Nordstrom’s is advertising BCBGMAXAZRIA, which we guess is some kind of clothing line that in no way wants customers to remember them.

improvA is a new online tutoring site. We’re not sure if it’s pronounced with a long or short “A”, but we are sure the name should sit in the corner with a dunce cap on. If that is not bad enough, they have a “customized personal tutoring” service called improvA+. Not so smart for a tutoring company to basically compete with themselves by saying their basic service is not that good. It reminds us of another name that makes us cringe: Learnia.

We’re not convinced that the whole crowdsuckingsourcing thing is viable, but another new entry has floated to the surface anyway. It is Authonomy, described on their site as:

“authonomy invites unpublished and self published authors to post their manuscripts for visitors to read online. Authors create their own personal page on the site to host their project – and must make at least 10,000 words available for the public to read.

Visitors to authonomy can comment on these submissions – and can personally recommend their favourites to the community. authonomy counts the number of recommendations each book receives, and uses it to rank the books on the site. It also spots which visitors consistently recommend the best books – and uses that info to rank the most influential trend spotters.

We hope the authonomy community will guide publishers straight to the freshest writing talent – and will give passionate and thoughtful readers a real chance to influence what’s on our shelves.”

We think it will collapse from the weight of the copyright infringement lawsuits that will abound by putting unpublished manuscripts online.

Oh, and the name is awful.

Note to Journalists:

Please stop using this headline for stories about naming:

What’s in a name?

It stopped being remotely clever about 414 years ago. Today in Google News a search for “What’s in a name” returns 183 news stories using the title in the last month alone. Some examples:

What’s in a name? New Yorkers are about to find out with their new stadium

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. What’s in a name?

What’s in a name: Try a fresh, summer Caesar salad

Bottled water: What’s in a name?

Yawn.

Namethis.com lame name of the week: “Hirelyzer“, a pre-employment screening service. We especially loved the description of the name…”This bomb name is the sum of hire + (ana)lyzer.”

We at least agree it’s a bomb.

Bengal Star Receiver Ditches Old Name (but fails at math)

Bengals receiver Chad Johnson (he is number 85) has legally changed his name to Chad Javon Ocho Cinco. The reason is that he wanted Ocho Cinco to be on the back of his football jersey, but the team would not permit that since their policy is to only have the players last name listed. Spanish is not our native tongue, but ocho cinco translates to 8, 5. 85 is ochenta y cinco.

Titan Prisons Rebranded as “Cluster Prisons”

Seems the English populace thinks the Titan Prisons (so named because extra large jails holding up to 2,500 prisoners) are not appropriate for proper rehabilitation. The solution? The Ministry of Justice is “rebranding” them as Cluster Prisons. Mind you, it is not changing anything but the name. It sounds like a cluster something. Other “rebranding” names considered were Crumpets, High Tea, Banger, Cheeky, Pish Posh and Mary Poppins.

E-namers – is №1 worldwide interactive naming-center, or so they say.

Um, we doubt it. E-ven their name sucks.

You know where the heart of the continent is? No?…… It’s Winnipeg, as evidenced by their new slogan:

Welcome to Winnipeg – Heart of the Continent. Proving once again that Canadians should give up on slogans that go nowhere. Runner up was Winnipeg – Spleen of the Continent.

Looks like they drew quite a crowd. What’s with the random VW racer?

1. The first is the company’s heritage of helping people get anywhere on the planet, particularly with its four wheel drive vehicles.
2. The second aspect is a recognition of the environment and issues relating to it.

What?

To us it sounds like they are encouraging something like this:

Seriously, what were they thinking? We don’t get either of their two tries at reasons for Drive@earth. Not only is it phony looking and trying too hard with the asperand, but “Drive at earth” just doesn’t make sense from 1, 2 or any aspects.

They may also have some unintentional international pronunciation issues. For example the @ is called:

• Bulgarian – Monkey A
• Czech – Rollmops
• Dutch – Little Monkey Tail
• Greek – Duckling
• Hebrew – Strudel
• Hungarian – Worm, Mite or Maggot
• Serbian – Crazy A
• Tagalog – Nipple

So go to the Philippines and DriveNippleEarth

The countdown for a new Mitsubishi tagline starts now.

Sam Stein at the Huffington Post tells us that, in his words, “McCain Rips Off Obama’s Slogan and Logo“.

Here is his side by side comparison:

Looks a tad familiar no? As Mr. Stein points out, Obama can’t claim ownership of the word “believe”, but he has used is consistently in the campaign. Maybe McCain is implying a subtlety in believing in the man (McCain) more than the ideal (Obama). Whatever, we’ll leave that to people who know about such things. All we will say is that it is either an outright attempt to water down Obama’s believe message, or a misguided attempt to say, hey wait a minute, I’m John Freakin’ McCain, you can believe in me too! What it is not doing is differentiating. Heck, we are already starting to get confused about who is who.