Shelly Farnham and Peter Brown are the co-founders of Waggle Labs, a Seattle software and consulting company that specializes in social technology. Their new product, Pathable, lets participants in social events tag themselves with their interests and personal connections to find other similar participants. Shelly and Peter were kind enough to share a story [...]

The name Twitter is not itself a pun, but it’s a set-up for a pun. It pretends to be a simple metaphorical name that casts the textual cacophony of its special kind of web exhibitionism as bird noise. But then there’s the connection to the expression all atwitter, used to describe someone filled with emotional [...]

On Monday The Name Inspector hosted a Biznik workshop and everyone discussed the name of the popular photo-sharing site Flickr. It’s an interesting case study in selecting a real word to serve as a business name.
The word flicker clearly evokes scenarios associated with light and photography. One person said it reminded her of movie projectors [...]

It’s probably safe to say that Amazon (or Amazon.com) has achieved the status of an iconic name.
So, does the word Amazon bear any meaningful relation to the company Amazon.com? Amazon is of course the name of the South American river which is the largest in the world. There were also ancient women warriors, made famous [...]

A reader suggested doing a profile of this name, and The Name Inspector thought that was a pretty good idea.
The name Digg depends on felicitous ambiguity, of which The Name Inspector is something of a connoisseur. (He even wrote a dissertation about it, though the kind he focused on there was a bit different). What’s [...]

Pandora is the character from Greek mythology who opened a jar (or box) and released evil and woe into the world. Doesn’t sound like good material for a name, does it? Isn’t calling a music service Pandora kind of like calling a women’s athletic shoe Incubus?
No, it’s not like that at all. When people think [...]

Occasionally the Name Inspector writes about names for companies, products, or services that have achieved iconic status. There are lessons to be learned from these names, sometimes because they’re great, and sometimes because they show it’s possible to succeed with a so-so name.
Apple Computers is a great name. It’s a model solution to a problem [...]