A product by any other name could sell as sweet… I wanted to blog about product naming because I was once given the task to come up with a stellar product name on a very brief notice. Within 24 hours or so. Tell me about it. I had to do my homework real fast.

I came up with this really clever heading for this blog that refers to Shakespeare’s famous line. Then I thought to check it out by googling, as famous lines often give the same idea to many people. Guess how many? About 28,700 articles with this heading on the interweb!

So it’s not very original but it works for many purposes. I was captivated for quite a while browsing through the different points of view coined under this same heading. Instructions on how to do product naming and what to avoid. A suggestion that Ikea product names include a chauvinistic sub-text – yes, and this was a long one. Revelations of the deception included in certain product names. Research on consumer reactions to certain consonants. Crowdsourcing for a software name on a community page. Practically an apology from one software company because the product name they had given to their product was not good enough. New York Times columnist’s take on the usual “Apple always does it better” mantra. Interesting stuff.

What I wanted to point out by my 2 cents out of 28,700 is that product naming is considered a whole discipline of its own. There are clear principles on the objectives, techniques on how-to, and whole companies specialized to do it. In case you didn’t come to think of it.