& Fashion

by Éléonore Toubin

Gianluca Billo, Managing Director of Nomen Italy, tells us about the macro naming trends in fashion in his column “Naming Trends” in the Pubbico Today.   The fashion world has developed, over time, two major naming trends, identifiable with two well-defined types. The more traditional brand made ??of a name + surname (or surname only) is reminiscent of high fashion and has become a genre, a code: name and surname of the creator, designer, entrepreneur, reference to the house. Whereas…

Read more >

VIDEO: An introduction to brand naming

by Emma Peto

In May this year I gave a talk at the Great British Business Show held in London’s ExCel centre.  The talk was called An Introduction To Brand Naming.  It’s a short overview of the basics of naming, and highlights some of the issues you will need to consider when looking for a brand name.   For those of you who missed it at the show, or if you wanted to see it again, here it is below.   Or to…

Read more >

Are all the good ones in Croatia already taken?

by Maja Benčić

No, I’m not talking about Croatian men. I’m talking about names.   Here in Croatia, we have the same problem as everyone else in the world – it looks like all the good Croatian words have already been used as names, mostly because people still like to use descriptive names and play safe. Also, our law allows us to register names only in Croatian or “dead” languages: Latin and ancient Greek.   As people today no longer use Latin or…

Read more >

A rose by a different name…?

by Emma Peto

Would a rose smell as sweet if called by a different name? The Nomen UK creative team is an eclectic group of individuals with different talents, coming from all walks of life and of ages ranging from the young to the not-so-young. We have in common a passion: creating great brand names for whatever project comes our way. What’s in a word? Words are powerful tools and a knowledge and understanding of words is essential to our task. The word…

Read more >

Controversial?

by Emma Peto

As consumers, it is not often we stop and think about the name of a product we are buying or the company we are buying from, especially in the case of familiar brands. On reflection, and particularly taking a name out of context, we might notice some strange choices. For example, have you noticed that Christian Dior’s perfume range called ‘Poison’ is not exactly an enticing name for a liquid product? And have you ever really thought about Richard Branson’s…

Read more >

Names and linguistic screening

by Emma Peto

It is well-known that the Chevy Nova was a failure in Spanish-speaking markets because “nova” translates as “no-go”. That’s not the kind of message you want to transmit in a car name. It may be well-known, but it’s also untrue – the translation is inaccurate and, in any case, the car was a success. But that doesn’t mean that linguistic howlers don’t occur all the time. There are three types of error to avoid. Firstly, the inadvertent use of words…

Read more >

Naming a car with true character

by Emma Peto

When you hear a product name and immediately recognise the underlying brand, you know you’re witnessing a highly effective naming strategy. That’s how it is with a sports car beginning with the letter ‘E’: it’s a Lotus. It has been so for decades and it was central to Nomen’s brief to create a name for the first new Lotus model since the Elise in 1995. But the strategy’s longevity is a double-edged sword and presents two significant naming challenges. Firstly,…

Read more >

The trouble with words

by Emma Peto

The trouble with words is that they don’t mean anything. People mean things – words are simply the form most commonly chosen by people to try to get their meaning into the mind of someone else.But when I hear a word, do I hear the same as you? Consider a simple word like “green”, or choose something a little more controversial, like the word “good”. The word I say is not always what it seems… yet words tend to pass…

Read more >