Search engine names: ten types plus mashonyms

Originally published Mar 9, 2007

The post on 10 company name types was so well received that The Name Inspector has decided, shamelessly, to make a sequel. This time we’ll look at names for lesser-known search engines, in which The Name Inspector has a special interest.

The fodder for this analysis is the list of the Top 100 Alternative Search Engines that’s begun to make a monthly appearance on Read/WriteWeb. Below the 100 names from last month’s list are put into the same ten categories that were found in the TechCrunch index.

But there’s a twist. Aside from the fact that we’re a ten-fingered species and have all pretty much settled on a decimal number system, there’s no reason there should be exactly ten kinds of name, and some new types pop up on this list. Interestingly, the new categories are basically mashups of the other ten. For example, if you can have misspelled word names and compound names, you can also have compounds in which one of the words is misspelled: a name type mashup. Let’s give these the slightly ridiculous name mashonyms. They’re discussed at the end.

1. Real words (23)

First a comment about the subcategory Misspelled Words. It’s a bit of a catch-all, because there are lots of different ways to tweak the spelling of a word. The most obvious is to replace letters and letter combinations with sound-alikes–a time-honored technique for creating product names which is now being applied more and more to company names (isn’t it interesting the way a web application blurs the distinction between company and product?). Two other techniques are worth mentioning because they’re especially common in Web 2.0 names. One is the domain hack. Everyone’s favorite example is the much-imitated del.icio.us, which makes a word out of the subdomain del, the domain name icio and the top-level domain us. Another technique is the omission of vowels (e.g. Flickr), which is vaguely reminiscent of text messaging conventions.

boing
ChaCha
Ditto
grokker
like
Local.com
mamma
Slideshow
Sphere
Zippy

Misspelled words

blinkx (blinks)
filangy (phalange ‘finger bone’)
GRUUVE (groove)
pipl (people)
retrievr (retriever)
sidekiq (sidekick)
Sproose (spruce)
S R C H R (searcher)
Swamii (swami)

Foreign words

hakia (Finnish hakea ‘to fetch’ hakia COO says no–see comments here)
pronto.com (Italian ‘quick’ Mario says a better gloss is ‘ready’–see comment)
soople (archaic variant of the English verb supple ’soften, make supple’)
girafa (Portuguese ‘giraffe’)

2. Compounds (20)

AnswerBus
Blabline
bookmach.com (Presumably sounds like a Bostonian saying bookmark)
ClipBlast!
Dogpile
dumbfind
factbites
FindSounds
FyberSearch *
GoYams
ICEROCKET
Pagebull
qksearch (= quicksearch) *
searchbots
SurfWax
WASALive *
WEBBRAIN
WiseNut
ZABASEARCH (”ZABA is from the Greek word tzaba…’free’ or ‘at no cost’ “) *
zapmeta

3. Phrases (17)

AllTha.at *
Ask Mobile
ASK VOX
FIND FORWARD
goshme Beta 3.0
liveplasma
PlanetSearch
Quintura for kids
RedZee
SearchTheWeb2
thefind.com
Web 2.0
whonu? *
Windows Live Mobile
Yahoo! Mobile
Yahoo! MINDSET
yoono (you know*

4. Blends (9)

collarity (collaborative + clarity)
CONGOO (”taken from the words content and glue“) *
exalead (exact + lead ??)
GoLexa (Google + Alexa)
mnemomap (mnemonic map)
Quintura (quintessence + neural networks)
Speegle (speech + Google)
Swoogle (Semantic Web Ontology + Google) *
yoople (Yahoo! + Google + people) *

5. Made up or obscure origin (8)

Of course, this means obscure to The Name Inspector. Anyone who sees an overlooked meaning or derivation should please leave a comment. For example, onkosh is an Arabic search portal–does the name have a recognizable Arabic derivation?

fazzle (blend of facile and dazzle?)
lurpo (???)
Mojeek (?)
onkosh (something derived from Arabic?)
Slifter (blend of sifter and lift?)
UJIKO (adjacent letters on keyboard)
yubnub (Ewok “hooray”; no, this does not belong in Real Words)
ZUULA (made up, but means ‘to take off’ in an African language)

6. Tweaked words (7)

Clusty (cluster)
d e c i p h o (decipher)
ixquick
KartOO (cartoon?)
Lexxe (lexical)
Trexy (treks)
WIKIO (wiki)

7. Affixed words (6)

crossEngine
GIGABLAST
MetaGlossary
Mooter
PolyMeta
turboscout

8. Initials and acronyms (4)

Omgili (Oh my god, I love it!)
TWERQ (The Web’s Effective Result Query; also from QWERTY)
url.com
VMGO.com (domain name for test verion only)

9. Puns (3)

gnod (nod, n –> gnostic ‘relating to knowledge’)
gnosh (nosh, n –> gnostic ‘relating to knowledge’)
scirus (cirrusci –> science)

10. People’s names (3)

mrquery
MS. DEWEY
riya

Mixing the name types in mashonyms

Some of the names above are flagged with asterisks because they really belong to more than one category. These are the mashonyms:

Blend + Compound = FyberSearch (first word blend of fiber and cyber ?)

Misspelled Word + Compound = qksearch

Initials/Acronym + Compound = WASALive (This is a guess. Does anyone know what WASA means?)

Foreign Word + Compound =  ZABASEARCH 

Phrase + Misspelled Word + Domain Hack = alltha.at

Phrase + Misspelled Word = whonu? (knew –> nu)

Phrase + Misspelled Words =  yoono (you –> yooknow –> no)

Blend + Tweaked Word = Congoo (glue –> goo)
Blend + Acronym =  Swoogle (Swo is an acronym for Semantic Web Ontology)

Triple Blend:  yoople (Yahoo! + Google + people)

The search for search engine names has drawn on some creative linguistic strategies. As new companies proliferate and compete for attention, domain names, and trademarks, these strategies are bound to become even more complex

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