“It’s a bit long.”
The long and short of it: Notes on brevity and other misplaced desires
I am not a tall person. I go to concerts to enjoy the sounds of the music, with no expectation of actually seeing the musicians on stage. I often need to stand on a stool to reach that thing I need in my cabinet, or ask a nearby Tall to help me. I have a hard time feeling comfortable sitting in most chairs at most tables. I was never destined to be a basketball player or to wear the kind of outfits designed for people who could be described as “willowy.” This is all to say, I know intimately the downsides of shortness.
So, it is a very strange thing indeed to name companies and products for a living—and to hear our clients so frequently express a desire for shortness above all else, as if character or syllable count is the be-all and end-all of naming.
I hate to break it to you, but there are really only so many four- or five- letter combinations that are suitable as names. And you are not the first to try and claim one as your own. Short names can make you sound like everyone else, and they’re often a shortcut to legal issues.
Given the difficulty and uninspired nature of short names, why do people want one?
- They think it’ll be easier to remember.
- They think it’ll be easier to pronounce.
- They think it’ll be easier to spell.
- They think it’ll be more “approachable.”
- They want what other people have.
I think it really comes down to this last point. Sure, some of the biggest brands people know and love have short names—think Apple, Nike, IKEA—but these brands have also been around awhile: 1976, 1971, and 1943 respectively. It was a lot easier to stake your claim before several decades of businesses showed up to the proverbial claims office. These days, the USPTO receives nearly a million applications for trademarks each year—back in the 80s that number was less than 75,000. To put this into context, there are under 10,000 four- or five-letter English words that are legal to play on a Scrabble board.
Of the 10,000 most frequently used words, all but nine are already registered as a trademark. Widen the net to the 85,000 most frequently used words, and the percentage isn’t all that better—97% are already claimed. I have a feeling those unclaimed words are unclaimed for a reason. Think: sex, drugs, crimes, and other things you might not want to discuss with your parents.
This might seem dire—but really it’s only a problem if you’re looking for something boring, expected, vanilla, samey. Being a brand is the opposite of being a spy. You want to stand out. You want people to know who you are and what you’re up to. There are still plenty of words and combinations of words left in a variety of languages. You just have to be open enough to explore what’s unexpected. It might seem unusual at first, but the benefits to being different are far superior to the drawbacks you’ll face if you try to be like everyone else.
This is why we work with people who want us to challenge them, to show them names they may never have considered otherwise. Yes, these names have a tendency to be a bit longer. To contain multiple words, even.
Anything can be a name. But first you might need to shed some outdated ideas about what’s most important. And short, for better or worse, is rarely sweet.
