The word awkwordplay is an especially silly example, and it’s made up. But the problem it demonstrates is found in a subtler form in many actual names. Consider the name Teensurance, for an insurance program for parents with teen drivers. Whenever you have a single-syllable word like teen in a blend, you’re going to want to give it some emphasis, especially when it expresses a distinguishing characteristic of something, as teen does in Teensurance. Yet in this name, teen replaces the first syllable of insurance, which isn’t emphasized. As a result, the name sounds strained. It’s an example of awkwordplay.

A similar example is the name Carticipate, for a mobile application to support ridesharing. Car is an important word in this name and deserves emphasis, but it replaces the unemphasized first syllable of participate.  Again, awkwordplay.

Contrast Teensurance and Carticipate with a well-constructed blend like Farecast, for an airfare forecasting service. The one-syllable word fare takes its rightful place as the emphasized syllable of the name, which preserves the rhythm of forecast as well.

Combine syllable emphasis mismatch with difficult or unpleasant transitions between sounds, and you’ve got a real mess. The name Mapufacture commits only a minor infraction with respect to syllable emphasis, because map replaces a syllable that receives secondary emphasis. But replacing a syllable with main emphasis would be much better. And, while the transition between the first and second syllable of manufacture sounds nice and smooth, when you replace the n with a p, the result sounds pretty bad.

An especially egregious example of awkwordplay is the name Syncplicity, for file synchronization and backup software. Pronouncing this name is not a matter of the utmost syncplicity. Not only is the word sync stripped of its natural emphasis, but there’s also that ugly consonant cluster between the first two syllables. As a result, the structure and sound symbolism of this name work directly against the intended message. The product is supposed to be about combining things simply, but the name combines things incompetently, and with great difficulty.

The lesson here, dear naming public, is that you shouldn’t jump on every coincidental syllable similarity you find to make a play on words. Sure, map sounds a little like the first syllable of manufacture, car rhymes with the first syllable of participate, teen shares a final sound with the first syllable of insurance, and sync sounds a bit like the first syllable of simplicity. But you’ve got to consider the overall rhythm and flow of your play on words. That means preserving the patterns of emphasized and unemphasized syllables that you find in the words you start with, and not creating ungainly new sound combinations.

Now go and play nice.

Tags: awkwordplay, wordplay, puns, teensurance, carticipate, mapufacture, syncplicity

The Name Inspector likes the sound of that.

Tags: obama, election, election2008

That’s phonotactics–the study of sound sequences that do and do not occur in a given language. Some non-occurring sound sequences are simply unpronounceable and are not found in any language. Others are pronounceable but just don’t fit the idiosyncratic preferences of a particular language.

Lately The Name Inspector has noticed a bunch of names used in English-speaking contexts that don’t toe the line of normal English phonotactics. He suspects this is a new strategy for creating short names that are available as .com domains.

It’s really common for names to mess with orthography. That strategy is typical of Web 2.0 names (Flickr, Digg, Zooomr, etc.) and has been with us for a long time (Cheez Whiz). But phonology has been pretty sacred until now. While all the following names are pronounceable, they start with sound sequences that don’t occur syllable-initially in English, except in some borrowed words.

Zlio. This website allows you to instantly create an online affiliate store. It was in the news a while back because it got banned from Amazon.com. In English, the sequence zl- only occurs in the word zloty, the Polish currency unit.

Vlingo. This is a voice-to-text application for mobile devices. We English speakers see vl-at the beginning of a word only in the name Vladimir and in a tiny handful of obscure borrowed words.

Jwaala. An online banking tool. This name is based on a Sanskrit-derived word for ‘fire’. English has plenty of words in which j- is followed by the vowel -u- (e.g. juvenile), but none in which it’s followed by the related consonant -w-.

Srixon. The name of this golf ball manufacturer has a beginning that English speakers only find in the place name Sri Lanka.

How much farther can the phonological sensibilities of English speakers be pushed? As names become increasingly scarce, let’s wait and see.

Tags: zlio, the name zlio, vlingo, the name vlingo, jwaala, the name jwaala, srixon, the name srixon