When brands speak emoji

by Éléonore Toubin

Having studied literature, I always felt strongly about language: I fancy beautiful long old-fashioned words or any words that is slightly out of our usual day to day vocabulary. As a matter of fact “pulchritudinous” and “tintinnabulation” are two of my favourite words. As a firm advocate of perfect spelling and grammar, I am allergic to misspelling. Therefore, you shouldn’t be too surprised to learn that text language is one of my biggest pet peeves. To my great dismay, it…

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Do you know your brand history ? (True or False series #5)

by Éléonore Toubin

Do you really know your favourite brands’ history as well as you think you do ? Test your knowledge thanks to the fifth part of the True or False series. In 1911, car dealer George Whitaker meets car racing enthusiast Samuel Rootes through common friends. Rootes also happens to be the heir of the Bamford factories, a bicycle business located in suburban London. George and Samuel make fast friends and in 1913 they decide to produce their own vehicles by turning…

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5 Linguistic Facts

by Bianca Oporto-Gola

1. In English, the schwa is the most common phonetic sound ə –> this is known as a mid-central vowel This sound sounds like the sound someone makes when they’re trying to figure out their next lie…i.e. “uhhhhh…I didn’t do it…she did!” 2. Standard British English (The Queen’s English) is officially referred to as Received Pronunciation (RP) in Linguistics 3. RP is probably the most widely studied and most frequently described variety of spoken English in the world, yet recent…

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Word of the Day #2 – Serendipity

by Éléonore Toubin

As the article about “Pulchritude” was well received, the Word of the Day series is continued. Today’s Word of the Day isn’t as obsolete as “pulchritude”, quite the contrary; it appeared rather recently in the English language. This word was chosen because of its exotic etymology, as it takes its roots in faraway Sri Lanka. Let’s talk about “serendipity”. The word serendipity is quite recent: it was first created in 1754, however it was not commonly used until the early…

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Word of the Day #1 – Pulchritudinous

by Éléonore Toubin

The previous blog posts often put the spotlight on brands, advertising or marketing but seldom focused on words. As Nomen is a naming company, and naming is mostly about juggling words and languages, it seemed important to take care of that oversight and dedicate a post to celebrating the beauty of words. Incidentally enough – or maybe not so much since I was the one deciding on this topic – the word of the day will be about beauty: pulchritudinous….

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How a certain style of name allows you to tell a story with your brand

by Camille Medina

A brand is like a book I like to compare brands with books (you can also compare brands with films if you want). You see, your brand name is just like the title of a book: it is important because it will often be the first contact customers will have with your brand. During this first contact phase it is important to get customers interested; and if you give them a title/brand name that is interesting enough they will be…

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Brand names that make you smile

by Camille Medina

Just like our emotions and thoughts can affect our behaviour (when we are sad we cry, and when we are happy we smile and laugh), our behaviour can affect our emotions and thoughts. I am sure that you have even experienced it before without necessarily being aware of it. Have you ever tried to act as a happy person and to make an effort to smile more at a time when you were feeling a bit down? If you have,…

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Overcoming Subjectivity

by Kevin Taylor

When it comes to naming products, subjectivity comes up an awful lot. It is easy enough to rule out the name of your new international sofa range if it means ‘yoghurt’ in Italian and even easier if it happens to be a word used as an insult or sexual term in certain countries or cultures. What makes it a more difficult decision is when you are faced with someone telling you that they see certain words in your names that…

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Generation gizmos

by Emma Peto

It is vital that a new product captures the attention of the current generation and it is possible to do this instantaneously with the use of an effective brand name.  Leading companies have observed the impact that an appropriately named product has on the market. With this in mind, they have decided to transform previous brand names with the era as they no longer suited the audience that they were aiming for. Various products can tell you about the generation…

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