A brand's name is one of its most visible branding tools. A brand can, in actual fact, not exist without a name. Although choice of name is indeed a critical success factor for a brand, relatively little research has been done into brand names. The research that has been conducted, however, provides clear indication of a brand name’s key importance in making a brand a success or a failure.  This section of the Knowledge Resource Library contains synopses of studies in brand naming, as well as references to literature on the subject.

A well-chosen brand name is hugely important for the success of a product or service. A good brand name is easier to remember and positively affects quality perception of the product in question. ‘The mother of all brands’, i.e. Coca-Cola, is an example of a well-chosen brand name. Recent research now confirms that the sound of a brand name – and then sound repetition in particular – drives the success of a product more than any other factor.

Family-run companies are an important driver of our economy. This kind of company often takes its name from the founder’s name (such as Michael Dell of Dell computers). This way the founder basically issues a personal guarantee. American research now shows that such self-named family-run businesses have higher levels of corporate social responsibility, listen to their customers better, and perform better than family-run companies that do not carry the founder’s name.

A brand’s success is driven by a range of different factors; design, price, advertising, and possibly also its name. The effect of a brand name is tricky to pinpoint, especially when realizing that successful brands not always have the most obvious names (take Apple or Häagen-Dazs, for example). Two US scientists have demonstrated that using different spellings for personal names can have far-reaching effects, and even influence how the carriers of these names are judged. Based on that information, we can basically only conclude that the Latin proverb ‘Nomen est omen’ does indeed fly when it comes to brand names.

Two kinds of linguistic criteria come into play when devising a brand name: semantic ones and phonetic ones. Semantic criteria focus on the actual meaning and associations of a name; car maker Vauxhall named one of its more sporty models ‘Tigra’, in a clear attempt to evoke associations with (the fierceness of) a tiger. And it is also important to choose a name that ‘is easy on the ear’; this is where phonetic criteria come in. Researchers looked into the different effects of front vowels and back vowels in brand names.

Oscillococcinum (pronounce: os-zilo-cox-si-num) is a homeopathic medicine that tackles the symptoms of the flu. The name does not exactly roll off the tongue, making it hard to remember. The question is therefore whether this is an effective brand name. Recent research has put brand names that are hard to pronounce into a different light.

Some companies are allowed to call themselves purveyors to the royal household or carry the designation ‘royal’. In 1987, new legislation was introduced in the Netherlands to regulate the right to use such designations. An official purveyor to the royal household might actually never purvey anything to the royal family; and on the other hand, a company that does supply to the Dutch royals cannot automatically call itself a purveyor to the royal household. The designation ‘royal’ is reserved for major, nationally or internationally operating companies and associations.

In the US, consumers and stock brokers know most corporate brands by different names. Stock exchanges in the US use abbreviations of company names, so-called ticker symbols. The term 'ticker symbol' comes from the continuously ticking machines that used to produce a paper tape printout as a rolling display of the latest stock prices, so called ‘ticker tape machines’. Ticker symbols are made up of letters and/or digits. Well-known examples include HNZ (Heinz), MSFT (Microsoft), MMM (3M), and INTC (Intel). In some cases, companies are unhappy with their ticker symbol and proceed to change it.

Certain names of product categories cannot be used freely. Holland can never produce ‘cognac’ under that name, for example, because the product name is reserved for cognac produced in a specific part of France. European countries traditionally set these designations (or ‘appellations’ in the case of French wines and spirits) of origin themselves. But in 1993, new European legislation was introduced to regulate these designations. One result of this was that, in 1999, Greece had no choice but to accept the European Court of Justice’s ruling that the use of the name ‘feta’ (cheese) would no longer be exclusive to Greece.

We now know that consumers are a whole lot less rational than we used to think. Research has even showed that consumers' purchase behaviour is also led by letter concordance between their own name and the brand name. By that line of reasoning, Barry would prefer brands like Bacardi, BMW and Boss, while Caroline would go for Courvoisier, Citroën and Calvin Klein. And Peter would show a preference for Peterborough in his selection of a place to live.