Posted in Bad Names, Names in the Wild, Peculiar, Product Names, Seattle Interest on August 14th, 2009 9 Comments »
A fun way to spend a rainy hour in Seattle is to browse in Uwajimaya, a huge Asian supermarket in the International District (which locals call “the ID”). There you can see products that, from a mainland American point of view (at least this mainland American point of view), are pretty exotic. Things like durian-flavored [...]
Posted in Bad Names, Product Names, Real Word Names, Words on July 14th, 2009 5 Comments »
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, [...]
Posted in Bad Names, Product Names, Real Word Names, Words on December 11th, 2008 No Comments »
While perusing the New York Times magazine last weekend, The Name Inspector saw a big ad for a new organic vodka called Crop. It’s clear what they were going for with this name. It connects the product to its agricultural origins. It makes the vodka seem like something natural and fresh and wholesome–like food!
Let’s try [...]
Posted in Enigmatic Names, Phrase Names, Product Names on May 9th, 2008 4 Comments »
Sometimes it takes a crazy kind of name to snap a name inspector out of a long dry spell. Verb for Shoe is just that kind of name. It belongs to a computerized, interactive shoe created by MIT-spinoff VectraSense Technologies. Apparently this shoe detects different activities of its wearer and inflates and deflates cushions in [...]
Posted in Good Names, Metaphor, Metonymy, Names, Product Names, Real Word Names, Schematic Names, Sound Symbolism on June 4th, 2007 2 Comments »
Microsoft recently unveiled Surface, a tabletop computer with an amazing multi-touch interface. There’s no keyboard or mouse–you interact with Surface through its display, which is touch-sensitive and can respond to simultaneous touches from multiple fingers or people. That means you can “grab” objects and move them around, re-size photos by stretching them out with your [...]
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