About.Me has a beautifully clean design and they make it so simple, anyone (even a PC user) can make their page look cool. (It’s the opposite of a cluttered MySpace page.)

Just like a Twitter handle, email addy, or domain name, it’s important when someone types in your name they get YOU (as opposed to a drag queen or adult film star.) Take it from us at naming agency Eat My Words – all the cool kids are doing it! Even if you don’t use it now, you’ll want it later.

Luckily I beat all of these other Alexandra Watkins’ to the punch…

Sometimes we find juicy news not worthy of a full blog post, yet too darn good to not share with you. These “Tasty Tidbits” are digestible bites of news about new names and the naming industry and what we think of them here at Eat My Words. Bon Appetit!

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Scary name for new roller coaster – The North Carolina State Fair’s newest roller coaster has been named “Toxic Shock,” as a result of a naming contest. We are not big fans of naming contests and this is just another example of you get what you pay for. We are not sure of the connection between a roller coaster and a rare, life-threatening bacterial infection that has been most often associated with the use of superabsorbent tampons and occasionally with the use of contraceptive sponges. However, it is better than the two runner-up names, Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Necrotizing fasciitis.

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Death Doesn’t Sell – There is a movement afoot in Israel to change the name of The Dead Sea because as one business owner says “our clients from abroad are uncomfortable buying products that have originated in a place whose name is associated with death. It’s problematic.“ They have not offered any alternatives, but we think any change to such a historical name with eons of brand equity and a rich reputation for its health benefits would be misplaced and would undoubtedly end up sounding silly.

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Company wins rights to sewage facility – T. Wayne Hill Trucking, a bio-solids (nice word for you know what) management company, had the winning bid of $6,100 out of 26 bids on eBay for the naming rights to a school’s new sewage plant. We can’t wait for the sign. The company logo is of a smiley face holding it’s nose. We think it was a brilliant marketing move.

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We bet the real “Joe the Plumber” is getting a lot of hits on his website.

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Father names baby without mother’s consent, may be dumbest man ever.

Here it is…Sarah McCain Palin. The father, Mark Citpak, did it “to get the word out” about the campaign. He goes on to say, “I took one for the cause, I can’t give a lot of financial support for the (McCain/Palin) campaign. I do have a sign up in my yard, but I can do very little.” Finally, in a statement that will seal his fate “I sort of secretively went behind her back and changed the paperwork.”

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Here is the Namethis.com lame name of the week:

This week we have another tie:

For “a mobile application and associated web site for quickly sharing your life with friends. Initially this will be sharing photos .”

The winner is Manifestivity.com The client has not snapped this winner up as of 11:15AM 10-19-08

For “a free service where you can find, share, and store recommendations easily and privately with the people you trust- See instantly what your friends have already recommended (no more wading through past emails to find stuff)”

**preference for domain names that are short, can’t be misspelled, random words that don’t mean anything are ok too

The winner is Ourpinionis.com. The client has not snapped this winner up as of 11:15AM 10-17-08

Prior week’s winners, Pixelouvre.com, Mevolutionfitness.com and Communinnty.com are all also still available.

So this crowdsourcing thing is not really working out for their clients. If these names are indicative of the ones rising to the top, there is something definitely broken in their methodology. At least that ourpinionis.

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A new government acronym is born.

Watch politicians for the next decade talk about EESA, or the… Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. This 3 page, then 110 page and now 451 page document spells out how the $700 billion will be spent. We are geeks and read it. What is interesting is that everything past page 113 are extras having nothing to do with the bailout. We especially love the addition at the bottom of page 300 (Sec 505: Exemption From Excise Tax For Certain Wooden Arrows Designed For Use By Children).

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Sarah Palin apparently thinks David D. McKiernan, the current Commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan is in fact George Brinton McClellan a major general for the Union army during the American Civil War.

Also loved when she called her opponent O’Biden. One heartbeat away, you betcha!

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Virgin Airlines wusses out and names their airline experience Airphoria.

We get it, you get euphoric while you are in the air. Why not just use the real word? Lame.

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We love House. In this week’s episode, the patient du jour was having a reaction to three unnamed clinical trial drugs he was taking as a guinea pig. House wanted to give the medications a name so he based them on his three minions. The names of the medicines were, Bisexidrine, Cuckoldisol and WorldSorestKneesisil. Watch the episode, it’ll make sense then.

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Here is the Namethis.com lame name of the week:

This week we have a tie:

For “a gym which have been in operation for some time in Sunshine Coast are looking to change names and change business direction to become more of a boutique personal training studio than a gym.”

The winner is Mevolutionfitness.com. The client has not snapped this winner up as of 2:37AM 10-04-08

a Global Lifestyle Hotel that is Unconventional, Transgenerational, Social, Eclectic, Sexy -but not obviously so.”

The winner is Communinnty.com. The client has not snapped this winner up as of 2:37AM 10-04-08

Last week’s fav, “Pixelouvre.com“, is also still available.

According to the website they have “rewarded” $20,670 to their crowdsource community to date. Since they “reward” 80% of their income, that means Namethis.com’s gross profit is $5,176.50 for the four months they have been active. That equates to $1,291.88 per month. From this they have to cover all payroll, rent, latte’s, antacid, cell phone charges to their VC investors explaining how $1,291.88 a month before expenses is an adequate return on their $3,000,000 investment, aspirin, therapist fees, thesaurus to come up with new terms for “start up phase” and Internet access to Monster.com for searching for their next job.

Oracle announced its first hardware product this week, called Exadata. Yawn. Apparently, Oracle has been working on this product for three years. However, it sounds like they started working on the name part about three days ago and grabbed something off of a whiteboard at the last minute. We can’t find a description anywhere on the Oracle website on the meaning of Exadata, but they show a picture of the product that has an “X” on it, so that makes it clear….

Also, there is a joint HP /Oracle product that is being simultaneously released, which they are calling….wait for it……the

HP Oracle Database Machine

Really? Isn’t that a description rather than a name?

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison refers to the products as “radical new thinking”. Maybe, but not so much for the names.

In the “Sure, That Will Fix the Problem” files comes this “rebranding” news from WPP Group’s MindShare:

“The agency’s North American senior executives are relinquishing their formal job titles. For example, Scott Neslund, CEO of Mindshare North America, will now be identified simply as Scott Neslund, Mindshare North America, the agency said.”

In phase 2 of the job title changes to be implemented early next year, he will be identified simply as, “The Scottmeister”.

Also, for no apparent reason, they will now be known as Mindshare, not MindShare. In related news, they are negotiating with the City of New York (their headquarters location) to change the city’s spelling to neW yorK.

Interesting Trademark Lawsuit of the week: Intel is suing Intellife Travel for trademark infringement. We are all for protection of your trademark, but come on…..

One is a small travel agency specializing in travel between North America and China and one is the world’s leader in semiconductor technology. Well, we’re confused, but not in the way Intel thinks we are.

Techcrunch lays it all out for us.

We can’t help our fascination with the trainwreck of an idea, Namethis.com. Watch later for our discussion why it cannot possibly succeed as a real business (hint: it has something to do with venture capital backers wanting an actual ROI). If anyone wants to give us $3 million, we’ll tell you how to make it really work.

In the meantime, here is the Namethis.com lame name of the week: “Pixelouvre.com“, an original name for a modern e-commerce art gallery. The company preferred a “one-word name” that “must be available as a .com“. That one sentence alone explains dreck like Pixelouvre.com.

As anyone who knows anything about domain names knows, one-word names are all gone. Also, emphasis on names that must be available as .com forces the production of junk names. In any case, the explanation behind the creation of Pixelouvre.com is:

“pixel + louvre. pixel represents the ecommerce.” (a pixel is a single point in a graphic image..how does that represent e-commerce exactly?) “louvre: an art museum that is a famous tourist attraction in Paris (Right…. Lucky it starts with an “L” or else it wouldn’t have worked with pixe”l”) “the domain is available” (there is a reason for that).

P.S. As of 6:00 am Pacific time on 09-26-08, Pixelouvre.com was still available, so maybe the company that bought the name doesn’t want to waste another $9.99 to lock up this winner. We were going to buy it on a lark, but decided we didn’t want to face a Pixelouvre.com domain dispute dustup. For free, we offer the following (domain names available) as backups: PixelSmithsonian.com, PixelMuseumOfModernArt.com and PixelTheGetty.com.

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?

America’s # 1 Populist ! blows the lid off of the Naming Industry! ! A populist is an advocate of democratic principles, making Naming Consultants Socialists or Communists we guess. His in-depth investigation uncovered our biggest secret; that Naming Consultants get $500,000 per name. He also introduced us to a great new word to explain what we do…humbuggery. He claims that “I’m not a naming consultant, so who am I to question?” Right. You be a populist and we’ll name stuff. We’ll give you the friend discount and charge you only $400,000.
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In an article entitled The 6 Coolest Jobs for Weird Majors, one of our competitors explains their naming process:

Linguistics plays a big role at New York-based namebase, a brand naming firm responsible for coining “Fruitopia” and Tyson’s “Any’tizers,” says President and Creative Director Jim Singer. The daily grind at Singer’s firm involves searching for a neologism (a coined word) that communicates so well, it virtually advertises the product itself. Sound is key. The name of a small car should sound small. The name of an antidepressant should sound helpful or upbeat. The company’s linguistic analysis checks for word associations and colloquialisms in a variety of languages.

Some Eat My Words differences in process:

1. We don’t consider our work a ” daily grind”. The only grinding at our office is the fresh coffee beans we start our day with.
2. We don’t search for coined words that virtually advertises the product, but rather look for real words that do advertise the product.
3. We think a name should not sound small or helpful or upbeat , but rather evoke small or helpful or upbeat.
4. None of our names have apost’rophes in w’eird pla’ces.

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“Branding expert” Laura Reis recently changed the name of her blog to Ries’ Pieces in an entry entitled “The Time for Change in Now.” She explains that “pieces is a great triple entendre that describes my blog posts, TV appearances as well as the correct pronunciation of my name.”

Further she fesses up that “there is one problem. You can’t use apostrophes and other punctuation marks in a website address. But you can cover your bases by buying close but incorrect names and redirecting them to your main site. I got RiessPieces.com and RiesesPieces.com to cover my new name and address RiesPieces.”

She goes on to say, “No name is ever 100% perfect, but Ries’ Pieces is a name that I think is worth moving to.” WHAAAAAAAAAT????????? No name is ever 100% perfect???!!! On the contrary.

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In the company most in the need of an immediate name change department is the Viet Nam based airline company “Air Speed Up”. It turns out that the name in Vietnamese means “Death and Grief.”

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We think it is not a wise move to name a children’s product something that implies child abuse. Apparently the “PopATot” people don’t have such qualms.

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The name change explanation of the week comes from SaleBuild, who changed their name to Salesify.

Here, is their own words, is the impetus behind the name change:

The Company’s former sales-centric services have been significantly expanded to include marketing processes and the name, Salesify, reflects this strategic repositioning.

The Salesify name is also aspirational, and while grounded in more than 30 years of industry experience, points towards our dynamic, innovative and out-of-the box thinking,” continued (company CFO, Oliver) Deng.

Um, what? Did they that name from Namethis.com?

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drank is the past tense drink that comes to us promising us that it will “Slow your roll” with a combination of valerian root, melatonin and rose hips. We are getting sleepy already.

The problem is that drank is a slang term for a homemade cocktail consisting of Sprite soda and prescription strength Promethazine/Codeine Cough Syrup. Good idea…..really. We think their next product should be an energy drink called Speedball.

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Our favorite book title of the week is:

Momma Is Daddy Going to Hell?

From the book description we get:

Captivated by the sermons on Hell at his mother’s church, Little Johnny started to question his mother about the great abyss. His curiosity covers topics such as the fate of his adulterous father, celebrities, false teachers and different religions to name a few. (our emphasis)

We think this is less about Little Johnny’s curiosity and everything about his adulterous father. The book title we think is not a question, but a hoped for fate for Little Johnny’s adulterous daddy by Little Johnny’s momma.

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We hope we didn’t spoil your dinner.