By Mark Evans

In the New Economy, playing the name game seems to be more critical and sometimes more confusing-than ever. How else to explain the proliferation of corporate names that are derived from sources as diverse as foreign languages and pop culture? Ottawa-based Ankari Inc., for example, got its new name from the Hindi word "to seek," while Toronto-based Bird on a Wire Networks Inc. was inspired by Leonard Cohen's pop-folk standard. Then there are the countless dot-com companies that insist on using an "i" or "e" prefix.

This trend toward unusual and distinctive corporate names can partly be explained by the need for differentiation in a global economy. A more practical reason is that nearly all the words in the English dictionary have been registered as dot-com domains, making it difficult for a company to obtain a Web site address to match its corporate identity. As for the "i" and "e" prefixes, industry experts say it reflects the desire to adopt a New Economy cachet-something that many companies are now trying to avoid as Internet stocks plummet.

Ira Bachrach, president of NameLab Inc.-a San Francisco-based branding consultancy-says that while unique corporate brands are attracting attention, they are not a new phenomenon. Jell-O is a good example of a unique name invented more than 100 years ago.

The creation of a fresh and appealing brand, Bachrach says, can be a huge challenge because it has to capture the essence of what a company does and grab customers' attention. When it works, an eye-catching name can become a powerful marketing tool. When it doesn't, it can hurt a company's prospects.

Given the challenges, it's surprising that most new names are still created in-house without help from a consultant. Andersen Consulting Group, for example, spent three months reviewing 2,677 suggestions from employees before deciding to change its name to Accenture.

In-house ideas are favoured because many companies think they can do a better job than a consultant-after all, they inherently understand their own corporate culture. And consultants can be expensive. When Hewlett-Packard Co.'s instrumentation and measurement unit was spun off last year, it paid identity consultant Landor Associates more than U.S. $1 million to help develop the name Agilent Technologies Inc.

For a new company, finding the right name can be essential because it helps set the tone for its corporate culture and external image. David Chaloner, vice-president of marketing with Q9 Networks Inc., says the Toronto-based Web hosting company needed to balance its desire to be "hip and new" with the need to be "professional."

The choice, he says, made sense because "Q9"is distinctive, recognizable and easy to remember, while "Networks" emphasized its hosting services and Internet focus.

However, before Q9 could complete its branding exercise, it faced one other hurdle: securing the domain names and from entrepreneurs who had already registered them. Q9.com was purchased for $15,000 and Q9.net was bought for $5,000-relative bargains given the prices demanded by some domain name owners.

However, many URLs are unavailable because they are being used by another company unwilling to sell them. The inability to get a specific URL can stop many companies in their tracks. Bird on a Wire had to wait until the owner of failed to renew his option for another year before it could get ahold of the URL.

Aside from the challenge of getting a domain name, Bachrach says his firm still believes it is fairly easy to develop new corporate identities.
"It used to be that a lot of companies were quite diffident about creating a new word because they wanted a nice natural word like General Industries," he says. "Now, new words are so common because of Internet identities that even the chairman of the board of a conservative insurance company is willing to look at them."