How’s your Latin?
January 13th, 2006
Here’s something that boggles my noggin’: when companies make up new words to use as names for new products, services and companies. And then they try to justify it by talking about how this part of the word is from the Latin prefix X which means Y and this part of the word is from another Latin root Z that means W.
Case in point is Aligent’s new semiconductor test company called Verigy. (Thanks for the heads up from Snark Hunting.)
The name is built from the Latin prefix “veri-” (”true, genuine”), which is the root of “verification” (”to prove the truth of, substantiate”) and so ties the name to the test business. The “-gy” suffix comes from the combining form “-logy,” meaning the name of sciences or bodies of knowledge, as in biology and geology. Verigy describes a company dealing with the true nature of things. The sound of the name connotes energy.
I took Latin in high school and in college. And I hardly remember any of it. What I do remember is that it’s a dead language and nobody speaks it any more, but it can prove useful in a game of Cranium when you’re trying to figure out the definition of a word.
My point is that these words don’t make any sense. Lots of different naming companies have lots of different methods. And I understand most of them, but not this practice of cramming two or three Latin prefixes together. No emotional connection can be made with your customers if they don’t know what your company name even means and I doubt that the majority of the general public carry around Latin translation books.
Evocative names that are whole, real words will win every time.
Other posts by Spike.
Olivier Blanchard says:
In their defense, “Magic 8-Ball” was already taken.
February 21st, 2006 at 8:43 amDJ says:
Oftentimes the reason these Latin/Greek neologisms are created is (a) appeal to a global market and (b) surmount the international trademark hurdles, which can be considerable for real words, translated equivalence being a legal issue. Latin may be “dead” (except in the Vatican), but it lives on in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Romansch, Provencal, etc….AND English. It also lends a STATURE to the name that a real word may not always convey.
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.”
February 21st, 2006 at 8:44 am