For many of our international consumer-oriented clients, the naming objectives for their new global brand often include:
- Trademark registrability of a single new name in all of their major markets
- Culturally appropriate or at least inoffensive
- Distinctly different from other competitive names
- The right mouth feel and cadence in multiple languages
- Easy to spell and easy to recall in multiple languages
- More meaningless as opposed to more meaningful
While most of these criteria are probably obvious, #6, “More meaningless as opposed to more meaningful” may not be. But what many of our clients have recognized is that the English meaning is often lost as one spans other cultures or languages. So names that just look right, that roll-off of the tongue and that are short enough to “pop” off of the package and provide the billboard effect on shelf are what work best.
As an example, when we were naming a new international retail jewelry site, the client wanted a name that sounded sophisticated while suggesting elegant, worldy, timeless designs. We ended up coining “Mondera” for them, a derivation of the French word for “world” with the addition of the -era suffix which softened the name, gave it a more elegant feel, and subtly related to designs that were timeless.