From one point of view, the name is appropriate. New you, new spelling!

But The Name Inspector would like to tell you about the other point of view. One of the main points of the NY Times article is that the coaching field is booming, and a bunch of newish university programs are cranking out coaches who are a bit…unseasoned. Like, hardly half the age of some of their clients.

Now, there’s much to be said for an infusion of youthful energy and enthusiasm to jumpstart a flagging career or personal life. But shouldn’t a coach also have some relevant experience to draw on? To paraphrase the headline for the NY Times article, shouldn’t a life coach have a life first?

That question must be on the minds of some potential coaching clients. Granted, proponents of coaching say that it’s not the same as mentoring. If you’re looking for an insider’s advice on your chosen field, look somewhere else. But still, you have to have some confidence in your coach as a knowledgeable human being, right? Does a 45-year-old with new professional ambitions really want to visit a site with a name that flouts conventional spelling with such whimsical abandon? Or, to put it more accurately, a site with a name that abandons conventionally conventional spelling to so fully embrace the contrived whimsy of a web startup struggling to find an available domain name?

Maybe the kooky spelling of Noomii represents all that is youthful and fresh. In fact, maybe barely post-adolescent coaches should text their clients inspiring messages like “UR 2 gr8 2 fail!” But The Name Inspector doesn’t think so. In this context, he’ll take a little grizzled experience and boring old-fashioned spelling any day.

So The Name Inspector has turned to a lesser-known tacky misspelled name, Egnyte, which belongs to a Silicon Alley “Cloud File Server” startup. This is a name with a very clear rationale: based on the word ignite, easy to pronounce, short (it meets the persistent six-letters-max expectation for domain names), and available or acquirable as a .com domain name. The E-for-I substitution works phonetically here, as it does in the name Enertia, because there’s little if any distinction between the two vowels when they occur in an unemphasized syllable.

That’s all fine. Yet, this name is just so unappealing.

The Name Inspector is not opposed in principle to creative spelling. But there are better and worse ways to do it. Creative spelling should have a little subtlety and/or flair. It should be almost unnoticeable, as in the name Flickr, or it should be motivated by wordplay, as in the name Automattic, or it should be efficient and phonetically apt, as in the name Pipl (which is almost how the word people is spelled in the International Phonetic Alphabet), or it should be odd in a way that’s cute or comical, as in the name Digg. Egnyte comes closest to falling into the last camp, because it’s odd, but it lacks humor. Somehow individual vowel substitutions just aren’t funny. Unless they involve umlauts.

The Name Inspector doesn’t presume to know exactly how the people at Egnyte
came up with their name. But he suspects they used this common technique: pick a real word and keep respelling it until you find an available domain name. That’s one of the least imaginative ways to do it.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” -Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

Do you spend too much time on Facebook, or Twitter, or Google+? Well take heart, because there’s a new app called Unsocial, which might be just what you need to wean yourself from your social networking addiction. Except it’s not. It’s actually a social networking app.

The Name Inspector was quite surprised to learn about this name, and wondered what would lead someone to think it up for an app that helps you meet people. After all, a person who is “unsocial” is someone who doesn’t want to be around other people. Isn’t this a bit like calling your paper towels Mess? Or your encryption software Expose? Yes, it is.

The tagline for Unsocial is “It’s not who you know. It’s who you need to know.” This location-based app helps you meet people who match your specified criteria when you’re hanging out in a hotel lobby, airport, or some other public space. So in a way it’s not merely about being social–it’s about being downright extroverted.

Re-purposing the word unsocial to name this app is just wishful thinking. It doesn’t say “go beyond social”. It says “I’d rather just stay in my hotel room and watch HBO”.

What on earth would make someone think it’s a good idea to name their business BackFire? Especially a chiropractic practice (a chiropractice?)?

Here’s what the word backfire makes The Name Inspector think of:

1. A plan going terribly wrong
2. A loud noise coming from a vehicle’s tailpipe
3. A back that is on fire

The least objectionable association is (2), and with a bit of imagination, that one is pretty bad (picture an especially elaborate chiropractic version of the “pull my finger” gag). (1) is just terrible in an obvious way (and chiropractic, with all that yanking and twisting, just seems like it’s bound to go wrong). (3) seems uncomfortable under any circumstances, but potentially especially acute in a chiropractic setting. If your chiropractic treatment backfires, you might find yourself saying, “Doc, it feels like my back is on fire!” And here’s the kicker: in the window of this chiropractor’s office there is a neon spine.

Just to be generous, let’s enumerate the appropriate things about the name BackFire:

1. It contains the word back

That’s about it. Maybe that feeling of one’s back being on fire can be interpreted as the reason for seeing a chiropractor in the first place. Or maybe (this is really a stretch) a back on fire can be understood as a good thing–a metaphor for vitality. On second thought, maybe not.

A tip to business owners: don’t pick a name just because it contains a word related to your business. Context is everything.

Thuuz is a startup that assigns an “excitement score” in real time to sporting events, notifies fans when things get especially thrilling, and even tells them how they can tune in to share the excitement. Pretty great idea, right? (If it really works. But let’s face it, the users of this are going to be big sports fans. They’re just looking for more excuses to watch sporting events.)

But then we have the name Thuuz. The Name Inspector is not a fan. Clearly it’s built on the bones of the words enthused, enthusiasm, and enthusiastic. So far so good–apt, if a bit pedestrian. But that syllable is pretty weird sounding. It’s really the first consonant and the vowel together that sound odd. The Name Inspector talked about this in connection with the name Thoof a while back. He quite reasonably declared that the “Thoo-” part was a bit counterintuitive in English, and then this smartypants named John commented that it was an accident of history that there is no word thoof, and The Name Inspector held his ground, and John was all “what about enthusiasm“, and The Name Inspector was like “good point but what about at the beginning of a word”, and John was all “historical linguistics blah blah”. So clearly The Name Inspector won that round.

The real problem with Thuuz is the spelling, which uses not one but two cheesy alterations: the double vowel and the z at the end. Thuze would be more straightforward–the founders were probably unable to acquire the domain thuze.com. In Thuuz the “uu” performs an odd function of sorts, because if the name were spelled Thuz people might think it rhymes with fuzz. But the “uu” is just weird. (And now John is going to say “What about the word vacuum“, and The Name Inspector will be all “It’s still unusual”, and the disagreement will escalate until there’s a fistfight followed by an exhausted moment of bonding, just like in a bromance movie, and an unbeatable linguistic duo is formed.)

This is one of those names that will have to be spelled for anyone who hears it without seeing it.

Fans are really great about jumping and shouting and being noticed and painting their chests purple. The Name Inspector thinks that non-fans need to stand up and get noticed sometimes, too. So here he is. He wishes the founders of Thuuz the best of luck with their startup, but he’s got to say, “Let’s not hear it for the name Thuuz!”

Adify

Crowdify

Mobify

Navify

Optify

Shopify

Spotify

Storify

Topify

There are lots of English verbs that end with the Latin-derived suffix -ify. In most of them, the main part of the word, or the base, is an adjective. Usually the resulting word means ‘to make (adjective)’–so intensify means to make something intense, purify means to make something pure, and so forth. In some of these words, the base is a noun, and the meaning is roughly ‘to make into (noun)’–so personify means to make something into a person (at least imaginatively), mummify means to make someone into a mummy, and zombify means to make someone into a zombie. Sometimes the meanings are a little more complicated. Yuppify doesn’t mean to make someone into a yuppy, but rather to make something (usually a neighborhood) more full of yuppies or more appealing to them. (For you youngsters out there, yuppie is a word, short for “young urban professional”, that we oldsters used derisively back in the 1980s when we were secretly aspiring to be yuppies ourselves). Sometimes the base of an -ify word is a twist on an existing word, as in clarify, horrify, and terrify, or it’s a Latin root that doesn’t stand on its own as a word but that’s related to familiar words, as in verify, rectify, and unify.

Despite these complications, one thing you can say about all these words is that the bases are simple and usually don’t carry any other suffixes before the -ify ending. Names using the suffix are another story:

Playlistify

Backupify

Linksify

Zensify

Here we have the -ify ending attached to the compound noun playlist, the nounified verb-particle combination backup, the plural noun links, and, inexplicably, a base made out of zen + s (maybe this is supposed to be a blend of zen and densify). Then we even have the -ify ending redundantly added to verb bases:

Chargify

Predictify

Restorify

You don’t find -ify attached to verbs in natural English, because the point of the -ify ending is to make a verb out of a different kind of word. The only exception The Name Inspector has thought of is preachify, and he’s willing to wager that’s a tongue-in-cheek word, based on the similar word speechify, that’s meant to illustrate the kind artificially puffed-up speaking style it refers to.

The Name Inspector fears that this approach to namifying has gotten out of hand. When will the madness stopify?

(The Name Inspector used to do this as a semi-regular feature, and then stopped. He’s going to try reviving it for a while, but this time, with words!)

While strolling down 1st Ave in Seattle, The Name Inspector was struck by the name of this cafe. Inside there were displays of what looked like traditional art of native Pacific Northwesterners. So the name is meant to evoke long-time inhabitants and the special relationship they develop to their land. But whoever named this place was unable to resist one of the most overused tropes of cafe-naming: punning on the word grounds. There are cafes called Common Grounds, Uncommon Grounds, Sufficient Grounds, and…well, you’ve seen these places, so think of some more yourself and don’t make The Name Inspector do all the work. He’s tired.

Anyway, there’s a problem with this name. Like all such names, it has two meanings: one that’s not related to coffee, and one that is. Usually the coffee-related interpretation is a positive one, as in Uncommon Grounds (uncommonly good, we mean!), or at least a neutral one, as in Sufficient Grounds (yes, we use enough coffee to brew your cup!). But Ancient Grounds makes it sound like they keep pouring water over the same coffee grounds again and again, and have been doing so for centuries. That just doesn’t promise a tasty cup of joe.

And if you’re interested in names, you can enjoy some English-based Asian brand names that are equally exotic. They’re mostly, but not exclusively, for Japanese products. The way English is used in these names is often shocking and amusing, so much so that there are websites, such as Engrish.com, devoted to showcasing Asian product names for laughs. Some of the names, like Pocari Sweat (for an “Ion Supply Drink”), you’ve probably come across before–they’ve been mentioned often enough in the media to have achieved a degree of notoriety. (Uwajimaya did indeed have big displays of Pocari Sweat right up near the cash registers.) There are other Asian-English names, though, that don’t have quite the same shock value, but that present English from a subtly different perspective. For a namer, these can be inspiring as well as funny.

Some of the names, like Watering KissMint chewing gum, are kind of poetic. No native speaker of American English would come up with this name. While KissMint alone is pretty normal, that present participle Watering makes the name special–it’s not an idiomatic use of the word water, and it suggests really sloppy kisses. The result is very evocative, though, and the unusual language is partly responsible. The Name Inspector gets the sense that watering is being used as a near-synonym for refreshing, but it evokes a more specific image of plants being watered, giving us a metaphorical way to see and feel our refreshment.

The gum with the charmingly literal name No Time apparently brushes your teeth while you chew it. Then there’s Walky Walky candy. Not shocking, not mind-blowing–just a little askew. It sounds  a bit like walkie talkie, or an ironic baby-talk command: “Come one now, everyone, walky-walky!”. And there’s a cold coffee drink called Let’s Be. You could imagine an American product going for a kind of Zen effect with a name like Just Be, but Let’s Be sounds a bit bizarre. Maybe the inclusive invitation of Let’s Be sounds more polite than the straightforward imperative form that’s ubiquitous in American branding and advertising. Come to think of it, the brand name of the little snack crabs mentioned above was Let’s Party! (Because nothing says “party” like a bag of little dried crabs!).

Other unusual beverage names included Sac Sac, a fruit juice drink, and amino supli, an apparent Pocari Sweat competitor.

In the Uwajimaya food court there’s a cream puff vendor called Beard Papa’s. Their logo includes a cartoon man-face with a fluffy white beard that looks liked whipped cream. Both the language of the name and the concept behind it are surprising. First, it’s just strange to modify papa with beard like that. Bearded papa would be the idiomatic way to say it. But more to the point, The Name Inspector is hard-pressed to think of a Western food product that’s touted, however subtly, for its resemblance to human hair. There’s angel hair pasta, of course, but that’s from angels, which, if they actually existed, would no doubt be quite delicious.

It’s hard not to have at least one laugh about an inappropriate name, and The Name Inspector got his from Chippy corn chips, which manages to be both unimaginative and way off the mark.

Browsing at Uwajimaya is like being a tourist without leaving the city center. Being in a foreign setting tends to heighten your sensitivity to all stimuli–even the familiar ones that are suddenly thrown into relief by an unfamiliar background. And so it was with The Name Inspector at Uwajimaya. One of the exotic Asian names he wrote down was Sport Beans candy. But then he looked more closely and realized this was a thoroughly American product, made by Ronald Reagan’s favorite jelly bean company Jelly Belly, headquartered in California, USA. Thank you, Uwajimaya, for helping The Name Inspector see the strangeness of American brand names through new eyes.

Watch out! There’s a new electric motorcycle in town. It’s the Enertia, from Brammo. Yes, like the word inertia, but with an E, which The Name Inspector supposes stands for electric. So, electric + inertia.

Inertia. Kind of an unusual word choice for a motorcycle, don’t you think? Inertia, as we all remember from physics class, is the tendency of a physical object to stay at rest or, if it’s in motion, to maintain direction and velocity until it’s acted upon by an external force. If you imagine a motorcycle in motion, you can think of inertia as a synonym for momentum: this thing will keep on going–just try to stop it! That seems to be what Brammo is going for. On the Enertia website they use the slogan “Enertia is Momentum for Change”.

The Name Inspector is willing to wager, however, that this is not the first idea that will pop into most people’s minds. They’ll think of the word inertia as it’s used in the everyday world, where it means, as the Merriam-Webster online dictionary puts it, “indisposition to motion, exertion, or change: INERTNESS”.

Inertia. Inertness. Stillness. Just sitting there. Not going anywhere. No energy or motivation. Lying on the couch, not doing what you’re supposed to be doing.

It’s actually hard to think of another name that so clearly communicates exactly the wrong message. Let’s face it, people are going to be skeptical about an electric motorcycle. They’re going to be concerned that it just won’t have enough oomph. Putting the word inertia in their minds isn’t going to help with that. The Name Inspector loves this quote from an otherwise rather positive review of the Enertia: “I cannot think of a more stupid name for a motorbike. I mean my bike cannot get over 35mph but because it is called the Ruckus I always feel something exciting might happen.”

Maybe the name Enertia is part of a daring, counterintuitive marketing concept. This is the motorcycle for people who don’t really like motorcycles! Or any form of transportation, or movement, really. Don’t worry, it’s electric. It only goes 51 mph, for Pete’s sake–just hop on! No, actually, get on carefully, holding on tight to the handlebars–but first make sure your helmet straps are properly adjusted. Now are you ready for the ride of your life? No? Good–don’t get too excited. This is really just a moped without the pedals–a noped. OK, ride carefully, and you’ll get there eventually if your battery doesn’t run out.

There. The Name Inspector just had to get that sarcastic little tirade out of his system. But it may not be far from the truth. In a 2007 interview for the Portland Tribune, Brammo design director Brian Wismann said the Enertia “was designed to appeal to somebody like me who has always loved motorcycles but perhaps was too intimidated to go out and buy one”. He also said it was made to be “really inviting to sit on”. Like a cool, zippy armchair!

For The Name Inspector, this news conjures an image of two pigeons fighting over a moldy piece of hot dog bun.

For starters, Jobdango is just a silly name. Besides being phonologically inelegant after Job-, that dang -dango is either one of the most bizarrely gratuitous endings The Name Inspector has ever seen on a name, or it’s a cranberry morpheme that’s probably derived from the name Fandango, in which case it’s embarrassingly unoriginal. The -dango ending makes sense in the name Fandango, because fandango is a word for a Spanish dance that also happens to contain the word fan, which is kind of fitting for a site that sells movie tickets. The name Handango is clearly a play on the word fandango.

But what’s -dango doing in the name Jobdango, which bears no other resemblance to the word fandango? Well, what it’s probably doing is reminding us vaguely of successful commercial websites like Fandango, known to many through its TV commercials featuring hand puppets made out of brown paper lunch bags.

So Jobdango, you should be a tad embarrassed trying to protect -dango as if it’s some kind of special mark that’s uniquely associated with you. It’s not. You didn’t make it up, you weren’t the first to use it, and you might even benefit from people’s familiarity with -dango companies that have gone before you. So just drop it. Drop that moldy hot dog bun.