What’s in a name?

Keylingo's CEO, Frederick Marx

Recently I’ve had a number of people ask me about my company’s name - Keylingo. Thankfully most of these queries follow a compliment like, “Hey, I love the name of your company. How did you come up with it?” I haven’t thought about Keylingo’s origins since, well, its' origin. But since a few people thought enough of Keylingo to offer a compliment I thought I would pay it forward by sharing how we came up with our name as well as a few nuggets from experts on this all-important topic.?

First, let’s have a little fun. Some companies get their name so wrong and it leaves us wondering, “What were you thinking?” It’s like if there was a Walmart where company names went shopping you would definitely see a few of these companies roaming the isles.?

Believe it or not, there’s a chicken restaurant named “Sam and Ella’s”. With a name like that there’s absolutely no chance your dinner spent much less time in the fridge than it should have or will arrive undercooked. Right? Well, even if that’s the farthest thing from the truth it sounds too much like Salmonella for me to ever go and find out.

Next, it’s important never to forget how your name is going to look and sound as a URL (i.e. an internet address). Take the unfortunate case of American Scrap Metal. Pretty straightforward name for sure. Maybe not the most original, but very descriptive so well done. Not so fast, make a website address of this and you’ve got Americanscrapmetal.com. Even if that statement were true I think we can all agree that it is not the best company name. And don’t waste your time visiting this website. The owners realized their blunder and corrected the mistake.

Ok, enough.

Next, here’s an obvious question. Is a company’s name important? Of course, it is. Then why do we sometimes get it wrong? Maybe we’re just channeling Shakespeare who said, “What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”. In other words, if the product or service is good then the name isn’t that critical. Problem is, however, customers might not come within smelling distance of your company if the name misses the mark.

According to a Forbes Magazine article, here are a few tips to consider when naming your company.

?? Think backward. Define your company’s identity and choose a name that speaks to it.

?? Keep it short and simple.

?? Avoid trademark and SEO issues.

?? Create something new so you own it.

Finally, what about Keylingo? After researching this topic, I thought back to the origins of that name. Did I do what the experts recommended? I founded Keylingo almost 20 years ago so while my memory may be a little foggy, I do remember several “key” things (pun intended) that I thought about when I went through the naming process.

First, I put a lot of thought into it and wanted the name to be original. I did a lot of research on existing translation company names as well as the names of successful companies from other industries. It was interesting because there were - and still are - some very successful companies in the language services industry with what I would consider to be obvious names. For me though, I figured win or lose, I’m a faithful follower of Matt Damon's famous line from Good Will Hunting, “At least I won’t be unoriginal”.

Second, I wanted to keep it short. Ideally, it would have been two syllables, but we ended up with three.

Third, I wanted the name to describe what we did, but creatively. There were certain words - translation, global, language, etc. - that I knew I wanted to stay away from.

With these things in mind, I started scribbling away and typing ideas into web searches to see if the names I was considering were available as a dot com. Also, I remember searching for synonyms of words relevant to the industry and the services we would provide. And this is where I hit pay dirt. “Key” is a synonym for translation and “lingo” as we all likely know is a word often used for “language”. I didn’t like the look and sound of Lingokey, but very much liked Keylingo.

There you have it. I hope this was helpful and a little entertaining. Please let us know what you think at [email protected].