We came across an article on cnn.com about the name of a new IBM spinoff company. The IT services unit will now be known as “Kyndryl.” The article’s author, Chris Isidore, a Senior Writer for CNN Business doesn’t particularly like the name. Isidore considered it from an employee’s perspective. “…90,000 employees affected by the change will no longer say they work for ‘IBM’…but instead for ‘Kyndryl’, a portmanteau whose meaning and pronunciation aren’t immediately clear.” Isidore is obviously right, new names, good or bad, are weightless. No credibility. A portmanteau is a word that’s created by combining two other words. Think, “motel.” The “Mo,” is from motor, the “Tel” from hotel. Breakfast and lunch combine to make the portmanteau, brunch. In the so far sad case of Kyndryl, and according to IBM, “Kyn” comes from the word kindred, except kindred isn’t spelled with a y. The “dryl” part comes from tendril, which by the way, isn’t spelled with a y either. As Isidore points out, using a y in place of an i often gets turned into long-I pronunciations. Think of the y in style. Or sly. So, as Isidore suggests, we might hear KIND-DRILE, instead of KIN-DRILL. Names aren’t easy. As the article points out, lots of good names have been taken, and are protected. Still, it shouldn’t be hard to spot bad names. Like “Little Hope Cemetery.”
Actually, there’s no hope.
There are at least two cemeteries with this name, one in Kentucky, one in Texas. Little Hope may have been the name of a town, or it could be purposefully ironic.
Not funny.
It’s a fish & chips restaurant with other British staples in NYC.
The food may be fine but why would anyone create a name by playing off the crime, “assault and battery?”
Do they serve Iceberg lettuce?
You are certainly allowed to name your business after a disaster that killed 1,500 people, but why would you?
No, Quibi is gone.
Even those who should know better, often don’t. Quibi was a short-form streaming platform, founded in 2018 by Jeffrey Katzenberg (producer, Chairman of Disney Studios, associate of Speilberg) and Meg Whitman (former CEO of HP). The name itself wasn’t horrible but it sounded more like the name of a Star Wars character than a streaming service. It shut down in six months.
The logo is as bad as the name.
This was the new name Woolworth Corporation decided on in 1988. The word venator is Latin for hunter and can also refer to a type of Roman gladiator. Certainly sounds menacing. It only lasted 3 years and was dropped in favor of the company’s largest chain, Foot Locker.
The pregnancy complication product.
Toyota is the brand, but the marketing team that picked this model name was clueless. A little research would have stopped it in its tracks. In English, the word is used in “placenta previa,” a dangerous pregnancy complication. The name was changed to Sienna.
When picking out a name for your business you want to make sure the meaning isn’t misconstrued. Sam and Ella’s Pizza and Chicken didn’t pay close enough attention (say it quickly).
Go ahead and make up a name. Häagen-Dazs is completely made up and meaningless. If you are struggling to come up with something, think about the name HyattWard.