Branding Solution: Creative Spelling Options May Help You Achieve a Trademarkable Company or Product Name


by Marcia Yudkin - Date: 2010-10-15 - Word Count: 502 Share This!

More and more business owners, entrepreneurs and corporate marketers get discouraged while trying to name a new venture. Each great inspiration leads to disappointment because the corresponding domain is already taken. Or the lawyers advise that the name in question is too generic and cannot be trademarked.

If this applies to you, consider creative spelling options, which take a familiar word or phrase and spell it idiosyncratically. Eccentric spelling can clear the way for both an available domain and trademarkability.

Using actual examples, here are particular spelling contortions to try when starting with a word whose sound and meaning you like.

1. Add a consonant. Normally this would happen at the end of the word, as with the social bookmarking site Digg.

2. Add a vowel. This tends to add a humorous, childish, cute tone to the new name, as with Piizza.

3. Insert an initial letter. You'd then get vAuto and Wpromote. Count on being asked what the extra letter signifies, and have a plausible and interesting explanation ready.

4. Drop a consonant. One name fitting this pattern is Singshot, an apt name for an online Karaoke community that lets you record your own versions of thousands of songs and share them with the world. Its resemblance to "slingshot" makes it come across as a pun.

5. Drop a vowel. This gives you BildNet, which a software developer chose because BuildNet wasn't available. Note, however, that the entrepreneur eventually rued this choice and changed the company name to BuildEZ, which has also apparently been abandoned.

6. Drop all vowels. Recently I saw the company name SCVNGR in a magazine. Without much context, I was baffled about how to read it. It stands for "scavenger," and it names a company that organizes scavenger hunts that take place using cell phones. Once you know that, the texting shorthand seems perfectly attuned to its audience.

7. Change a vowel. Epinions, Farecast and Rylaxing fit this model. The first two of these three examples have pleasing double meanings, which add to the effect.

8. Change a consonant. Many businesses use "Kidz" in their company name, which is appropriately informal, considering the group referred to.

9. Change several letters. Thus we get Takkle, Mozaique, Topix and Syfy, all of which are correspondingly harder to remember than spelling variations where only one letter is changed, added or removed.

Be mindful of the tone created by your spelling gyrations. Using Railtronix instead of the more logical Railtronics or Thinkworx instead of Thinkworks heightens the "techiness" of these names. On the other hand, the spelling Tasti D-Lite instead of Tasty Delight sends the name downmarket, suggesting affordable treats rather than exclusive ones.

Be aware also that critics and the public may be ready to pounce when you take a conventionally spelled name and change it to a quirkily spelled one. Dozens of articles mocked the Sci Fi channel when they rebranded it to SyFy for trademarking purposes.

Creatively spelled names are much harder on the eye and ear than conventionally spelled ones. But they do often solve the problem that sparked their creation.


Marcia Yudkin is Head Stork of Named At Last, which brainstorms catchy company names, product names and tag lines for clients around the world. Download a free copy of "19 Steps to the Perfect Company Name, Product Name or Tag Line" at http://www.namedatlast.com/19steps.htmn
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