Someone should write about the name Pinterest. Pause. Don’t you think someone should write about Pinterest? Pause. OK, it looks like The Name Inspector is going to have to do it. Pause. Sometimes it seems like he’s the only one who ever does any name inspecting around here. Pinterest, like Groupon, is one of those [...]

The Name Inspector was going to write a post about Qwikster, the terrible new name that Netflix has given to the movie-by-mail arm of its business. But really, what is there to say that Fritinancy hasn’t already said? So The Name Inspector has turned to a lesser-known tacky misspelled name, Egnyte, which belongs to a [...]

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” -Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass Do you spend too much time on Facebook, or Twitter, or Google+? Well take heart, because there’s a new app called Unsocial, which might be [...]

Language is the most efficient tool your business can use to get attention and build a brand. It gives your business a human voice, and costs almost nothing to reproduce and share. In fact, it costs nothing at all when other people spread your message for you, using only their voices or their fingers and [...]

The Seattle Startup Index is Seattle 2.0′s regular ranking of Seattle startups based on web traffic. The newest ranking is out, and The Name Inspector is delighted to see Zulily, a former client, at #4, just behind Cheezburger Network, BuddyTV, and Feedjit. Zulily has been burning up the track lately–just last month John Cook wrote at [...]

Naming isn’t all soft, fuzzy language stuff. Mind you, The Name Inspector loves the soft, fuzzy language stuff. It’s his job to love it. But he realizes that businesspeople often have more practical considerations on their minds, as they should. So here are some hard practical truths about naming that The Name Inspector often shares with [...]

Brevity is a virtue in a name, usually. Come up with a short name that relates to your company or product in an imaginative way, and you’re golden. A sort of verbal minimalism is the goal of most naming efforts. Some names, however, succeed with a more…maximalist approach. Two extreme examples are the well-known full-sentence [...]

Who hasn’t had the frustrating experience of regretting having missed a big game that everyone talks about the next day? Actually, The Name Inspector hasn’t–for a reasonably sporty fellow he’s oddly immune to the normal enthusiasms of sports spectatorship. Don’t get him wrong, he can appreciate a well caught ball, an impressive defensive maneuver, or [...]

The Name Inspector was fortunate to have had the opportunity to help Zulily come up with their name. In case you haven’t checked it out, Zulily specializes in daily deals for moms, babies, and kids. The company offers amazing bargains and inspires great enthusiasm among its customers. The name Zulily, while odd to some, is loved [...]

Photo from Flickr by Stuart Seeger. Used under a Creative Commons 2.0 license. Remember a while back when The Name Inspector did a post about Seattle startup names, and promised a series of posts about names in other entrepreneurial hotspots? This is the next in that series: a little post about Austin startup names. To [...]