What is in a name?

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."-Juliet Capulet in the play Romeo and Juliet






Many instances when someone wants a small, self-sticking bandage they ask for a Band-Aid and if they want a hand held camera, they ask for a Handycam. In some cases it is because they prefer that brand. But more often than not it is because those names have become synonymous with the product types they represent mainly due to good marketing.






Name is very important as far as marketing is concerned unlike what Shakespeare believed. This plays a crucial role when a product is launched in a different region due to linguistic barriers and wrong message may get conveyed. That is exactly what happened to Chevrolet when they introduced their popular model “Nova” in Latin America which means “Won’t Move” even though GM doesn’t admit its flop in Hispanic market. This type of cultural barrier is the reason why Mitsubishi’s “Pajero” is named “Montero” in Spain, USA and Latin America.


Native-speaker checks are good, but they can't neutralise the unseen disaster of a lame advertising campaign. The translation may be perfect, but the concept will never translate completely into another culture. Colgate faced big obstacle marketing toothpaste in Spanish speaking countries. Colgate translates into the command “go hang yourself.”


Spanish is not the only culprit, south Asia offers biggest challenge while naming the products or getting an advertising line. Kentucky Fried Chicken’s slogan, “It’s finger lickin’ good!” was translated into Chinese as “You’ll be eating your fingers!” Coca Cola found it very difficult to make a name with Chinese signs and later settled with "ko-kou-ko-le," which can be loosely translated as "happiness in the mouth." Things were not easy for Pepsi either; in Taiwan, the translation of their punch line "Come alive with the Pepsi Generation" came out as "Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead."


Apart from translation, even pronunciations also may cause trouble. Japan's second-largest tourist agency was mystified when it began receiving unusual requests in English speaking markets. Upon finding out why, Kinki Nippon Tourist Company changed its name. Further, a popular dairy product in Japan is pronounced as “Kow Pis” and a beverage in France is named “Pschitt”.


To become easy to pronounce for every market Toyoda became “Toyota” and “Sony” discarded their family name. There are some very popular names like “Apple”, “Kodak” and “Google” which doesn’t have a reason to name them. In India too, most business houses don’t just stick on with the family name as they used to like the “Tata” or the “Godrej”. So now we see “Airtel” instead of “Mittal’s Cellular” or “Reliance” in place of “Ambani Oil”. Many names now indicate the business they are in such as “Big Bazaar”, “Yatra.com”, “Go Air” or “Easy Cabs” also to enable them to be found easily in the web.


Superstition is another reason why people edit their name from “Akshay” to “Akshaye” or “Sunil” to “Suneil”, mostly found in the film industry where people believe a particular name can bring good luck to a film or an actor. So we now know Dileep as “AR Rehman” and “Rajiv Bhatia” as “Akshay Kumar”. Tata names most of their brands starting with the letter “T” and Suzuki name their two wheeler models with ancient Japanese military designations making “Samurai” or “Shogun” popular. Many auto makers play it safe by naming the models using numerals or alphabets to denote the Cubic Capacity or the load carrying capacity or by just giving some modified adjectives such as “Splendor” or “Marvel”.