Lost in translation — why having a pronounceable and spell-able name matters less than you think

Everyone wants the perfect name. They want it to be edgy, imaginative, and inimitable, but only so long as it’s also easy to spell, easy to say, and impossible to forget.

The only trouble being, easy and evocative are natural enemies.

And nothing is so sure to slip between the ears undetected as the word that requires no effort to absorb.

We remember best that which asks something of us. So hear ye nameless startups and new products! Embrace the difficult, the strange, the bizarre! And if you want people to remember you, embrace the one thing that will help them do just that: stand out.

Yes, sometimes that means, playing with language in a way that reinvigorates what it means to come into contact with a name: a word seemingly unspeakable, an imagined noun, a little foreign panache, whatever. We’re not talking about smashing morphemes together — we’re talking about giving a second chance to the part of our human lexicon that gets snubbed because someone might not be able to spell or pronounce it correctly.

An uncommon name says, This is nothing you’ve seen before, that’s why you don’t recognize it. It can offer a kind of newness that the familiar simply cannot do.

But don’t take our word for it. Consider a few examples whose names most of us are never quite sure how to say, but never fail to remember: 

Wii: Sometimes throwing linguistics into the wind means something even cooler can happen: An imagined word that embodies the sound of fun in kid-doms everywhere.  

ARC’TERYX: 1.7 billion EU annually. So much for too hard to spell. And even if you don’t look up that the name refers to the late Jurassic’s Archaeopteryx, you know it’s epic, even if you don’t know how to tell people. 

PATXI: (Bay Area) Like packs-tea right? Nope, patch-eez. Impossible to know really, until you read the box that kindly asks you to stop mispronouncing it. Still the best pizza you can get someone to bring to your house.

WACHOVIA: Recent missteps aside, Wachovia knew a thing or too about the power of a word which, when mispronounced, sounds better than the original: watch over ya. A powerful slip that repurposes “not knowing” into something even more effective.

CHIPOTLE: Saying it wrong is part of what makes it fun.

L’OCCITAINE: Can’t find the word you want in French? Make one up. Not even Parisians know for sure how to say this one, but they have their way, and we have ours. Both seem to be working just fine.

TAG HEUER: A division of another mouthful, Louis Vuitton, Tag Heuer is anybody’s guess, but it hasn’t changed their 150+ years of success.

We could go on and on: Kyocera, Pfizer, Yves Saint Laurent, Qdoba, Swarovski, Prorsum; all oddly christened, all thriving.

Why?

Because while most of the slots in your brain are packed with existing associations, the L’Occitaine slot has a single resident: soaps and perfumes designed to fulfill the British colonial fantasy you don’t want to know you have, but love.

Its ambiguity gives it the power to transcend the detritus storm of information that swallows up easy and clear before they ever have a chance and makes way for the new and bold, even if that novelty comes with a little confusion.