Trade Markedtm a Linguistic Introduction to Brand Naming By
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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 — — 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 — — 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. — — 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 — — 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. — — 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”). — — 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, — — 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.