Where did the name "Acura" come from?
12-27-2006, 10:58 AM
#1
Where did the name "Acura" come from?
Having too much time on my hands, and pretty much immobilized by a bad back pain; I thought I would investigate pretty much interesting, but irrelevant trivia.
Here is the answer...
Make a Name for Yourself
To some it's an art. To others it's a science. However you approach it, coming up with winning names is more than just a game.
New product introductions are exploding at the rate of more than 26,000 per year. As a result, new names, good names, even legally available names are harder and harder to find. Says David Placek, founder of Sausalito's Lexicon Naming, which named Apple's PowerBook and Intel's Pentium: "It's an enormous task to leapfrog over existing names to get something that not only is legally available, but also gets the product concept in motion."
The name drain is so severe in the digital realm--trademark registrations for computer hardware and software surged 112% between 1989 and 1994--that the stock of information-era word roots like net, power, and link is virtually depleted.
For average table stakes of $20,000 to $50,000, a company stands to win a valuable asset that can become the cornerstone of brand success. Yet more important than the rewards of a good name are the risks of a bad one.
"Good names don't make products succeed so clearly as bad names make products fail," says Ira Bachrach, founder of the San Francisco-based NameLab. He cites 7-Up's $120-million misfire with the first caffeine-free cola: Lyke Cola.
Names don't fail for lack of raw material--there are some 600,000 morphemes (the smallest meaningful word unit) and a huge number of combinations. Experts disagree, however, on the best strategy for tapping into that pool of possibilities. Bryan Mattimore of the Stamford-based Mattimore Group and Lexicon's Placek describe naming as "very much an art." In contrast, NameLab's Bachrach says, "It's an analytical process. It's not creative--it's cold-construction linguistics."
Take the case of Honda's first luxury car. NameLab first developed a working definition that focused on "high engineering content." It then broke engineering down into its component elements--science, metallurgy, precision--and matched them with a series of morphemes.
"The best word we made was Acura," says Bachrach, who also came up with Compaq and AT&T TrueVoice. "It's based on the morpheme acu, which means 'precisely' or 'with care' in many languages. It worked because the first thing you thought of was precision--the definition of German luxury cars."
Now you know...
Here is the answer...
Make a Name for Yourself
To some it's an art. To others it's a science. However you approach it, coming up with winning names is more than just a game.
New product introductions are exploding at the rate of more than 26,000 per year. As a result, new names, good names, even legally available names are harder and harder to find. Says David Placek, founder of Sausalito's Lexicon Naming, which named Apple's PowerBook and Intel's Pentium: "It's an enormous task to leapfrog over existing names to get something that not only is legally available, but also gets the product concept in motion."
The name drain is so severe in the digital realm--trademark registrations for computer hardware and software surged 112% between 1989 and 1994--that the stock of information-era word roots like net, power, and link is virtually depleted.
For average table stakes of $20,000 to $50,000, a company stands to win a valuable asset that can become the cornerstone of brand success. Yet more important than the rewards of a good name are the risks of a bad one.
"Good names don't make products succeed so clearly as bad names make products fail," says Ira Bachrach, founder of the San Francisco-based NameLab. He cites 7-Up's $120-million misfire with the first caffeine-free cola: Lyke Cola.
Names don't fail for lack of raw material--there are some 600,000 morphemes (the smallest meaningful word unit) and a huge number of combinations. Experts disagree, however, on the best strategy for tapping into that pool of possibilities. Bryan Mattimore of the Stamford-based Mattimore Group and Lexicon's Placek describe naming as "very much an art." In contrast, NameLab's Bachrach says, "It's an analytical process. It's not creative--it's cold-construction linguistics."
Take the case of Honda's first luxury car. NameLab first developed a working definition that focused on "high engineering content." It then broke engineering down into its component elements--science, metallurgy, precision--and matched them with a series of morphemes.
"The best word we made was Acura," says Bachrach, who also came up with Compaq and AT&T TrueVoice. "It's based on the morpheme acu, which means 'precisely' or 'with care' in many languages. It worked because the first thing you thought of was precision--the definition of German luxury cars."
Now you know...
