Startup naming trends – a return to literal and proper spelling?
Stephen Moore over at Marker wrote an interesting article on a return to proper spelling in the world of startups.
He goes into the practice of disemvoweling and how it became a thing in the previous decade.
He writes:
In 2010, Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake told the San Jose Mercury News, “I suggested to the team, ‘Let’s remove this “E” thing.’ They all said, ‘That’s too weird,’ but I finally ground everyone down. Then of course, it became THE thing and everyone started removing vowels right and left.” After Flickr’s successful launch without its “e,” other brands began dropping vowels from their own names.
He goes on to say that for some they were not going to pay the ransom being demanded by domain hoarders.
He now sees a return to simple, easy to spell, literal names. One reason why looks to be technology.
The rise in A.I. and voice recognition technology also means that brand names with weird spellings or strange pronunciations may be harder to find via Alexa or Siri compared to a standard dictionary word.
Read the full article it’s a very good read.
I like a lot of the misspelled names i have as brands.