International Business Times: “It's The Best Job In The World”: Man Gets Paid To Name Companies, You Might Recognise Some

“Being a professional namer can see you earn up to $100,000 on a project for a client.”

LOL my naming projects do not cost $100,000.

Please enjoy this slightly different version of my Fortune profile in International Business Times.

Fortune

In the above Fortune video, I excoriate X, enumerate what makes a name great, and reveal my first naming experience.

Meet the ‘professional namer’ who directed Accenture’s $100 million name change: ‘It’s the best job in the world’

Fortune published a profile about me. I talk about naming Accenture, the gruesome reality of creative name selection, and my friend’s late chocolate labrador, Bosco, who I named.

Read and enjoy!

Firedup podcast: How to Name Your Brand

I was featured in the inaugural episode of the FiredUp podcast. Our lively #naming discussion touches on:

• The debranding of Twitter

• When a startup should find its forever name

• Startup naming best practices

• The one tool I could not do without

• The oddest thing I ever ate.

Share, listen and enjoy!

Naming Masterclass with Village Global

Link to the masterclass video is here.

Village Global, a Silicon Valley VC firm, generously invited me to speak with startup founders about naming. With about 80 people attending, I addressed two broad topics:

(1) Is there a framework for generating names that are ORIGINAL, MEMORABLE, RELEVANT and AVAILABLE?
In which I discuss the necessary mindset (expectations, strategy) and toolset (software and techniques).

(2) Tell us about nomenclature and naming system best practices
In which I discuss the customer perspective, branded house vs house of brand strategies, the importance of good descriptors, and linguistically or thematically linked naming systems, among other topics.

Throughout the discussion, I answer questions about:

• Naming for global audiences

• Naming that signals a new category

• Pros and cons of real words vs coined words

• When should we change our name if it no longer fits

• and other topics of interest to startup founders.
  

  Links to my posts on relevant topics were shared with the founders. I’ve posted them below if you’d like to dive into a particular topic. Links within these posts may be 404, don’t dm me I know.

  Real Words Make Better Brand Names
  All posts tagged “memorable names”
  Explore Concepts, not Words
  Where are the Most Creative Names?
  Creative Names the Easy Way: The Cloaked Brief
  Search Definitions, not Headwords (jumps to Rhymezone)
  The World’s Most Powerful Naming Tool (Corpora Exploration)
  All Posts Tagged "creative tools"
  Five Ways to Create Great, Free Domain Names
  The Case for Coining
  Decisions, Decisions: How to Research Brand Names

BBC News: Brecon Beacons: Bannau Brycheiniog rebrand shows why names matter

I spoke with BBC News about a Welsh national park changing its current English name, Brecon Beacons, to a native Welsh one, Bannau Brycheiniog (“ban-ai brech-ay-nog”). Here’s my bit:

California-based Anthony Shore also makes a living naming companies and products.

He is excited by what he has seen in Wales and wants more places to follow suit.

"I believe that there is a sense of liberation and independence that comes when a country readopts a name born out of their own native language rather than some other country's native tongue," he said.

"We've seen this happen throughout history with countries and cities - we have Bombay becoming Mumbai, Peking becoming Beijing, Siam becoming Thailand, Burma to Myanmar and so on and so forth.

"As an American it brings up the question as to how American our own place names should be - should we start converting all place names to the names of the native Indian tribes who were here before America was colonised and I think that's a reasonable question."

When asked how easy to remember or pronounce Bannau Brycheiniog was for people outside Wales, he said: "Whether it's easy for other people to pronounce or remember is not necessarily the problem of the native speakers of that language.

"Really it is a responsibility that is adopted by foreigners in order to learn how to pronounce that name.

"Initially people may struggle with it but they'll get used to it. They'll figure it out, and they'll move on."

Below my picture in the article reads the caption: California-based Anthony Shore supports certain places in the US reverting to their native American names.

I believe that countries should re-evaluate place names that have come about through colonialism, or those names that memorialize bad actors.

What should we call meat from a lab?

“Cultivated Meat” seems to be a frontrunner, but a consensus has yet to emerge on the category descriptor for these products. I spoke with Reuters about the naming conundrum facing manufacturers and regulators. Enjoy!

when will i retire?

I spoke with the Shaping Opinion Podcast about naming, covering topics I haven’t talked about before, like naming my dog, naming Operative Words, and when I’ll retire. Check it out and enjoy!

Podcast Interview

I spoke with Israel’s leading tech podcast, 30 Minutes or Less, about startup naming. It’s filled with tips and anecdotes, so if you like those types of things, check it out. My interview starts at 1:45.

I made a word

Namer Rob Meyerson, author of the excellent book, Brand Naming, tweeted a good question:

After some banter amongst Rob, myself, trademark counsel Perry Gattegno, and the inimitable Nancy Friedman, I offered the word “infamation” (like “defamation” but for infamy), but then thought:

Collectively, we liked the word “infamicide” so it was unofficially adopted by us few. Nancy did an extensive write-up on the coining. And it’s just made this first appearance in the mainstream press, making it infinitesimally likelier it’ll get recorded by the OED for all posterity:

I’ve always wanted to be credited with creating a word in the OED. Maybe “infamicide” will be it.

Marketplace tech: Thumbs up…or down on Facebook’s name change?
We asked a pro.

In this interview with Marketplace Tech, I talk about the Meta name, tech name trends, and a few name disasters.

“Just because the name Meta is good doesn’t make the company good. It’s going to come down to their behavior, and that’s where we’ll see whether or not they’ve been able to change their colors.”

Popular Science: Renaming the company won’t fix Facebook’s image problem

Popular Science asked me about the impending Facebook parent company name change. Though a good idea from a brand architecture standpoint, it won't change the narrative.

”The social network will continue to exist under that name,” says Shore, “and as long as it continues to fail in its responsibilities, and continues to foment division, ignorance, and hate, that narrative is going to continue.”

The Atlantic: The Hot-Person Vaccine

The internet has decided that Pfizer is significantly cooler than Moderna—but why? With tongue plated firmly in cheek, I propose the real reasons Pfizer is hot and Moderna is not.

“Do you really have to call yourself modern if you’re selling pharmaceuticals that are in fact based on cutting-edge technologies?” he asked. “No, you’d be more cool about it.”

More…

INc.: 5 Keys to Choosing the Best Business Name

“Don't even start with a short list of names. Your beginning list of possible company names should be very, very long, according to Anthony Shore, Chief Operative at Operative Words, and a naming expert.”

A solid naming article with actionable tips.

Abby Wolfe, business insider

JOB DIARY: A day in the life of a professional namer, who gets paid to brand major companies and products and spends 2 weeks at a time in a creative phase of brainstorming names

• With an education in linguistics and a career in typesetting, branding, and marketing, Anthony Shore was able to become a professional namer.

• He worked as a namer at Landor Associates for 13 years, then started his own agency called Operative Words.

• Shore’s naming process lasts six weeks and includes three phases: briefing, creative, and presentation.

• A good name can’t grow old, must be multidimensional, and should inspire people, he told Business Insider.

For Anthony Shore, becoming a professional namer — a person who makes a living out of naming things, such as companies and products — was "always in the stars."

As a young child, he was obsessed with individual words. His favorite book, he told Business Insider, was the “American Heritage Dictionary,” in which you can find the origin of thousands of words and parts of words. For example, “dinosaur” comes from “deinos,” which means monstrous, and “sauros,” which means lizard.

“What interested me about this specifically was that there would be a little root, a little utterance, that means something like 'hand' or 'give' or 'tree,’” Shore said. “And this root begat hundreds of different words across dozens of different languages, ended up having all these different meanings, some of them literal, some of them metaphorical.” 

The path to professional namer

Shore went on to study linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Post-graduation, he landed a job as a typesetter, which is someone who formats text and gets it ready for publishing. This led to a career in branding and, eventually, marketing. His broad experience in creative services and linguistics background set him up perfectly to become a namer.

“To do it well, you have to think about the implications of what you're putting out there,” Shore said. His foundation in marketing strategy and public relations allowed him to see the possible impact and versatility a name could have once it's released into the world.

In 1996, Shore got his first official job in naming, as a naming manager at Landor Associates, a large branding agency. Besides a one-year stint at a company called Lexicon, he spent 13 years at Landor (eventually becoming its global director of naming and writing) before leaving to start his own agency, Operative Words.

Across the naming industry, the cost of a name could range from a few hundred dollars to more than $50,000. This doesn't include trademark-related fees or the price of creating a visual identity (e.g., a logo) for the name.

Shore collaborates with a variety of clients, from large established organizations to boutique branding agencies and early-stage startups. Typically, he's working on one to five client projects at a time.

“I can't imagine doing anything else,” Shore said. “I love the challenge of articulating what makes a company different in one or two unique words. And I am so happy when I see a name that I midwifed.” Over the course of his career, he's worked with big names such as Fitbit, Accenture, and FedEx.

The naming process

Each project Shore works on consists of three distinct phases: briefing, creative, and presenting. In total, the entire process lasts about six weeks.

During the first week (the briefing stage), Shore learns as much about the company as he can, including what its main objectives are when it comes to the name it wants.

Next, he immerses himself in a two-week creative phase, followed by two to three days of presenting his proposed names to the client. He then repeats the creative and presentation stages one more time.

How he comes up with ideas

Shore's to-do list varies depending on what the “creative call” is for. He's not the type of person who can stare at a blank sheet of paper and come up with endless ideas.

“I need stimulation,” he said. “I need to look at things. Much of what I do in naming isn't creating things out of nothing; it's identifying things. I want to have an onslaught of stimuli that's going to beget ideas.”

Movies are always playing on the television while Shore works, and there are endless tabs open on his computer, each one holding a different resource he can probe for inspiration. And it certainly doesn't hurt that he can view beautiful scenery through the windows of his home office in Oakland, California.

For some projects, Shore leverages machine learning and artificial neural networks to help him generate ideas. One of his clients, for example, had a strong interest in romantic poetry and literature. So Shore dug up all the work of the 18th-century poet John Keats and others and fed that content into a corpus-linguistics engine, which spits out 10,000 keywords and terms for him to start with.

This process still requires a ton of creativity on Shore's part. First, he has to decide what to feed to the engine. Then, once he gets those keywords and terms, he has to train the neural networks on them. 

Every once in a while, Shore will seek inspiration outside his office. When he was tasked with naming an outdoor-recreation company, he bought a fishing pole, got a fishing license, and spent a day fishing in California's Berkeley Hills.

“I wanted to get a taste of what” their customers experience, he said, adding, “What is it that they crave when they go out fishing or do any of these other kinds of outdoor activities? Some of that's going to be intuitive — I like the outdoors as much as anyone — but some other things I just really want to experience firsthand.”

Of course, a good portion of Shore's inspiration comes from the briefing process with the client. 

For example, Shore once renamed an architecture firm from Pollack Architecture to Rapt Studios. When he met with them, they listed "scribe," "slate," and "tablet" as words that had “the sound and feeling they sought.” So Shore explored “words that were short, strong, and suggested creation,” he said. Using special linguistics software, he said he looked for “all one-syllable English words ending with a 'stop' (P, T, K, B, D, G).” He ended up with 1,000 name candidates. One hundred made it to the presentation, and Rapt won.

What he does when he hits a creative block

When Shore just can't seem to come up with any good ideas, he stops working.

“The creative process works effectively when you immerse and then you forget,” Shore said. “Then you go back into it.”

This is one of the reasons he allots two weeks for this phase. He's not working nonstop — he builds in time to step away. He's diving in and out, “consciously decoupling from the project in a useful way to sort of let things happen.”

Shore said he tends to work “abnormal” hours.

“Every day is ‘Blursday,’” he said. “I tend to be more productive in the morning, but lately I've been naming into the night.” Sometimes he'll take calls in the evenings or on weekends to accommodate his clients in Asia. 

Sometimes brilliance strikes during these breaks. Recently, he came up with an idea while showering and asked Siri to write down a memo for him to remember it for later.

What makes for a good name

First and foremost, a name must be available, Shore said. It's useless if it's already trademarked. 

Other than that, here are two qualities that are a must when it comes to a good name, according to Shore.

A good name won't grow old — it can last forever

This means that it'll never become obsolete because of changes in culture or technology. A company called “8-Track Now,” for example, would've made a lot of sense in the mid-'60s to mid-'80s, but today it would fall short.

You should also avoid basing the name on a pun or joke, he said. Just because it makes you laugh now doesn't mean it'll have the same effect forever. All jokes grow old eventually.

A good name is multidimensional and should inspire

The name you choose should have different meanings for different people, Shore said. 

“The more a name allows someone to have their own interpretation, their own story,” the better the name is, he said. “Because it engages a person and compels them to make a connection.” Shore advised that in order to lure people in and cause them to make their own unique association, the name shouldn't be too descriptive.

The best names are also ones that can be adapted to various situations. For instance, the Rapt team calls employees “raptors.” Monday morning meetings are named “Rapture Mondays,” and there's a neon sign in their studio that says “RAWR.”

NPR: If the Military Renames Southern Bases, Whose Names Should Replace The Confederate Generals?

"It may be that not every name could please every person," said Anthony Shore, "but we certainly know that some paths are more likely to lead to a broader acceptance and other paths are likely to diminish that broad acceptance."

Vox: Why banking apps and startups suddenly all have human first names

I spoke with Vox about the naming strategy that attempts to put a face on a faceless institution. “Let’s make ourselves chummy and folksy.”

My interview with Emotive Brand

I discuss best practices that help naming programs succeed.

BBC World News interview: naming best practices

I spoke with BBC World News about naming best practices, creative rigor, artificial intelligence and my experience creating the name Yum Brands.

I name brands and companies for a living — here's what it takes to succeed as a 'professional namer'

”Shore is already using AI to expand his naming process and believes that, in the future, ’accessible AI tools for name generation will increase everyone's access to interesting names.‘” 

One of my clients once called me a mad word scientist

A revealing look at the creative minds and machinations of brand name developers.

Anthony Shore's naming partner is a neural network

I was honored to be interviewed for the premier episode of How Brands are Built. In this podcast, I reveal the tools, techniques and best practices that amplify my creativity and promote project success.  Strongly-held opinions are expressed.

Using AI to Name a New Phase of Life

Name a stage of life. That was the challenge posed to me by Ageist, a media company dedicated to the over-50 set. What do you call a cohort that is at the top of their game but never satisfied with staying put? Whatever their life phase is, it sure AF isn’t “retirement.” 

Stereogum: Metal Band Naming

I spoke with Stereogum about the challenges and nuances of metal band naming. It’s a long read and a good one, exploring the philosophies and conceptual frameworks around names. Turns out, metal band names can teach us a thing or two about brand naming, too.

The New York Times: The Most Important Word in the Hospitality Industry? ‘Clean’

I spoke with the Times about hotels reassuring us that they are, indeed, very, very clean.

“It’s not about what these names say outright — it’s about what they signify.”

CBC Radio Interview (starts at 13:57)

Why plant-based burgers should be "Awesome" instead of trying to go "Incogmeato"

BBC Radio Leed host Johnny I’Anson asked me about a new Heinz naming kerfuffle in the UK. Between laughs, I give my opinion on alternative “honest” names for other products.   

Interview with Anthony Shore

“I hate shitty names,” he says. “It’s my cause to make sure they don’t happen.”