term the natural fitness of names. (Plato, trans. 2008)

One question lies at the heart of the debate: do words (Greek, onómata, “names”) get their meaning by nature (phýsei) or by convention (thései)? Cratylus argued for a natural relationship, while Hermogenes spoke in favor of a relationship by convention. Socrates initially supported the natural relationship argument, positing an ancient, omniscient “name-giver.” However, by the end of the dialogue, Socrates qualified Cratylus’s position by pointing out examples of arbitrary form–meaning relationships. The naturalism vs. conventionalism question has persisted throughout the history of linguistic study.

Saussure (1916/1977) dealt a serious blow to naturalism with his theory of the arbitrariness of the sign, largely taken now as dogma in modern mainstream linguistics. Others like Benveniste (1939/1971) have questioned total arbitrariness with theories of iconicity (Jakobson, 1978). Sound symbolism is just one facet of iconic language, and its controversial claims are worth considering from a linguistic point of view.

2.1.2. Modern sound symbolism research

The famous “bouba–kiki effect” discovered by Köhler, replicated by Ramachandran & Hubbard (2001) and others, is just one example of ongoing studies in sound symbolism. Gómez Milán et al. (2013) continued unraveling this neurological thread connecting the effect to the theory of ideaesthesia, or the conceptual linking between ideas, or between a sense and an idea, “such as

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when we represent intelligence with an illuminated light, that is, like seeing” (2013: 4).

When examining the phenomenon of sound symbolism, one must remember that it largely takes place within a given language; one language will have an entirely different set of sound-symbolic features than another. For example, Japanese speakers, especially children, apparently find the [p] sound funny in certain contexts (M. Thomas, personal communication, March 2015). Despite this intra-language boundary, some veins of sound symbolism boast some cross-linguistic evidence.

Researchers have found attestations of so-called magnitude sound symbolism in many (but not all; cf. Ultan, 1978) languages. Across various languages it seems that often high front vowels connote smallness, and also, though with less evidence, low back vowels connote largeness (Jespersen, 1933: 283; Jakobson & Waugh, 1979/2002: 188–191; Nuckolls, 1999: 229–239).

Figure 3. Size–sound (magnitude) symbolism (Downing & Stiebels, 2012: 382)

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Like Köhler (1929) and his takete and baluma, linguists have generated their own series of invented words to test speakers’ intuitions about the meaning of individual phonemes. Sapir (1929) conducted a study using a coined pair mal and mil. Given that both words meant “table,” he asked participants to judge which one was the larger table and which one was the smaller table. For these relational tests, Sapir found that a word containing /a/ was at least 80% more likely to be judged at larger if compared to a word containing /i/ (cf. Nuckolls, 1999: 230). In a study accessory to Sapir’s, Bentley & Varon (1933) replicated the a–i size relationship test, and included other variables like angularity and hardness (see Figure 4). They used a collection of “a-sounds” (fam, jaf, mav, vag) and “i-sounds” (fim, gif, miv, vig) surrounded by various consonants.

Figure 4. Testing angularity, and hardness of /a/&/i/ (Bentley & Varon 1933: 82)

Despite having found similar results in their experiments, Bentley & Varon (1933: 83) critiqued these types of “forced-choice” studies: “The forcing instruction, in such cases, is bound to increase the number of positive reports, but it may well affect validity also.” B & V concluded that while subjects indeed connect

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“non-linguistic sounds” with abstract values like size and angularity, Sapir’s conflation of these sounds with “words” went too far.

More recently, Westbury (2004) obtained comparable data when he experimented with real words and nonce words. Avoiding the forced-choice method, he tested participants by subtly framing the image of the word on a computer screen with jagged or rounded edges. Using a lexical decision task, he discovered, as Bentley & Varon (1933) had suggested, that subjects made no sound- symbolic association with actual lexemes, but did so with invented words.

Figure 5. Reaction times for correct decisions to real words (left), and non-words (right) (Westbury 2004: 13)

The designation curve and spike refers to the frames of the screen presented to subjects during the task. In the tests using real words, subjects reacted with equal quickness whether or not the word appeared within a curved frame or spiky frame. However, when tested with a non-word, subjects correctly responded significantly faster when presented (1) with a word containing continuants in a curved frame, and (2) with a word containing stops in a spiky frame.

I should qualify, as have others (Nuckolls, 1999; Westbury, 2004; Feist, 2013), that supporters of sound symbolism have often exaggerated its productivity. Nevertheless, this evidence that suggests an intuitive connection between sound and meaning

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clashes with the established theoretical understanding of language. Phonemes are not supposed to bear meaning. To round out the discussion, let us then turn to some possible explanations for this phenomenon.

2.1.3. Explanations of sound symbolism

While the relationship of the non-low front vowels with smallness is not conclusively explicated, some authors have offered interesting proposals.

Jespersen (1933: 284) explained that since high front vowels exhibit greater constriction on the oral cavity and smaller lip- aperture, they designate smaller objects. Diffloth (1994: 113) followed this argument describing “articulatory feedback sensations” in order to explain why in Bahnar, largeness is symbolized with high front vowels. The articulation of high front vowels indicates largeness or heaviness in these languages because it corresponds with the sensation of the tongue filling the mouth (cf. Feist, 2013: 114).

The “frequency code hypothesis” (Ohala, 1984; Bauer, 1987) suggests that biologically wiring causes us to associate higher frequency sounds with smallness or submission. Ohala posited that the rising intonation of a question signals submission on the part of the questioner, comparing it to the flat or falling intonation of a declarative statement. Expanding the hypothesis beyond humans, he surveyed frequency code in animal communication (1984: 4); consider a dog’s yelp vs. a dog’s growl. Animals (humans included) could possibly make themselves appear more aggressive or more submissive by either lowering or raising, respectively, the frequency of their speech, since a bigger animal possesses a larger larynx (e.g. adult men have deeper voices than adult women). Thus, much like puffing out the chest or folding back the ears, animals learn instinctively to take on higher or lower frequencies in communication depending on the message they

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want to send. Many, however, question the validity of this hypothesis, and argue that its claims are exaggerated or unfounded based on the actual empirical evidence (Diffloth, 1994; Downing & Stiebels, 2012: 384).

Westbury (2004) expanded on the neurological explanation, which we have seen already in Ramachandran & Hubbard’s (2001) theory of sensory-to-motor synaesthesia. Westbury found similar results, but with a purely visual study, and so he concluded that it is unlikely that interference occurs in primary auditory areas of the brain as R & H suggested. Rather, according to Westbury (2004: 16), the locus of interference is likely one of three possibilities: [1] the angular gyrus, since it is a well-known “primary cross-modal association area,” or [2] the left fusiform gyrus, the so-called “visual word form area” (Price & Devlin, 2003), or [3] the left lateral posterior temporal lobe (cf. Cohen et al., 2000).

Approaching the issue from pragmatics, Feist (2013) sought to incorporate sound symbolism, which he called “phonic” as distinguished from “phonetic/phonemic” significance, into the general framework of English. He suggested that speakers can communicate meaning on several levels, and the phonic or sound- symbolic level is simply one of these schemata. Focusing on its expressive function, Feist argued that sound symbolism is simply one of many marked forms within the language (2013: 117).

2.1.4. Sound symbolism and branding

Sound symbolism offers a valuable resource for branding agencies charged with creating names for companies, products, or services. Since the semantic qualities of familiar words tend to dominate our perception of them, sound symbolism really only bears on the coinage of new words or borrowings from other languages. The research discussed in the previous section often involved testing people’s perception of nonce words, and so the creation of unique

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brand names benefits directly from those results. When they hear a new word, consumers will rely on the neologism’s phonetic relationship with other known words (Placek, 2010).

David Placek and his team at Lexicon Branding utilize principles of sound symbolism in their professional naming strategies. Lexicon coined the name Swiffer for Procter & Gamble’s user- friendly mop. They claimed that the name Swiffer evokes deftness and speed because of the initial syllable swif- which it shares with swift, and also because of the use of the lax vowel [ɪ], which they suggested is the lightest sounding vowel in English. It also maintains its relationship with mops by the related word sweeper.

Another popular example of successful sound symbolic branding is the drug popularly known as Viagra. The initial syllable connotes other words like vivacious, virile, and vigor. Some have observed an extremely close phonetic tie between /vaɪ'ægrə/ and Niagara /naɪ'ægrə/ Falls, though the manufacturers deny that this image influenced the name. Others have suggested that the Sanskrit words vyāgrah “tiger” and vy-agra “excited, agitated” are not only close in sound but also semantically evocative. However, the makers of the drug claim that the proprietary name Viagra for sildenafil citrate was not influenced by phonetically related or semantically suggestive words (cf. OED, “Viagra,” 2015). Nevertheless, consumers have still made these associations, and will continue to make them, whether the developers intended it or not.

Altria, a tobacco corporation previously called Phillip Morris Companies, Inc., sounds like the Latin word altus meaning “lofty, deep.” By suggestively relating the name to a Latin word, the creators of this re-brand exploited sound as well as sentiment: not only does the sound of the brand name allude to a Latin word meaning “lofty,” but because of the very reference to the Latin language, which many typically regard as a sophisticated, “lofty” language, they doubly increased the connotation of sophistication

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of the name. Steven Pinker (2007: 304) criticizes Altria’s rebranding as a particularly “egregious example” of phonaesthesia, “presumably to switch its image from bad people who sell addictive carcinogens to a place or state marked by altruism and other lofty values.”

Consumer research has consistently shown that people associate certain connotations based on the sound properties of a brand. Figure 6 shows some of the results of Klink’s (2000) study of invented words. He asked participants to rate words on size, speed, strength, and weight.

Figure 6. Testing consonant and vowel pairs on motorcycles, shampoo, and work boots (Klink 2000: 17)

Yorkston & Menon (2004) gathered analogous data in their experiment with ice cream. After installing sufficient confound and manipulation checks to additionally test the effects of the timing of information about the brands, they found that consumers rated the ice cream name Frosh as “richer, smoother, and creamier” than the alternative, Frish. Lowrey & Shrum (2007) discovered the same when they tested the “smoothness, mellowness, and richness” of beer brand names. Such evidence just goes to show that a company truly benefits from considering

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the phonetic contours of the name of a product or service to be released.

2.2. Phonotactic constraints

Successful brands will obey the phonotactics of their language; in other words, they will avoid awkward sound clusters and ideally be intuitively pronounceable. Otherwise, no one will take the company seriously.

In the recent history of startups, businesses across the country have chosen some awful brand names. Christopher Johnson (2015), a verbal branding specialist who goes by the pseudonym “The Name Inspector,” surveyed some the most bizarre startup names of 2014. Some names ambiguous “alien language” names include flynx, zairge, and xwerks. Misspelling is a common tactic to avoid trademark issues, as in Flickr and Tumblr, but some brands have gone too far: Naytev, Reconiz, Buxoff, GozAround, Skemaz, and Naborly. Overpopulation of vowels crowds and obscures other names: Keeeweee, Priime, Bluurp, Huudle, Blizuu, Phiinom, Joocier, Schooold, and Braandi. Strained blends constitute some of the worst naming abominations, as in Searchperience (search + experience) and ClickGanic (click + organic). What makes the latter two blended names particularly awkward from a phonetic point of view is the clashing of featural components at the blend juncture. In Searchperience, the final affricate [ʧ] of search transitions into the plosive [p] much less naturally for English speakers than the fricative [s] (ex-) in the coda of the first syllable in experience. At the juncture of ClickGanic, voiceless velar [k] collides with voiced velar [g].

2.3. Acronyms and initialisms

Some companies practice abbreviatory naming via acronyms and initialisms. Initialisms are strings formed by combining the first letters of a phrase, like BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) and HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface); acronyms are

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pronounceable initialisms, like NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and laser (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation).

Older brands often used initialism names, as in the venerable companies like ABC, NBC, IBM, AT&T, and A&W. For contemporary name creation, branding agency Catchword (2014: 5) advised against using acronyms and initialisms because they can confuse customers or obscure the brand message. In 2013 the U.S. spin-off of Dutch financial institution ING re-branded to Voya Financial to stand out, conveying as they say the importance of the voyage rather than the destination (Rooney, 2013). The original brand is slightly ambiguous to English speakers who have the productive verbal suffix -ing. Those not familiar with the company might question whether to pronounce it as an acronym or as an initialism. Consider ING’s 2001 “Bench” commercial where a confused young adult desperately tries to read what comes before the ING he sees on a city bench, imagining the suffix interpretation, while the concluding slogan echoes: “It’s not an ending. It’s a beginning” (Amorosi, 2002).

Alternatively, a brand may have a good reason for choosing an acronym name. Catchword (2014: 5f.) congratulated an agency dedicated to victims of domestic violence called CORA, which stands for “Community Overcoming Relationship Abuse” but also sounds like a woman’s name when pronounced, allowing for a discreet answering message, for example. Similarly the organization MADD, “Mothers Against Drunk Driving,” conveys relevant affective information (Catchword, 2014: 6).

3. Morphology

Linguistic and onomastic research has observed trends of brand naming over time, offering valuable insight to those interested in capitalizing on (or avoiding) those trends. Drug companies, tech startups, car manufacturers, universities, societies, pubs – virtually

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every area of our culture has naming tendencies, many of which can be studied under a morphological lens. Here I discuss a few examples from the expansive realm of brand name morphemes, specifically focusing on the productivity of brand affixes.

3.1. The American Dream

The branded culture of America developed in the 20th century and continues growing today at seemingly quicker rates. A look at some of the morphemes from archetypical American brand names offers significant evidence of how we as American English speakers adapt, protest, and play with language.

3.1.1. Brandola

The suffix -ola has a long and tortured past in this country. We do not definitively know its origin, but many have suggested that it was sound-symbolic and connoted “music” and “movement,” which is why companies like Pianola, Victrola, and Motorola – all providers of music-related products – latched onto the suffix in the early 20th century (Glowka, 1985). Plagued by scandals in the music industry in the 1960s, the suffix became associated with any form of bribery, hence payola, and following this journalists coined humorous versions like laundrola, plugola, and ghostola. The suffix continued on in headlines but lost its tongue-in-cheek flavor in the ’70s when even more scandals were uncovered, involving more serious drug trade accusations. Still the name persevered, especially in food products like Mazola (corn oil), Penola (peanut oil), Saffola (safflower oil), as well as Clarola, Kaola, Acrola, and Vegola, perhaps associating the names with Latin oleum (Glowka, 1985: 152). With a variety of associations and indefatigable resistance, -ola remains a truly iconic 20th century brand morpheme.

3.1.2. McBrands

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McDonald’s revolutionized American food consumption with their “Speedee Service System,” the original concept of modern fast food. Their brand architecture includes a recurrent Mc- prefix in many of their products such as the McDouble, McChicken, McNugget, and services like McInternet (Parker, 2005: 4).

Thus, critics of other institutions or movements that exhibit similar mass-market, ease-of-access, substance-lacking dealings have labeled such entities with the Mc- prefix. Accusations of excessively luxurious yet generic McMansions in the 1980s (Winn, 1985) and Protestant McChurches in the 1990s (McClory, 1992) display a couple of the many applications of the productive prefix. Around this time some critics of low-paying jobs, or jobs that offered little corporate movement, called such positions McJobs (Etzioni, 1986). The pejoration of Mc-, whether justified or not, indicates cultural sentiments for generic, bulk availability of goods and services.

3.1.3. Brand-O’s

The productive ending clipped from Cheerios now unquestionably means “ring-shaped breakfast cereal.” Rather than the pejoration suffered by McDonald’s, this edible ending underwent semantic narrowing. One might intuitively guess that General Mills chose the name based on the phonetic association o with the shape of the cereal. However, the true origin of Cheerios is the result of a legal dispute (Feinstein, 2013). General Mills originally released their oat-based cereal Cheerioats in 1941, and decided to change the name to Cheerios five years later to avoid a lawsuit from Quaker Oats who claimed that the original name was too similar to theirs.

Other cereal manufacturers were drawn to the visual symbolism of the -o’s ending and applied it to their own products. Chavey (n.d.) provided a list of contemporary cereal companies. The world has now seen Frosty O’s, Krunchios, Millenios, Oreo O’s, Waffelos, Weetos, and even Urkel-O’s named after Jaleel White’s character in Family

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Matters. Kellogg’s released C-3PO’s named after the droid C-3PO in the movie Star Wars, which demonstrates an example of haplology (i.e. *C-3PO-O’s). Joe’s O’s from Trader Joe’s, on the other hand, plays on the repetition of the /oz/ cluster.

Campbell Soup Company came out with their canned pasta product SpaghettiOs in 1965, probably borrowing from cereal’s suffix.

3.2. “Pre-fixation”

Particularly in recent decades, the use of productive prefixes has raged through the branding world. The rise of the internet has played a large part, especially considering the search for unique and available domain names.

3.2.1. eBrands

Beginning with email standing for “electronic mail” in the late 1970s (OED, “email,” 2015), the e-prefix boomed in the Web 1.0 era. Companies began using it to showcase any digital affiliation. Every business had to have an e- version of something or it was behind the times.

Figure 7. eCraze, or Craze-e? (Adams, 1999)

Schaffer (2001) performed a corpus analysis on over 200 e- words, 76 of which functioned as names of companies, products, or services. She provided examples of humorous adaptations – businesses playing on the first syllables of the root words, like e-vite

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(digital invitations), ePocrates (online drug database), and e-frigetator (electronic fridge) (2001: 24). Though even at the time of Schaffer’s analysis, others started to notice that the e- prefix was becoming more and more redundant with the growing ubiquity of online businesses (Quinion, 1999), and today it is likely considered outdated by most.

3.2.2. iBrands

Before Apple began its “iConquest,” a women’s internet community called iVillage demonstrated the first recorded usage of this prefix in 1995 (Ariens, 2013). Soon after in 1998, Apple released their line of iMac computers. Ken Segall, the man responsible for the prefix, suggested the i- to Steve Jobs, who had originally considered the name “MacMan” (Hawley, 2012).

Steve Jobs offered multiple meanings for i- in his public address introducing the iMac, including primarily “internet” but also “individual, instruct, inform, inspire” (Apple History Channel, 2006). Apple’s most recent release, however, has abandoned the “iConic” prefix synonymous with the company. Some have pointed out that the Apple Watch suffered the i-dropping because of Swiss watchmaker’s iSwatch, and they suggest that this might signal the end of the company’s famous “pre-fixation” trend (Wingfield, 2014).

Figure 8. The end of an iDynasty (Gruber, 2014)

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Nevertheless, i- has left its mark on the branding world, with companies still making use of the productive prefix. And perhaps we can thank Ken Segall for the fact that we do not talk on “PhoneMans” and carry around “PadMans” on the train.

3.2.3. abcBrands

It is worth mentioning that Schaffer (2001: 25), who carried out the corpus study of e- words, also noticed a trend with other single-grapheme words. She separated obscure names, brands like rdesk and cdeals whose prefixes have no clear reference, from motivated names like uBid from “you” and mPower from “empower.” She offered no hypothesis for other letter-brands in her corpus like G.lite, O-Link, Opass, O-Zone, Xdrive, zBubbles, and zShops, except that the prefixes might bear the first initials of products or services related to those companies.

Following up with some of these names, I suspect G.lite (associated with delight) might source its G- from its intentionally self-described function as “your favorite ‘get around town’ accessory” (emphasis added; UPPAbaby, 2015). Makers of O-Link defined it as a communication tool that “allows users to link video clips to an object intuitively) (emphasis added; Nakae, 2009). Amazon’s now abandoned project zShops has no z- related reference in its description; however, evidence from sound symbolism studies suggests that z conveys efficacy, and fricatives in general connote speed (Klink, 2000: 10, 16, 19), and Amazon might have tried to suggest this with their zShops service.

3.3. The “killer advertising suffix”

The ending -ex has consistently appeared in brand names over the years, awarding it the honor of “killer advertising suffix” (Prange, 2006). Stvan (2006) performed a thorough examination of the -ex ending in brand names. She initially postulated some specific domains as seen in Figure 9.

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Figure 9. Domain types of -ex brands (Stvan 2006: 220)

After an exhaustive survey, she recategorized and concluded five sources of -ex names:

1. “Killer” or “killed” brands, as in products that kill things, such as Mothex, Virex, and Blistex (2006: 234f.). 2. The -ex had an “enhancing” effect, as in Windex, Kleenex, and Rolex. 3. For company names, the -ex could have been a clipping from expert, as in Arborex, the “tree care experts” (2006: 235). 4. The -ex could have manifested as a further clipping from -tex, related to the textile industry, as in Gore-tex, Gannex, and Marlex (2006: 236f.). 5. Otherwise, the -ex entered from unrelated blends like FedEx from Federal Express and Rolodex from roller index (2006: 237f.). Another common variant of the trend is the ending -x. Room (1991: 195) attributed various senses to the -x ending, including the sign of the cross, “X marks the spot,” an unknown quantity, or shorthand for “kiss” (cf. Stvan 2006: 224). Hygiene products seem to be particularly ripe for connotative -x names. Critics have praised the venerable soap brand Lux for its well-formed brand name (Room, 1991: 112; cf. Stvan 2006: 224). It conveys ideas of “luxury” and “light” (from Latin lux). Forde (2002: 117f.) cited other hygiene -x products like Cutex, Borax, Celotex, Innoxa, Kotex, and Pyrex.

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Though some popular affixes may have constituted nothing more than a flash in the pan, -ex names have maintained their revered position. Having checked the number of -ex brand coinages over seven decades, Stvan noticed that no crest has yet appeared in the trend (2006: 243).

Brand morphemes exhibit impressive linguistic flexibility. Cutting and pasting these affixes, speakers can boost a brand’s message, critique problems in society, and display remarkable creativity, or, regrettably, display dull conformity.

4. Syntax

Because brands usually act below the phrasal level, I have chosen to set aside an extensive analysis of the syntax of brand naming in this survey. Nevertheless, there is some interesting syntactic activity worth mentioning even briefly.

4.1. Compound names

Names like Facebook exhibit a typical branding technique: compounding. Other famous compound names include Allstate, DreamWorks, Keysight, Livescribe, MasterCard, and Microsoft (Catchword, 2014: 6). Speaking of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg’s choice to drop the article from theFacebook to create simply Facebook (Phillips, 2007) suggests that perhaps brands tend towards simplification rather than elaboration. Johnson (2015) noticed some strange grammatical combinations in startup names of 2014 such as Bright Simply which appears to “modify an adverb with an adjective.” Additional research on syntax of brands might examine constraints on brand compounds.

4.2. Anthimeria

One also notices recurrent syntactic movement patterns in casual speakers’ use of brands. Since trademark names are most often nouns, there is a strong tendency for these nouns to undergo

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anthimeria (also called zero derivation, conversion, or, colloquially, “verbification”), especially with brands that offer communications services. Most understand the well-known example of Google becoming a verb. Such examples of anthimeria are not new of course – see Xerox > xerox (v.). Many other noun brands follow this same pattern of zero-marked noun > verb derivation, as in typical conversions of communication services like Facebook (v.), Skype (v.), WhatsApp (v.).

That night, I Facebooked Michael. We agreed to meet for a drink. (Corpus of Contemporary American English, henceforth COCA, 2011)

I would Skype with my family… (COCA, 2011)

What do you do if a guy you’re talking to on Tinder accidentally WhatsApps you a pic of him with another girl? (Mahanty, 2015)

Speakers will not always verbify a trademark name; if an existing verb is available, as in tweet from Twitter, economy guides speakers’ choices. (Although, tweet (v.) arguably originates as anthimeria of Twitter’s term tweet (n.) “a message on Twitter.”)

Be sure to tweet all your followers. (COCA, 2012) *Be sure to Twitter all your followers. “Be sure to send a message to your followers via Twitter.” Some have pointed out the unequal attention anthimeria gives to brand names. “We Google but we don’t Bing (at least not yet). We Rollerblade but we don’t Slinky” (Hoban, 2013). Hoban referenced possibly the first brand to intentionally encourage verbification: Simoniz, a car wax whose 1920s and ’30s tagline went “Motorist wise, Simoniz” and “Simoniz Now!” Similarly the Michigan-based rustproofing product of the ’60s and ’70s Ziebart was typically verbified by locals, and also “genericized” to mean the use of any rustproofing product. Some companies try too hard to force anthimeria of their name, as in Kroger’s ’70s-era commercial “Let’s go Krogering, Krogering, Krogering…”

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(Hoban, 2013). Further research on the parameters of verbification in brand names might yield promising results in advancing the syntactic understanding of branding.

5. Semantics

When brainstorming brand names, most people intuitively approach the activity from semantics. Companies usually want a name that fits the concept of their business, product, or service. Since the name is often the consumer’s first encounter with the brand, it ought to reflect the company’s core meaning.

5.1. Descriptive, suggestive, and arbitrary names

The approach to the meaning of brand names has changed over time. Older brand names reflect a time when businesses simply stated what they did; people had no need for creative naming. Descriptive names like International Business Machines (IBM) or American Telephone & Telegraph (since 2005 officially known only as AT&T) sufficed for that time period. Some companies still take the descriptive approach, like VirtualWallet and Hotels.com (Catchword, 2014: 4), which helps to communicate the brand transparently to the desired audience.

In an increasingly competitive market, businesses have often turned to unique, catchy names to stand out. Still, most desire to capture at least some essence of their concept using semantic or phono-semantic techniques, and thus seek a suggestive name. For example, the pain reliever Aleve is associated semantically with alleviate and relieve. Nike’s product Fitbit is a small object (“bit”) that tracks the user’s physical activity (“fit”). But Fitbit alone defines the product much more vaguely than, say, American Telephone & Telegraph. Other suggestive brands include Amazon, Dreamery, Facebook, Subway, Swashies, and Willow Glass (Catchword, 2014: 4).

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Not every famous brand makes itself known by connecting name with concept. In the context of the computer industry, Apple stands out as an arbitrary name. An interview with Walter Isaacson revealed that Steve Jobs had chosen the name after having spent some time at an apple orchard (read: commune), and having wanted a name that was “fun, spirited and not intimidating” (Rivkin, 2011). Branding agency Lexicon has coined names for some of the world’s most well-known brands. On their website they write, “Pentium, PowerBook, BlackBerry, Swiffer, Febreze, Scion and Dasani are just a few of the names that we identified as strong candidates with strategic impact potential. And none of the above were either the best fit to concepts or the most popular!” (Lexicon, n.d.). Semantic association represents just one data point in the overall strategy of name creation.

5.2. Store-brand sodas

At the Linguistic Society of America’s annual meeting in January, Laurel Sutton (2015), trained linguist and branding specialist, presented her naming project for a generic store-brand version of Dr Pepper. Her research (Sutton, 2013) covered store brands of multiple soft drink companies, wherein she described the unique methods private shops use to associate their generics with the publicly branded counterparts. For example, home-brand versions of Dr Pepper need only borrow the Dr to effectively make the association. After all, the taste Dr Pepper is a combination of several flavors, so the easiest device is to take a recognizable segment from the main brand. She separated the various “doctor” drinks into categories: “Dr + [Energetic],” as in Dr Fizz, Dr. Perky, Dr. Spark, Dr Thunder. Another group consisted of “Dr + [Extreme]” like Dr Extreme, Dr. Bold, Dr. Radical, Dr. Rush. Some store-brands have also phonetically chosen names with a bilabial sound resembling the original like Dr. B, Dr Pop, Dr. Topper, Mr. Sipp, and Pibb (cf. Cop, 2012).

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Other generically branded sodas have used methods of semantic association. Citrus-flavored sodas competing with Pepsico’s leader Mountain Dew overwhelmingly reused mountain in their brands or some other “extreme” natural phenomenon, like lightning, rapids, or lion (Sutton, 2015). Most Coca-Cola competitors have made themselves known by simply borrowing the word cola.

5.3. Lost in translation

Borrowing from different languages is another naming technique. Sometimes a borrowed word succeeds, as in Hulu (streaming online media) from Mandarin, “empty gourd,” Boku (online payment service) from French beaucoup, “much, many,” or Prego (pasta sauce) from Italian, “please” (Sutton, 2009; Catchword, 2014: 5). However, the goal of creating a global brand can cause issues with naming appropriateness. Sometimes, either due to lack of research by the company, or simply because speakers are creative with their local euphemisms, names can be misunderstood. As comical as it is to survey awkwardly translated names, a so-called “brand blunder” can result in dollars, pesos, yen, and euros lost.

5.3.1. Automobile names

Bill Casselman (2012) called it autoneokakonymia: the process of “making up bad names for new cars.” Perhaps cars suffer extra international heat because they are such a global product, as opposed to, say, toothpaste. Companies have mistakenly produced offensive names like the Mitsubishi Pajero, named after the Pampas cat Leopardus pajeros. Unfortunately pajero is also Spanish slang for “one who sexually gratifies himself.” Consequently they decided to market the car as the Mitsubishi Montero overseas. A similar fate befell the Mazda Laputa, Spanish for “the whore” (Zwicky, 2007).

People love to perpetuate these stories, of course, and sometimes a falsely accused name will be reprimanded despite its innocence. For example, the myth of the Chevy Nova persists in popular

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culture, claiming that the car failed horribly in Spanish-speaking countries because the word was broken up as no va, Spanish for “it does not go.” Not so. The Spanish verb for a malfunctioning automobile is no funciona or no cammina. No va in the context of cars means nothing in Spanish (Shore, 2010). For an example in English, imagine the claim that from notable, an English speaker would interpret no table (Friedman, 2012). Not likely.

5.3.2. Cringeworthy in English

Brands can blunder just as clumsily when they arrive into English from other languages. Italian manufacturer of high-end bathroom fixtures Milldue, which probably sounded innocent enough in Italian as a blend of mille + due, ironically associates itself in English with unsanitary organic grime (Friedman, 2008). Chinese robotics company Incesoft regrettably evokes “inappropriate intrafamilial contact” (Johnson, 2008; cf. Friedman, 2008). Johnson (2015) also points out the name Spayee, an Indian ebook, awkwardly conveying some pet-unfriendly behavior.

In this age of globalization, agencies ordinarily vet names for all possible foreign meanings. But that never stops a few awkward brands from slipping through the cracks.

5.4. Naming in practice: An agricultural technology project

In 2014 I offered my services as a freelance branding strategist to a small technology business in California called Rowy Networks. They had just developed a new system for collecting data in various agricultural sectors, and they were in the beginning stages of marketing the product. Given the charge with proposing a potential name for the system, I generated a constellation of interconnected brand possibilities. For the most part I relied on semantic association to create suggestive names, tying in each reference to the agricultural industry, even borrowing from different languages (mostly Latin and Greek, but also other

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Germanic languages), while still maintaining phonotactic awareness in order not to create an awkward brand (see §2.2).

Figure 10. Ceres Agronomica logo (E. C. Jackson, 2015)

After I presented the various proposed names to the company, they showed particular interest in the classical Greco-Roman theme, since it conveyed the idea of an established tradition with the importance of agriculture. They immediately seized on my suggestion of a compendium of names from classical mythology, beginning with the Roman agricultural goddess Ceres. This option also benefitted the company by providing an adaptable brand architectural foundation upon which to build future product names. The company also took another name I coined to accompany the Ceres platform: Agronomica. Since the system that the company had developed was intended to collect and catalogue massive amounts of agricultural data, the Greek roots agrós “field”+ nómos “law” matched the concept perfectly (Figure 10).

6. Conclusion

I have presented this survey as an introduction to brand naming from a linguistic perspective, using theoretical categories of the field to guide research. The phonological processes of sound symbolism can greatly impact the value of a coined brand name. Brands can create productive morphemes and apply them elsewhere, for better or for worse. Compounding and anthimeria

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(verbifying) are some of the syntactic activities brands undergo which deserve further research. Finally, semantic association strongly influences branding, making the global translation process especially important.

Marketers can benefit from language science as it observes patterns and predicts future changes. Brand names offer a vast resource suitable for descriptive investigations of language evolution. Branding populates our contemporary culture with symbols of corporate philosophies but at the same time with linguistic items ready to be analyzed, scorned, played with, or otherwise productively developed.

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