Naming history: how approaches to brand names have changed
Next are specific dates, figures, and cases: why 95% of names in pre-revolutionary Russia were surnames, what changed after 1900 year, by how many years the USSR lagged behind the US market, and what sound patterns today determine how much consumers are willing to pay for a product with a specific name.
From 'merchant Ivanov' to an abstract name: how the naming formula changed
In pre-revolutionary Russia, about 95% of names of trading and industrial enterprises were built according to one descriptive model: field of activity plus owner's name. 'Confectionery of Abricosova', 'Manufactory of the Prokhorov Brothers', 'Pharmacy of Ferreina' — there was almost no variation. The name conveyed who the seller was and what he sold, nothing more. Competition was local: the buyer went to a familiar merchant, not choosing between brands on the shelf, so the task of 'standing out by sound' simply did not exist.
Today, only about 25% of names are built on such a descriptive model. The remaining three quarters are associative nomination: a word does not directly describe the product, but evokes the necessary image before one even meets it. The difference of 70 percentage points per hundred and a little more years is not an evolution of taste, but a change in the very function of the name: from a label on a product to a positioning tool.
1900 year: why naming suddenly became recognized as important
The starting point is considered to be the 1900 year, when James Walter Thomson published a work where he for the first time substantiated that a product's name affects sales no less than the quality of the product itself. Before that, names were chosen intuitively — often simply because the owner had a surname. Thomson proposed designing a name consciously, as a trade asset.
The reason why this happened exactly then was economic, not creative. The U.S. market was saturated with factory goods produced in mass quantities by the beginning of the XX century — for the first time, the buyer was choosing not between a 'native' and a 'foreign' seller, but between dozens of essentially identical products on the same shelf. The name became the only visible difference before purchase. Intuitive name selection ceased to work the moment there was more than one competitor on the shelf.
How Walter Landor Turned Nomenclature into an Industry
The next leap occurred in 1941 in San Francisco: German émigré Walter Landor founded the Landor agency — the first company to combine nomenclature with full-fledged branding consultancy: visual identity development, perception research, color and sound psychology. Before Landor, nomenclature was a one-time service offered by advertising agencies. Afterward, it became a standalone discipline with its own methodology and staff of linguists.
The industry then grew in waves. In the 1980-s, against the backdrop of globalization and the rise of transnational corporations, specialized nomenclature boutiques emerged — general branding agencies were no longer sufficient, specialized experts were needed: linguists who check words for negative associations in dozens of languages, and psychologists who test sound on focus groups. Thus, intuitive name selection finally became an academic process with research and legal expertise for registration.
USSR and Russia: sixty years of lag
In the Soviet Union, nomenclature as a discipline did not develop — there was no market competition, and a name did not have to convince a buyer to choose this particular product: alternatives on the shelf simply did not exist. Hence names without any strategy: candies "Raduy" (named after a scientific discovery, not taste), chainsaw "Druzhba" (Friendship), cheese "Druzhba" — names were assigned according to the principle of elimination or in honor of an ideologically neutral concept.
The first Russian nomenclature agencies — RIA «Hieroglyph», «Naming.ru», LEXICA naming — only appeared in the 1999–2003s. This is sixty years later than Landor in the USA in 1941. The Russian market began to systematically deal with names only when, after the market reforms of the 90s, real competition for the consumer emerged — before that moment, there was simply no economic sense in nomenclature.
Why companies are moving away from founders' surnames and names
An independent line of evolution — large companies abandoning family and «personal» names in favor of neutral corporate names. The reasons are different for each case, but the logic is the same: the larger and more diverse the business, the more universal its name should be.
| Was | Became | The reason for rebranding |
|---|---|---|
| Alphabet | The company grew beyond search, a umbrella structure was needed for different businesses | |
| Tinkoff | T-Bank | Moving away from the founder's surname, simplifying pronunciation and spelling in Latin |
| VKontakte | VK | International expansion and adaptation to a short format for mobile applications |
A surname and personal name are good at the start — they create trust and humanity because behind the name stands a specific person, not a corporation. But they become a limitation when the company outgrows the initial idea: a surname-based name does not scale well to new markets, new languages, and new product lines that have no connection to the founder's surname.
Trends of the 2020s: from «strange» names back to simple words
The technological boom of 2000–2010 gave rise to the trend of names with removed vowels and distorted spelling — Flickr, Tumblr, Mud\Wtr. The logic was pragmatic: such a word was easier to register as a free domain, and it stood out in the feed among ordinary words. But in the 2023–2024 years, a backlash emerged: brands increasingly return to simple, recognizable words — this is a reaction to economic turbulence, in which the consumer reaches for something understandable rather than a puzzle.
What is happening with names in parallel
- Letter transformations — about 30% of modern names use either Latin script (Americanization) or the pre-revolutionary alphabet (archaization, retro-nomination);
- Single-letter and ultra-short brands — a direct response to the shortage of free domains and the demand for instant memorability;
- Phonetic psychology: names with sounds that seem to 'go inward' into the mouth during pronunciation (as when swallowing) are perceived by consumers to be 4–13% more expensive than names with sounds directed outward — this parameter is now considered in naming briefs alongside legal verification;
- Gender segmentation of sound — women remember brand names 1,56 times more often than men and form associations with them 1,44 times more often, so the emotional component of a name is now often tested separately on female audiences, rather than on mixed focus groups.
Over a hundred years, naming has evolved from a random surname on a signboard to a parameter that is now measured in percentage markup. Every decision — letter, sound, graphics — can now be explained by research rather than the personal taste of the client, and it is precisely this that distinguishes a working name from a pretty one.
Next are specific dates, figures, and cases: why 95% of names in pre-revolutionary Russia were surnames, what changed after 1900 year, by how many years the USSR lagged behind the US market, and what sound patterns today determine how much consumers are willing to pay for a product with a specific name.
From 'merchant Ivanov' to an abstract name: how the naming formula changed
In pre-revolutionary Russia, about 95% of names of trading and industrial enterprises were built according to one descriptive model: field of activity plus owner's name. 'Confectionery of Abricosova', 'Manufactory of the Prokhorov Brothers', 'Pharmacy of Ferreina' — there was almost no variation. The name conveyed who the seller was and what he sold, nothing more. Competition was local: the buyer went to a familiar merchant, not choosing between brands on the shelf, so the task of 'standing out by sound' simply did not exist.
Today, only about 25% of names are built on such a descriptive model. The remaining three quarters are associative nomination: a word does not directly describe the product, but evokes the necessary image before one even meets it. The difference of 70 percentage points per hundred and a little more years is not an evolution of taste, but a change in the very function of the name: from a label on a product to a positioning tool.
1900 year: why naming suddenly became recognized as important
The starting point is considered to be the 1900 year, when James Walter Thomson published a work where he for the first time substantiated that a product's name affects sales no less than the quality of the product itself. Before that, names were chosen intuitively — often simply because the owner had a surname. Thomson proposed designing a name consciously, as a trade asset.
The reason why this happened exactly then was economic, not creative. The U.S. market was saturated with factory goods produced in mass quantities by the beginning of the XX century — for the first time, the buyer was choosing not between a 'native' and a 'foreign' seller, but between dozens of essentially identical products on the same shelf. The name became the only visible difference before purchase. Intuitive name selection ceased to work the moment there was more than one competitor on the shelf.
How Walter Landor Turned Nomenclature into an Industry
The next leap occurred in 1941 in San Francisco: German émigré Walter Landor founded the Landor agency — the first company to combine nomenclature with full-fledged branding consultancy: visual identity development, perception research, color and sound psychology. Before Landor, nomenclature was a one-time service offered by advertising agencies. Afterward, it became a standalone discipline with its own methodology and staff of linguists.
The industry then grew in waves. In the 1980-s, against the backdrop of globalization and the rise of transnational corporations, specialized nomenclature boutiques emerged — general branding agencies were no longer sufficient, specialized experts were needed: linguists who check words for negative associations in dozens of languages, and psychologists who test sound on focus groups. Thus, intuitive name selection finally became an academic process with research and legal expertise for registration.
USSR and Russia: sixty years of lag
In the Soviet Union, nomenclature as a discipline did not develop — there was no market competition, and a name did not have to convince a buyer to choose this particular product: alternatives on the shelf simply did not exist. Hence names without any strategy: candies "Raduy" (named after a scientific discovery, not taste), chainsaw "Druzhba" (Friendship), cheese "Druzhba" — names were assigned according to the principle of elimination or in honor of an ideologically neutral concept.
The first Russian nomenclature agencies — RIA «Hieroglyph», «Naming.ru», LEXICA naming — only appeared in the 1999–2003s. This is sixty years later than Landor in the USA in 1941. The Russian market began to systematically deal with names only when, after the market reforms of the 90s, real competition for the consumer emerged — before that moment, there was simply no economic sense in nomenclature.
Why companies are moving away from founders' surnames and names
An independent line of evolution — large companies abandoning family and «personal» names in favor of neutral corporate names. The reasons are different for each case, but the logic is the same: the larger and more diverse the business, the more universal its name should be.
| Was | Became | The reason for rebranding |
|---|---|---|
| Alphabet | The company grew beyond search, a umbrella structure was needed for different businesses | |
| Tinkoff | T-Bank | Moving away from the founder's surname, simplifying pronunciation and spelling in Latin |
| VKontakte | VK | International expansion and adaptation to a short format for mobile applications |
A surname and personal name are good at the start — they create trust and humanity because behind the name stands a specific person, not a corporation. But they become a limitation when the company outgrows the initial idea: a surname-based name does not scale well to new markets, new languages, and new product lines that have no connection to the founder's surname.
Trends of the 2020s: from «strange» names back to simple words
The technological boom of 2000–2010 gave rise to the trend of names with removed vowels and distorted spelling — Flickr, Tumblr, Mud\Wtr. The logic was pragmatic: such a word was easier to register as a free domain, and it stood out in the feed among ordinary words. But in the 2023–2024 years, a backlash emerged: brands increasingly return to simple, recognizable words — this is a reaction to economic turbulence, in which the consumer reaches for something understandable rather than a puzzle.
What is happening with names in parallel
- Letter transformations — about 30% of modern names use either Latin script (Americanization) or the pre-revolutionary alphabet (archaization, retro-nomination);
- Single-letter and ultra-short brands — a direct response to the shortage of free domains and the demand for instant memorability;
- Phonetic psychology: names with sounds that seem to 'go inward' into the mouth during pronunciation (as when swallowing) are perceived by consumers to be 4–13% more expensive than names with sounds directed outward — this parameter is now considered in naming briefs alongside legal verification;
- Gender segmentation of sound — women remember brand names 1,56 times more often than men and form associations with them 1,44 times more often, so the emotional component of a name is now often tested separately on female audiences, rather than on mixed focus groups.
Over a hundred years, naming has evolved from a random surname on a signboard to a parameter that is now measured in percentage markup. Every decision — letter, sound, graphics — can now be explained by research rather than the personal taste of the client, and it is precisely this that distinguishes a working name from a pretty one.
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