What’s In A Name?

I like checking out brand names in the grocery store because I’m amused by phrases that mean absolutely nothing. For example, consider a beer that is called “Private Reserve.” It’s made in mass quantities and widely sold to the general public. No one is prevented from buying it (unless you’re under 21, in which case you need to hover in the parking lot and wait for an adult to buy it for you). The beer is neither private nor reserved. Perhaps the maker hopes you’ll keep your feelings private while you reserve a time to meet with the doctor to discuss your stomach cramps.

My favorite find so far is a brand called “Open Nature”. What does that even mean? Nature by definition is open, so this is like choosing to name your seafood product “Wet Ocean.” There’s only two ways you could come up with a name like “Open Nature” – either an expensive consultant racked his brain to find a phrase suggesting chemical-free qualities, or the chimps on the naming team pointed repeatedly to the words “open” and “nature”. And then got a banana treat.

Personally, I think they should have gone with “Open Wallet.” More truthful.

I just saw a brand of milk and eggs called “Simple Truth.” I can’t remember the last time I felt like my eggs and milk were lying to me. The simple truth here is that you should just keep moving down the aisle. I would’ve tried out their products, but there was nowhere to hide the milk and eggs inside my tight-fitting Members Only jacket.

Speaking of clothes, a clothing company trademarked the word “Jesus” in 2007. It sells Jesus Jeans. This makes no sense. Have you ever seen a depiction of the savior wearing jeans? Given the whole loaves-and-fishes thing, this might make sense if the company held a Buy One Get One Free sale, but still.

Companies should just let us pick their brand names. Hold a contest on Facebook or something. The brand names would probably still be ridiculous, but at least they’d be free.

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6 thoughts on “What’s In A Name?”

  1. Car names get to me. Ford Fusion. Is it two cars glued together? What about the Honda Fit. Do they have a Honda Overweight for portly drivers?

  2. I can’t believe it’s finally happened. The chance to leave a comment of uber-relevance. There’s a beer called “Horse Piss Beer” out there in the world!

  3. It’s amazing how much money companies spend to have a consultant provide them with a name or a logo. A few years after they went public, Garmin (my former employer) decided they needed a new logo. I don’t know why, but they paid several hundred thousand to have a consultant add an upward triangle over their last letter. This caused the word “Garmin” to need to be reduced in size due to the extra height of this symbol. Worse yet, no one, including the consultant, could verbalize what the triangle above the “N” stood for!

    1. I would love to know who came up with the name “Verizon” for the telephone company. (Yes, I used to work for them, and I was working there when they made the name change.) It’s supposed to be a combination of “veritas” for truth and “horizon.” It’s a telephone company, for Pete’s sake. If they made airplanes or rockets, the name would fit, but what do telephone poles and wires have to do with truth or horizons?

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