Archive for the 'Soft Names' Category

Naming Stories: Limber Media

Posted in Company Names, Good Names, Metaphor, Naming, Naming Stories, Soft Names, Sound Symbolism, Startup Names on April 11th, 2007 6 Comments »

A while ago Allegra Searle-LeBel sent in a story about naming her online media-editing startup:
We had been struggling for about 2 months, trying to find the right name. There was this funny, almost mystical sense that it existed *somewhere*. We just needed to keep slogging through the troughs of lame options and almost […]

Amazon.com: The river, not the woman warrior

Posted in Company Names, Good Names, Iconic Names, Metaphor, Names, Real Word Names, Soft Names, Sound Symbolism on February 9th, 2007 5 Comments »

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 […]

Zillow

Posted in Blend Names, Company Names, Good Names, Metonymy, Names, Soft Names on January 11th, 2007 No Comments »

As a denizen of the Emerald City, the Name Inspector has been intrigued by the meteoric rise of the online real estate service Zillow, and has speculated on the origins of their name. Those speculations, though enjoyable, have turned out to be pointless, because it says right there on their website how they came up […]