We all eat and breathe company names and brand names. They occupy an ever-expanding space in our cultural environment. As the most carefully designed additions to the popular vocabulary, they are literary miniatures: nanopoems. They influence us, annoy us, and make us laugh, but mostly for reasons that elude our conscious minds.
The Name Inspector takes a close look at names and tells you what makes them tick (or tank) from a linguistic point of view. He does not offer marketing treatises on branding strategy or corporate nomenclature. He is concerned with the linguistic essence of names: how they feel and sound when spoken, what they look like when written, and the meanings and moods they evoke in their contexts.
The Name Inspector has a finely tuned ear for names. A sharp eye. A delicate palate. He has a PhD in Linguistics and years of experience as a professional namer and name analyst. Let him show you the inner workings of names.
You can learn more about the Name Inspector here.
November 3rd, 2006 by The Name Inspector
After hearing your expertise on all possible names
for baby Newman, I am sure Name Inspector will be
in high demand! Love the picture!
What a fabulous service (business?) this is! I used to be good friends with a linguist and have always loved that seemingly secret knowledge of language’s inner workings. I’m curious what is cool or clunky about my own business name, Write with Meaning. Honestly, I chose it because I brainstormed a list of words and phrases and then checked to see which ones had urls still available.
What’s in my companies name??? StrongMail Systems
I would love to get your opinion on the name that we choose for our company- Fussyboy! We are a Seattle based company that designs and markets Baby Booties. We have been in business for 5 years, and the origins of the name Fussyboy! came from our son Miles, who was a tad bit fussy when he was a baby. More importantly, I thought the name had a cool kind of tone to it, and rolled off the tongue pretty well…
Taking profile requests yet? Do Digg!
Digg done.
Rachel and Brian, I can’t say much about your business names without knowing anything about your businesses, but here goes: “Write with Meaning” seems to be a play on “Ripe with Meaning”. I see what you might be getting at, but I find “Write with Meaning” a little confusing, since it’s hard to imagine writing without meaning. As for “StrongMail Systems”, it strongly suggests security to me, evoking “chainmail”.
I’m afraid I can’t go into much more detail than that, because lots of people have contacted me (most by email) asking for opinions about their names, and I just don’t have the time to give each one the attention it deserves.
Best of luck to both of you!