Pandora is the character from Greek mythology who opened a jar (or box) and released evil and woe into the world. Doesn’t sound like good material for a name, does it? Isn’t calling a music service Pandora kind of like calling a women’s athletic shoe Incubus?

No, it’s not like that at all. When people think of Pandora now, they probably don’t think of the myth. They more likely think of the common expression open Pandora’s box, which is based on the myth but has softened in meaning. Now it doesn’t suggest evil and woe as much as setting into motion chaotic forces beyond one’s control.

The image of opening a container to release wildly unpredictable forces perfectly captures the great possibility, and slight danger, of baring your listening habits to the world to discover new music. Unfortunately, that’s not quite the way Pandora Internet Radio works. It’s last.fm that asks you to make your private listening stream public. Pandora simply asks you to tell them which artists and songs you like and then it will create a “radio station” including similar artists and songs. This is an example of the right name for the wrong company.

That’s not to say Pandora isn’t great. Its secret sauce is the way it determines similarity through human judgments about musical qualities.

Phonetically the name Pandora is quite lovely and musical. We English speakers are suckers for those classical-sounding names that end with -a. The di-DUM-da stress pattern sounds lilting, the initial p- gives the name a powerful start, and the rest rolls nicely off the tongue because of the easygoing voiced alveolar consonants between the vowels.

Pandora is a good name. It would be even better if the service were more like last.fm.

Tags: Pandora, the name Pandora, last.fm, music, music service, music discovery, recommendations

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 with the name. Zillow is a blend (or, to be old-fashioned and French about it, a portmanteau) of zillions (as in “zillions of data points”) and pillow (a metonymic reference to home-where you rest your head).

Because blend names are based on real words, they often have a familiar ring to them. They can be especially seamless and elegant when, as in this name, they overlap through rhyming syllables.

Zillow adds an unusual first letter and sound z to an unusual and especially mellow-sounding word ending -illow. The only common two-syllable words that the Name Inspector can think of right now that share that ending are pillow, willow, and billow. Willow regularly shows up on lists of the most beautiful-sounding English words. Two qualities that make it beautiful are its symmetry (beginning and ending with w) and its high sonority (that is, its lack of sounds that obstruct the flow of air through the vocal tract). Both qualities are diminished when the z replaces the w, but the name still sounds pretty good. The Z is distinctive, but the company goes overboard applying it to other names for specific services: Zillow alone says “cool”, but Zindex and Zestimate tagging along say “zzz”.

Because both zill- and -illow are unusual word-halves and don’t evoke many competing meanings, Zillow brings to mind zillion and pillow surprisingly well. Even if you don’t get the “right” association for -illow, you’re bound to get an appropriate one: willow suggests yards or gardens, and billow suggests sailboats and, by association, wealth. Not bad.

Tags: Zillow, the name Zillow, Zindex, Zestimate, real estate

Occasionally the Name Inspector writes about names for companies, products, or services that have achieved iconic status. There are lessons to be learned from these names, sometimes because they’re great, and sometimes because they show it’s possible to succeed with a so-so name.

Apple Computers is a great name. It’s a model solution to a problem faced by all technology companies: how to make something that’s fundamentally abstract and mysterious seem accessible and appealing. Apple, you may recall, is responsible for turning computers into popular consumer commodities. Before Apple’s famous “1984″ ad, when people thought of computers, they thought of mainframes used in business and government. Apple has managed to make computers seem fun, approachable, and desirable.

Of course, it isn’t just the name that has achieved this. It’s the user interface and the design and the packaging and marketing. But the name Apple captures the whole image perfectly. Why?

Well, there’s the obvious cultural symbolism of apples. They’re associated with school (an apple for the teacher) and therefore with childhood and learning. More importantly, in the story of Adam and Eve, the apple represents knowledge and sex. Who doesn’t want those things? The fact that the apple also represents sin contributes to the hip, rebellious image that the original Apple ads tried to establish. The apple is the perfect symbol for the subversive power of owning your own computer. The Apple logo, with the little bite taken out of it, is an obvious reference to the idea of eating from the Tree of Knowledge.

This kind of quasi-literary symbolism is only part of the story, though. The deeper power of the name Apple comes from our everyday experiences with actual apples. They are, in a sense, the perfect consumer commodity: they’re ubiquitous and cheap, you grasp them in your hand and literally consume them, and they’re delicious. For almost everyone, they’re old childhood friends: cooked into sauce and cut into little pieces for babies, put into school lunchboxes and toted around, and baked into pies. It’s these deeply rooted sensory memories of apples that make Apple a great name. Nothing is more familiar, more accessible, or less intimidating than an apple, and that’s just the message Apple wants to get across.

Tags: Apple, the name Apple, Apple Computers

When YouTube was acquired by Google, there were jokes about how it might be renamed (GooTube? GoogTube?). There were some serious suggestions, too. One branding expert urged Google to change the name to GoogleTube.

In the Name Inspector’s not-so-humble opinion, Google was smart to let things stand. YouTube is a great name. A compound made of two common monosyllabic words, it feels easy and familiar. While it hints at the tired convention My ___ (e.g. My Yahoo, My eBay, MySpace, My.Netscape, My AOL, etc.), the second person pronoun makes it fresh and more honest (all those “my” names have big corporations speaking in “my” voice, which is kind of creepy). It’s nice that it can be either singular or plural, too.

Like many good names, YouTube evokes sound-alike phrases that activate appropriate associations in our minds. First, of course, it’s built on the pattern of boob tube, and sets up an implicit contrast with this comically derisive term (”This isn’t the boob tube, this is the YOU tube!”). The use of tube to refer to video is a little retro and ironic, which makes it kind of fun. YouTube also suggests the phrase you too, as in, for example, “You too can be a star!”. These expressions and their meanings resonate in the background, making this an excellent name for a video service featuring user-generated content.

YouTube is also strong phonetically. It has no consonant clusters, so it’s very easy and pleasant to say (unlike GoogleTube, which has that ugly knot of consonants in the middle). There’s poetry in the repeated vowel sound [u], but it avoids the cutesiness of perfect rhyming compounds like SmugMug and TagJag.

The Name Inspector’s conclusion: Chad and Steve found a good name in YouTube, and Google was smart to keep it.

Tags: YouTube, the name YouTube, GooTube, GoogTube, GoogleTube, Names, Company Names

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 click (or clunk) from a linguistic point of view. He does not offer marketing treatises on branding strategy or analyses of corporate nomenclature systems. 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.

Tags: Names, Naming, Company Names, Product Names, Brands, Branding, Marketing, Linguistics