Eat My Words - The Kitchen Sink

Microsoft Not Equipped for Equipt

Microsoft's newest offering, previously code named "Albany" or rather optimistically "Valuebox" has been announced.  It is.......Equipt.  Now, Equipt is a real word, but not the common spelling.  What we find funny is that when you type "Equipt" into Microsoft Office products it gets flagged with that little red wavy line underneath it indicating it is misspelled.   

Here is the company line on the chosen name: "The name comes from the idea that the package will help customers "equip their PC with a core set of services", said Bryson Gordon, a group product manager for Microsoft Office. "It resonated well with customers in testing."  We're guessing these are the same "consumers" that thought the whole Vista thing resonated too.  What Mr. Gordon doesn't say is that once you get those core services you have to pay licensing fees for them year after year or they turn off.  In other words, Equipt rhymes with ripped, if you get our meaning

While there are worse names out there, Equipt fails several items on the SMILE & SCRATCH test and does not get our blessing, or our business.

Namethis.com - $99 for a name and a laugh

The aptly named company Kluster FKC is using trying to use crowdsourcing (and $1 million) to name companies via their second venture, Namethis.com (their first crowdsourcing venture, Knewsroom went kaput in 37 days...ouch). 

For $99, Namethis.com claims to give you three world-validated names for your thingamajig in 48 hours.

We had no idea that "world-validated" was an euphemism for "really awful names in any language even if it isn't a real word, means anything or is even pronounceable".  Here are some of the "winning" world-validated names created so far:

• Eaternet - first wireless pay-at-the table entertainment device
• Magnapeutic - therapeutic magnet patches
• iChews - individualized cereal in the mail
• Vestisa - investment management company for the people
• Encompa - online strategy/consulting firm
• Beauternity - beauty and anti-aging website
• el-goog - reversed web searching 
• G.E.C. (Global.Energy.Climate) - climate change charity

We don't want to live in a world where a word like Beauternity is validated.

While we will acknowledge that $99 is a bargain compared with what you might pay elsewhere for similar  names, there are several issues.

1. The names suck.
2. They have given no legal consideration (see el-goog  above who will have Google sending one of their friendly cease and desist orders around five seconds after their website goes live).
3. Anyone can just go on the website and snatch names for free.  Why they would is a different issue.
4. The names suck.
5. Namethis.com makes about $20/name (after paying the crowdsourcers or is it crowdsourcee?).  Accordingly, the volume would have to be huge to make any real money for their investors, which seems unlikely.
6. Our friends at Wordlab already have a website doing essentially the same thing for free.
7. Did we mention the names suck?
8. Every name fails the SMILE & SCRATCH Test.

We don't know if crowdsourcing in general can be successfully monetized over the long run, but we will be very surprised if Namethis.com survives. BTW, their 37th day is July 13.

Naymz That Make Us Insane

I was interviewed this week by Inc. Technology on what the biggest mistakes are in choosing a domain name. I wish I had remembered this doozie - Naymz, which is the epitome of everything WRONG with a name... It's seriously spelling-challenged (we'll give it an A+) and beyond annoying. The cutesy spelling is downright offensive to anyone who knows how to spell. The irony is that Naymz is a professional "Reputation Network" site (think LinkedIn wannabe) with a homepage that screams "Put your good name to work." Okay, Naymz how about you put your BAD name out of its misery.

Here are some other recent Head Scratcher submissions to our Name Shame Hall of Fame...

Technorganic (a seriously twisted website with a forced name that tries too hard and doesn't work... the "o" in Techno is silent when you merge it with Organic, so it sounds like Tech Norganic. Next time hire a naming firm... we know a really good one.)

Adayana

Sambazon (they export Acai from Brazil )

Norvax (Insurance Agents - sounds like a vaccine)

Hauppauge Digital

NuCo2

Frebreze

Far 4 (ceramics store)

Keep those bad naymz coming!

 

 

What's the (exclamation) point, SOLUT!

Granted, this company is not well known, or particularly interesting, but we can't pass up a bad name when we run across it.  In our sights today is Duracorp (hello 1950's!!) who have announced that they are changing their name, logo and tagline, all of which is included in one graphic on the right.
Some comments about the new name "SOLUT!".

Erik O’Neil, Vice President of Sales, says “only our name has changed to better reflect the brand essence of our growing company, and we are committed to responding quickly to the packaging needs of our customers with creative solutions”  OK, now how is that?!!!  We are of the opinion that reasons for name changes have to make sense and not be some blah blah blah MBA speak about brand essence.  How about "Duracorp frankly just bored us to death and made us sound like a 1950's company out of a business management textbook, and the best thing we could come up with unfortunately was SOLUT!."

The exclamation mark in both the name and the tagline?   Why is that?  Are we supposed to be excited about buying your thermoformed paper products ?   Does your receptionist answer the phone with an loud cheerleaderish "SOLUT!"?  Leaving aside the unnecessary exclamation mark in the name, it becomes truly superfluous in the tagline (see SOLUT!ONS) unless it is a clue to where the hell the word SOLUT! came from.  In fact, the press release announcing the new name says  "the new name is derived from the word ‘solutions’, and better reflects  the core essence of the Company—responding quickly to provide creative solutions for the packaging needs of its customers."  Here and we thought thermoformed paper products was the core essence of the company.  How about THERMO! or PROD!

Compounding the artificial excitement is the all caps name.  As we know, USING ALL CAPS IS LIKE YELLING, SO NOW WE ARE YELLING THE NAME OF THE COMPANY EXCITEDLY --SOLUT!

Let's talk about the tagline, also in all caps, FORMING SUSTAINABLE SOLUT!ONS.  The only thing missing is an exclamation point at the end.  Well, that's not the only thing missing.  It's also missing the mark.  The company claims the new tagline is "to focus attention on its distinctive abilities to form uniquely designed paper based packaging solutions."  zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz   How about, Not your mama's thermoformed paper products!, or something that elicits some emotion or inspiration.

Watch for the letter from V&S Vin & Sprit Aktiebolag's counsel (maker's of Absolut Vodka ), they are trademark protection pit bulls that go after anything sounding remotely like their name regardless of what your goods or services are. 

We dislike the injudicious use of exclamation points.  We DO enjoy the judicious use of them in, let's say, the Bloom logo though.  In a search of the USPTO database, we found 35,562 marks using !, 822 using !!, 355 using !!!, 10 using !!!!, 4 using !!!!!, 3 using !!!!!! and 2 using !!!!!!!!. Yikes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, does SOLUT!  pass the Eat My Words  Scratch Test?

SCRATCH - scratch if it has any of these deal-breakers
Spelling-challenged - YES !
Copycat – similar to competitor's names - Not that we can tell
Random – disconnected from brand - YES!, although they did try!
Annoying – hidden meaning, forced  - YES!
Tame – flat, uninspired  - YES! Despite the exclamation!!!!!!
Curse of Knowledge –No, it's just cursed!!
Hard-to-pronounce  -Not really, but once you pronounce you are still in the dark!!!!!

So, if nailing just one of these is a deal-breaker, hitting on as many of these mistake makes it an instant inductee into the Name Shame Hall of Fame and a leading contender for our Head Scratcher of the Year contest.

TO VENT: Send your contender(s) for The Name Shame Hall of Fame to nameshame @ eatmywords dot com. (We won’t sell your email address to spammers, we promise.)

 

Oriental Mildew - a taste of Zimbabwe

If you have ever sucked down a mouthful of African river water like I did in Zimbabwe, where I nearly drowned in the Zambezi and ended up in Zambia, you will be delighted to know that that delicious taste has now been replicated (or at least it sounds like it has) in a new Zimbabwe juice brand, ORIENTAL MILDEW. The product has already flooded most of the retail outlets in Harare where it is high demand. (Okay. And Mugabe won the last election.) I can't track down a photograph of  the Oriental Mildew bottle, but the taste sounds so hideous that surely dictator Mugabe's mug graces the packaging. I know all of this sounds adventurous and exciting, but by all means, do not go to Zimbabwe, which from what I've seen is the most corrupt country on the planet. If you must see Victoria Falls on your way to the Okavango Delta, do it from the kinder, gentler Zambian side. And if you just want to live vicariously through me, here are photos of the mighty Vic Falls, the churning Zambezi below and what it looks like when your raft flips over on top of you in a class 4 rapid. 

Xohm - a name that should've been X'd off the list

As the Easter Bunny makes his rounds, Sprint has brought us an egg of its own: Xohm (WiMax Service).  Eat My Words would like to extend Xohm a warm welcome to the Name Shame Hall of  Fame.

What does Xohm mean?  No one seems to know, even the executives of the company. Atish Gude, Sr. VP of mobile broadband operations for Xohm said the company chose Xohm "because a marketing company told it to." He goes on to say,  "we contracted with a company to come up with a very cool, cutting-edge name that really reflects what we're trying to do - which is mobilize the internet."  How does the name reflect that?  Gude calls it, "an empty vessel...We can make it out to be whatever we want."  That marketing (naming) agency in question is Zenmark, a self proclaimed "World-Class Verbal Design Agency." (They sound ripe for one of our Competitive  Spotlights.)

Sprint's John Polivka says Xohm is a made-up word, but Sprint fully intends to make Xohm a household name, hopefully spawning such usages as "Xohm me" or "meet me in the "Xohm."  Polivka goes on to say, "focus groups keyed in on the lead letter "X" for its "cool factor." Finally, Polivka says that " the end goal is for the new name to become synonymous with the mobile Internet just as Xerox has become synonymous with photocopying." (EMW:  Is he serious?  Meet me in the Xohm?  Cool Factor? Xerox?)

In various press release, Sprint says that Xohm is pronounced "Zoam." Others say "Zome." What we find amusing is that they tell us that Xohm is pronounced like two words that don't exist.

So, does Xohm pass the Eat My Words  Scratch Test?

SCRATCH - scratch if it has any of these deal-breakers
Spelling-challenged - yes it is, oh please yes
Copycat – similar to competitor's names - no, thank God
Random – disconnected from brand - yes, and from reality
Annoying – hidden meaning, forced  - blue ribbon here
Tame – flat, uninspired  - yes, despite  the "X" factor
Curse of Knowledge –no, not even insiders get it
Hard-to-pronounce  -yes, even with the tutorial

So, if nailing just one of these is a deal-breaker, hitting a home run on all of these mistakes it an instant inductee into the Name Shame Hall of Fame and a leading contender for our Head Scratcher of the Year contest. Note: the name is similar to last year's winner, Xobni. Starting a name with X is so 2007, or in the case of Xerox, so 1961.)

TO VENT: Send your contender(s) for The Name Shame Hall of Fame to nameshame @ eatmywords.com. (We won’t sell your email address to spammers, we promise.)

Mxyplyzyk - a Superman name that's Super Bad

Submitted by our Sous Chef, Caroline “Ruby Sneakers” Leavitt, our most outrageous inductee into the Name Shame Hall of Fame ever is a quirky Greenwich Village gift boutique named Mxyplyzyk. The store claims "the name is inspired by a character in early Superman comics." Ironically, they didn't use the actual character's name,  (Mr.) Mxyzptlk, (pictured below) which is spelled differently than "Mxyplyzyk," (perhaps thinking they might head off a C&D letter from D.C. Comics), because you cannot, after all,  confuse Mxyplyzyk with Myxzptlk. 

Mxyplyzyk hits all the criteria to qualify for the Name Shame Hall of Fame and is a leading contender for the annual Head Scratcher™ trophy, awarded each December by Eat My Words. Here's why:

1. It’s difficult to pronounce the first time you see it (actually every time you see it)
2. It’s meaningless unless someone explains it to you (even then)
3. It's forced and unnatural sounding (oh boy)
4. It has an unnatural spelling (ya think? )
5. It’s just damn annoying (did we say oh boy yet?)

Inc. magazine briefly discussed Mxyplyzyk in an article entitled "What's in a Name"?

Here is an except from the full article:

Kevin Brynan spends a large chunk of his day explaining over and over again how to pronounce the word Mxyplyzyk--the name of his gift shop in New York City's Greenwich Village. As it happens, the name (which is pronounced "mix-ee-pliz-ik," in case you were stumped) is so long that Brynan's business card is a three-part foldout. The unusual moniker, created by a co-founder and inspired by a Superman comic book character, is fitting for a shop with unusual items like pug dog "puggy" banks and warped vinyl record serving bowls. On the other hand, it's hard to tell your friends about a store when you can't pronounce the name, and good luck finding it online. Ultimately, Brynan thinks the unusual name has been a plus, highlighting the store's quirkiness and helping to draw foot traffic. Nonetheless, he adds, "sometimes I wish we'd named it John Doe."   

(Side note to all journalists:  Please stop using "What's in a name?" every time you do an article about naming.  It was clever about 400 years ago, but not so much anymore.)

So, welcome to The Hall Mxyplyzyk.  It's a rare name that is so very wrong on every level and makes us scratch our heads super hard.  However, we can give credit where credit is due.  We are quite sure that every extension of the domain name was available on GoDaddy for $9.95, which is a deciding factor for many companies when choosing a name. More on that later...

 

A lame duck and other names that make us cringe.

Here's the latest batch of "what were they smoking?"
Head Scratchers™ for the Name Shame Hall of Fame™.
Aflac
eHarmony
Inxight Federal Systems
esurance
Vehix
xpedx
Legal Zoom
With a Twyst
Aneres (Serena spelled backwards - get it?!!!) 
ALCiS (pain relief cream - ironic considering the painful name)

Many thanks to Three Girls Media, who have a knack for spotting really lame names and sending them in. Send your entries to nameshame@ eatmywords.com.

Itchy New Head Scratchers

Here are the latest Head Scratcher inductees into our Name Shame Hall of Fame. Each name violates one or more rules of good naming and is hard to spell, pronounce, remember, meaningless or just doggone annoying.

IN A CATEGORY ALL ITS OWN:
Doggie Diaper
Poochie Pants
Tinkle Trousers
Peepers
Bitch Britches

RANDOM NAMES:

Quantum of Solace (The next James Bond film - sure, 12 year old boys will get this)
Evventa
Oscillococcinum (Their lame ad: Tough to pronounce. Even tougher on your flu.)Quel Objet
Oztion
Little WoWo (I'll let you figure this one out)
Bella Cabosse (chocolate)
Zerran
Mzinga  (Swahili for beehive)


Thanks to John Luckett, Erika Taylor, Alex Gramling, Maryam Ayyash and Matt Sterne for sending these in. Keep 'em coming!

Bad Names That Make Us Insane

Here are the first 2008 inductees into the Eat My Words Name Shame Hall of Fame™, including some repeat offenders. Each name is eligible to win our #1 Head Scratcher™ award at the end of the year. Thanks to all of you who sent in suggestions. Keep them coming and we'll post more soon.  (Send your entries here.)

Beneful (pet food)
Benefiber (people food)
BOOMJ (how do you pronounce that?)
Eneloop
Fragranza
Motiva
Oncothyreon (formerly Biomira)
RenewzIt
Tcho
Wii (lots of people sent this one in)
Zumobi (formerly Zenzui)
Ziizoo
Zune