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Originally Published June 2000

Language Matters

Naming in the New Economy

Drug and device firms should take special care when naming products and services for the Internet.

In this column, we have explored considerations for naming goods and services that help companies avoid international gaffes. This month, however, we focus on how to name products for the Internet.

In old-economy branding, companies named their products and services based on the needs, preferences, and trends of specific top markets. If a firm wasn't marketing in Germany or Japan, it didn't worry about branding considerations unique to these markets.

Enter the Web, where global accessibility of information renders a brand international the moment it goes on-line. Further, many companies are creating company and product names that are themselves domain names, like companies that end in .com or Web sites whose URL is the same as the product name, such as viagra.com.

In the old economy, creating a brand was typically an expensive proposition. In the new economy, a mere $70 will buy a domain name and a passport to international business. However, companies shouldn't let such ease of international-market entry lull them into thinking that branding for the Internet is just as easy.

Following are some tips on how to avoid some of the myriad naming problems bubbling to the surface in the Internet era:

Avoid bad translations. Many common English words that refer to countless products are internationally problematic. The word sale, for example, means "dirty" in French. Gift means "poison" in German. Mist has many applications in the medical and pharmaceutical fields, but it means "manure" in German. A name like Primatene Mist, for instance, could be a source of embarrassment if marketed in a German-speaking country or if accessed on the Web by German consumers. Brand designers should check out the Web site http://www.netcraft.com, which is extremely useful for doing preliminary searches on domain names. It allows you to search by substring, so a query on "mist*.com" will list all domains that begin with those four letters.

Keep names short and easy to type. In the past, people simply saw names in product catalogs, on store shelves, etc. But today, people are increasingly interacting with names, either in Internet URLs and other entry fields, as well as when employing search engines. There is now a premium placed on the ease of typing a name and on having an intuitive spelling internationally. Everyone can remember how to spell Johnson & Johnson. But designers who are creating a new brand or product should beware of tricky spellings or silent letters, which are notoriously difficult for non-English speakers to remember.

Use single words. If consumers are forced to type a lot of characters, the chances of their making mistakes and getting frustrated are great. The Web has a clear preference for single words or words with intercaps, like OfficeMax, which eliminate the confusion of spaces or underscores.

Use brands name that are easily and intuitively pronounced. This is critical for products that the consumer might ask for in a pharmacy, where she or he might feel embarrassment if the name is awkward or a tongue twister. Modern technology provides another reason: increasingly people are using voice recognition to interact with machines. If a name is easily pronounced and intuitively spelled, the computer or other device will more likely understand the name.

Avoid diacriticals. Häagen Dazs probably wouldn't be appropriate as a dot-com name. When typing a URL or entering text into a search engine or query field, consumers may miss an accent mark, thus keeping them from finding a site. Further, many input devices that are used to enter data or interface with the Web, like a touch-tone pad on a phone, do not support diacriticals.

Beware of trendy contractions. Phonetic tricks in one language can sound awful or nonsensical in many others. What would consumers in China make of such trendy Anglicisms as MediWorx or EZMed?

Given the ephemeral nature of the Web, marketers need to be aware of naming trends. The challenge when naming products is to balance short-term, trendy, and regional considerations with decisions that will produce a name that can last—which, in Internet time, might be at least a year or two.

Robert Sprung is the chairman of Harvard Translations (Cambridge, MA). To contact him, send an e-mail to robert_sprung@htrans.com or visit http://www.htrans.com.