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There are lots of English verbs that end with the Latin-derived suffix -ify. In most of them, the main part of the word, or the base, is an adjective. Usually the resulting word means ‘to make (adjective)’-so intensify means to make something intense, purify means to make something pure, and so forth. In some of these words, the base is a noun, and the meaning is roughly ‘to make into (noun)’-so personify means to make something into a person (at least imaginatively), mummify means to make someone into a mummy, and zombify means to make someone into a zombie. Sometimes the meanings are a little more complicated. Yuppify doesn’t mean to make someone into a yuppy, but rather to make something (usually a neighborhood) more full of yuppies or more appealing to them. (For you youngsters out there, yuppie is a word, short for “young urban professional”, that we oldsters used derisively back in the 1980s when we were secretly aspiring to be yuppies ourselves). Sometimes the base of an -ify word is a twist on an existing word, as in clarify, horrify, and terrify, or it’s a Latin root that doesn’t stand on its own as a word but that’s related to familiar words, as in verify, rectify, and unify.

Despite these complications, one thing you can say about all these words is that the bases are simple and usually don’t carry any other suffixes before the -ify ending. Names using the suffix are another story:

Playlistify

Backupify

Linksify

Zensify

Here we have the -ify ending attached to the compound noun playlist, the nounified verb-particle combination backup, the plural noun links, and, inexplicably, a base made out of zen + s (maybe this is supposed to be a blend of zen and densify). Then we even have the -ify ending redundantly added to verb bases:

Chargify

Predictify

Restorify

You don’t find -ify attached to verbs in natural English, because the point of the -ify ending is to make a verb out of a different kind of word. The only exception The Name Inspector has thought of is preachify, and he’s willing to wager that’s a tongue-in-cheek word, based on the similar word speechify, that’s meant to illustrate the kind artificially puffed-up speaking style it refers to.

The Name Inspector fears that this approach to namifying has gotten out of hand. When will the madness stopify?

Groupon offers ridiculous discounts to its users, on the condition that enough people commit to making a purchase. It thus delivers new customers to hungry businesses, making everyone happy and Groupon very rich.

The name Groupon has always kind of irritated The Name Inspector, and now it’s time to write about that.

The unpleasantness of the name Groupon, at least to this particular name inspector’s ears, can’t be attributed to obviously poor construction. It’s not exactly a case of awkwordplay, because one emphasized syllable is replaced with another, and there are no difficult consonant clusters. But something still sounds awkward. The Name Inspector believes it might have to do with the way the syllable division in Groupon (Grou + pon) splits up the word group. But even that’s not quite right. The name Scoopon, which belongs to an Australian company that’s been sued by Groupon for domain squatting (they bought groupon.co.au), has the same problem, but sounds better than Groupon. Maybe it’s the way the r in Groupon changes the sound of the first syllable. Or maybe it has to do with the meaning: if you think of the name as group + on, you get kind of an orgiastic vibe from it: group, grope, grab on, get your group on… That’s not just The Name Inspector, is it? You get that too, right? Right?!

Of course you do. So don’t the people at Groupon know their company has a funny name? They probably do. According to the company blog, the guy who came up with the name Groupon is Aaron With, the Editor in Chief at Groupon. Apparently he’s responsible for the unique voice in which Groupon’s deals are presented. In its short life as a big deal, Groupon has become known for its goofy and irreverent content. For example, here’s how today’s offer for Seattle starts out:

Though they work best as a gleaming smile, perfectly white teeth can also be removed in emergencies and inserted into candelabra for the purposes of exploring haunted houses. Keep your incisors illuminated with today’s Groupon…

This attitude extends to their naming. In one of the oddest promotional stunts in The Name Inspector’s memory, Groupon offers a chance at a college scholarship to any “Groupon baby”, defined as “a baby parented by a couple that used a Groupon on their first date”. The name of this program is Grouspawn.

Then there’s the name of that company blog: Groublogpon, which uses the extremely rare word-formation strategy of infixation-plopping one word right into the middle of another. The name Groublogpon actually separates the final p from the rest of the word group-it almost seems to make fun of the very property that contributes to Groupon’s funny sound. Here’s the tagline that appears under the blog name: “Sweet name, I’ll totally remember it”.

Maybe The Name Inspector is just being crotchety. Mrs. Name Inspector likes the name (as do several other people). And thanks to her, The Name Inspector is going to enjoy a wonderful massage next week, at a deeply discounted price. So he should just chill out.

But when did people start to think of sugar as something wholesome? The Name Inspector is asking that question rhetorically, because he knows perfectly well when it happened: when HFCS became the new demon of the nutritional world, and hip foodies started buying Mexican Coke thinking it’s made with pure cane sugar (or just because they like the cute retro glass bottles).

Is HFCS really so bad? One thing that muddles the issue is that people get their politics mixed up with their science. They don’t like Big Agra, and in particular, they don’t like King Corn. They object to the practice of feeding corn to beef cattle, which leads to an increased use of antibiotics and a higher level of bad Omega-6 fatty acids and saturated fat in the resulting beef.

But does that make HFCS bad? Politically, perhaps, but not nutritionally. The main nutritional objections to HFCS seem to be (1) it’s very sugary, (2) it’s in lots of foods, including ones where you wouldn’t expect to find it, and (3) it’s usually made from genetically-altered corn. But it’s gotten an especially bad rap lately, partly because it has a name so long and scientific sounding that it has to be abbreviated.

Compare poor HFCS to the much more groovily-named “agave nectar”, available in health stores everywhere. Agave nectar is essentially high fructose agave syrup, make from agave starch rather than corn starch, but through a similar process. Seeing how its hippie cousin got a free ride for so long, poor HFCS is trying to cast off the yoke of its demonized, scientific-sounding name. Who can blame it?

Of course, x has always done a little moonlighting, expressing the sound z at the beginnings of certain words and names, such as xylophone, Xerox, and Xobni, while the letter z is otherwise engaged.

Now consider the name Predixion, for prediction software. That’s not at all confusing, right? Presumably it’s pronounced just like the word prediction. If you were telling someone about it, you’d simply have to say “It’s prediction, except with an x rather than a ct”. When you look at the name you can figure out the pronunciation, but expressing the sounds k and sh squished together is something new for the letter x.

It’s the company Adapx, however, that really asks too much of poor x. In the name Adapx, the x must express either the sounds t and s squished together, or just the sound s, if you say the name like you’re pronouncing the word adapts in an especially jaunty nonstandard way. Adapx makes handwriting capture software called Capturx, which is supposed to be pronounced just like the word captures. Here x is called upon to express the sound z at the end of a word instead of the beginning, again expanding its job description. The hardware that goes with this, a special pen with sensors that record its movements while you write, is Penx, pronounced like the word pens. Besides being another strange use of x, the implied plural is odd in this context. It would be natural to allow the name to be used informally to refer to the pens, the way we call our cars Toyotas and our jeans Levis, but the plural form almost guarantees that won’t happen. You just can’t say “I got a pens” and feel good about it. You have to say something like “I got one of those Penx pens, you know what I’m talking about?”

The Name Inspector would like to urge everyone to give x a break. You’re overtaxing the poor letter, and its job performance is suffering as a result.

As a touch point for this post, The Name Inspector will look back on his old “10 company name types on TechCrunch” post, the most-visited page on this blog. That post broke down the names in the TechCrunch index at that time, which was much smaller than it is now, into a number of different categories. We can use those categories to help make sense of what’s going on here now, naming-wise.

Are there any surprises? Yes! Seattle is crazy about phrase names! Phrazy! Phrase names were only the third most numerous type in the TechCrunch post (making up about 25% of the names), but they’re numero uno here (about 34%). To be scientific, we have to acknowledge there are many possible explanations for this. Maybe the Seattle Startup Index includes a different range of types of companies than those found in TechCrunch in 2007. Maybe there’s been a nationwide change. Maybe it’s somehow related to all the coffee here. Maybe…

But that’s all speculation. Let’s get down to it.

First, what exactly counts as a phrase name? Put two words together and you’ve got a phrase, right? It’s actually a bit more complicated than that. Sometimes 1 + 1 = 1 where words are concerned. Certain word combinations are pronounced as a single word, and we call these compounds. Think of the different emphasis in the expressions The president lives in the White House and Pat lives in a white house. White House is a compound, and is emphasized on the first word, while white house in the second sentence is a phrase, and is emphasized on the word house, which is the “head” or main word of the phrase. Compounds are typically made by putting two nouns together, but other types of words can be used as well.

The Name Inspector counted names as phrases when they (1) followed the normal rules for putting together non-compound phrases (such as adjective + noun), or (2) broke those rules and had compound pronunciation. Things got tricky because some names that are syntactically phrases get pronounced as compounds. They’re kind of all run together. An example is Postacrime.com. “Post a crime” is actually a whole imperative sentence, and would normally be pronounced with emphasis on the word crime. But The Name Inspector assumes the name Postacrime is emphasized on the first syllable. Names like these went into the phrase category for syntactic reasons, but they might have been counted as compounds. (They were also counted as phrases in the TechCrunch post.)

Topping off the Seattle Startup index is Cheezburger Network, which is responsible for another website with a whole-sentence name, I Can Has Cheezburger. Then there’s Survey Analytics, BuddyTV, Robot Co-Op, ActiveRain, BigOven, the syntactically unusual HasOffers, and many others.

Seattle doesn’t favor phrase names at the expense of compounds, though. The old TechCrunch index was about 23% compounds, while the Seattle Startup Index is about 25%.There’s Wetpaint, Redfin, Smilebox, FlowPlay, Popshops, Walk Score, and many others. Seattle also makes a pretty good showing with blends, or names that seem like blends, which make up about 8% of the Seattle startup names versus 9% of the TechCrunch names: Zillow (zillions + pillow, though that analysis of the name might have been created after the name was), Feedjit (feed + widget, with a spelling twist), Sporcle (supposedly based on the word oracle-it’s got to be a blend with sparkle, right?), Mercent (merchant + percent?), and some others.

So what type of name does the Seattle Startup Index have fewer of? Real word names. Here’s what’s going on: TechCrunch covers mostly funded startups, which can afford to buy real-word domain names. About 25% of the names in the old TechCrunch index were real words, some with creative spelling. Real-word names make up only 12% of the names in the Seattle Startup Index. The Name Inspector doesn’t know how many companies in the Seattle index are bootstrapped, but he’s willing to guess it’s a lot. So our scrappy little bootstrapped startup scene has a different linguistic landscape than the one on TechCrunch. The need for economy forces us to be ingenious with all our resources, including our verbal ones. Go Seattle!

Have you noticed how many of these there are? In the TechCrunch index you can find Bridgevine, CrowdVine, Newsvine, Snapvine (now defunct), and SwingVine Inc. Other names The Name Inspector has come across include Comic Vine, LeadVine, Loudvine, PlaceVine, Racevine, RiotVine, Sandvine, and Widevine.

So what’s up? The Name Inspector believes that the -vine ending has become popular because it simultaneously meets four naming challenges, two more or less universal and two specific to web-based “connecting” tools such as communication services, aggregators, and social networks.

The first universal challenge is to find a name that evokes an appealing visual image. Vines are lovely, with their curly stems and foliage, and make a great visual design motif. The second is to find a word that combines well. Vine is great because it’s a single syllable with no clusters of multiple consonants.

Another more specific challenge is to evoke the idea of connection in a fresh way, avoiding words such as net and link. A vine makes a great visual metaphor for a network, with the leaves representing nodes and the stems representing edges. This metaphor is strengthened by the idiom “to hear something through the grapevine”, which uses the vine image to represent a network of friends and acquaintances.

The remaining challenge is to hint at the “organic” nature of social networks and crowdsourced recommendations and rankings-the way they grow through the complex actions of many people, not according to someone’s grand design. A vine is of course a plant, in keeping with the metaphor we evoke when we use the word organic that way.

The vine, thanks to its simple name, lovely appearance, and metaphorical potential, has flourished as a natural choice for namers. But has it perhaps begun to wilt?

If this post works out, The Name Inspector might just do a whole series of posts about naming trends in different startup centers, to add a comparative dimension. Ooh, that could be fun.

But for now, send your thoughts, Seattleites! Use the email address that appears under The Name Inspector’s pondering visage.

(The Name Inspector used to do this as a semi-regular feature, and then stopped. He’s going to try reviving it for a while, but this time, with words!)

While strolling down 1st Ave in Seattle, The Name Inspector was struck by the name of this cafe. Inside there were displays of what looked like traditional art of native Pacific Northwesterners. So the name is meant to evoke long-time inhabitants and the special relationship they develop to their land. But whoever named this place was unable to resist one of the most overused tropes of cafe-naming: punning on the word grounds. There are cafes called Common Grounds, Uncommon Grounds, Sufficient Grounds, and…well, you’ve seen these places, so think of some more yourself and don’t make The Name Inspector do all the work. He’s tired.

Anyway, there’s a problem with this name. Like all such names, it has two meanings: one that’s not related to coffee, and one that is. Usually the coffee-related interpretation is a positive one, as in Uncommon Grounds (uncommonly good, we mean!), or at least a neutral one, as in Sufficient Grounds (yes, we use enough coffee to brew your cup!). But Ancient Grounds makes it sound like they keep pouring water over the same coffee grounds again and again, and have been doing so for centuries. That just doesn’t promise a tasty cup of joe.

This is a name that might have great positive associations for some and leave the rest of us scratching our heads. Salal is the name of a shrub that’s popular in the Pacific Northwest. It has tough shiny leaves, pink blossoms in the spring, and edible purple berries in the late summer. (Actually, they’re technically fleshy sepals, or flower parts.) King County (the county where Seattle is) calls it “the single best ground cover for northwest gardens”. So, it might give gardeners a warm, fuzzy feeling. And the strange sound of the name might not seem so strange to people who are used to place names like Sammamish, Snoqualmie, Issaquah, and others that come from the original languages spoken in the Pacific Northwest.

The word salal is derived from Chinook Jargon, a trade language based on Chinook that was used widely in the Pacific Northwest in the 1800s. But if you’re not familiar with the plant, the name Salal is likely to seem like Arabic, as James Callan (@scarequotes) pointed out on Twitter. The Name Inspector, not much of a gardener himself, must confess to having been ignorant of the plant and puzzled by the name. Salal doesn’t appear to be an actual Arabic word, but there’s a municipality in Qatar called Umm Salal, and there are people with the surname Salal. The Arabic flavor of Salal seems to come from the sequence -al-, which is very common in transliterated Arabic, being one way to write the definite article (as in Al-Qaeda, which can be transated as ‘the base’). Also, after the vowel that appears twice in this word, the English /l/ sound gets velarized-pronounced in the back of the throat-which might remind people of the voiced velar and pharyngeal fricatives that English-hearing ears find so distinctive in Arabic.

This seems like a risky rename. Maybe the reference to a local plant is meant to make people in these parts feel like they’re part of a special in group. Others, however, will feel left out.

Now, The Name Inspector realizes he’s been a little absent lately. But remember, he’s been advancing the cause of traditional nonfiction book publishing. And all you have to do is find “The Name Inspector” on a conveniently alphabetized list, click a little radio button, and think nice thoughts. Then, no flowers or bottles of artisanal rye whiskey expected!