Richard MacManus at Read/WriteWeb has posted a great list of the 10 worst web app names. The comment section, just as great, shows that those ten have a lot of competition.
Tags: readwriteweb, rrw

Phil Butler over at ReadWriteWeb has written a post about a new online music service called Fairtilizer. Oh dear. The Name Inspector doesn’t even know where to begin.
This name is presumably a pun: the first syllable of the word fertilizer has been changed to the similar-sounding word fair. Or maybe the word air has been [...]

Duncan Riley has posted on TechCrunch about Incuby, a social network where inventors can promote their inventions. The Name Inspector thinks this is a great idea for a web business.
But not a great name for one. Clearly it’s intended to be a fun tweak of incubator, which is what we call organizations that help delicate [...]

Most company names consist of just one or two meaningful parts. That makes sense, because brevity is important in a name for several reasons: memorability, simplicity of pronunciation, ease of writing and typing, and graphic compactness in a logo.
So crowded is the space of names, however, that people have been forced into three-meaningful-part territory. The [...]

Have you noticed that your local Kinko’s has become FedEx Kinko’s?
Kinko’s is known for having a laid-back corporate culture. Maybe a little too laid back. The Name Inspector once went to a 24-hour Kinko’s in Manhattan, and there was no one there. Not only were there no other customers, but there were no employees, either. [...]

If you found the title of this post a little confusing, then you have some idea what’s wrong with the name Tenacious Offense. This name belongs to young Seattle-based company that seems to be a kind of rent-a-bizdev team for small startups trying to land big clients. Thanks to Brant Williams for writing and sharing [...]

The Name Inspector would like to thank Michael Laine and Brian Dunbar for their gracious responses to his critical comments about the name LiftPort. Brian links to the critique in a good-natured post. In a comment Michael vows to impress the world with results rather than words. That’s really what matters, isn’t it? In the [...]

Some of the Name Inspector’s readers have commented that the posts so far have all been pretty positive. While he has made a conscious decision to play nice until people get to know him, the Name Inspector is not all bunnies and butterflies. Here’s a story about a name that doesn’t work, bravely submitted by [...]