Of course, like real words, there are good neologisms and bad ones. Verigy is pretty good, as these things go. Better than Agilent actually, which always seemed derivative of Lucent, (most people think Lucent was coined but it actually is a real word.)

Some pretty successful companies have gone this route from “Sony”(SONUS=Sound, L.) to “Xerox” (from xerography, in turned derived from a coined construction of “dry writing” (Gk.)

Don’t totally drink the Igor Kool-aid–their method of “unexpected real word metaphor” is but one arrow in the namer’s quiver–appropriate or inappropriate as the case may be. Totally inapproriate for phamaceuticals, for example.

Oftentimes Igor’s names just sound like so many candy bars (Zounds, Monkeybar, Tickle, Urge, Whisper). And remember they didn’t exactly exult over “Brains on Fire” in their “Naming Companies Taxonomy.” Whatever one may think of Brains on Fire (why not MindFire?), it’s surely better than oh, say “Woof Gang,” n’est pas?

Remember Vice President Dan Quayle once said “I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have was that I didn’t study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people.”