Strategies for Creating Domain Names - Constructional Linguistics
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Here we delve into specialist territory. This is the technique consultant name picking companies use to assemble unique, easy to remember names for their million dollar paying clients. We will look at naming company name lab. They have come up with names such as Acura, Viactiv, Cognos, Compusa, Sentra, Renova and a host of names for companies such as GM, Johnson and Johnson and Honda. Their domain name section of the company is called Domain Labs. After charging their clients they start their naming process, with the end result in mind of creating a domain name that reflects a global brand that doesn't cause conflict whether it's said in Japanese, Arabic or English.
Constructional linguistics is the art of assembling morphemes together, tweaking them and then making sure they meet phonetic and translational standards. Stay with me here because if you do not follow closely, I may just lose you in the whirl of words which are normally the terrain of English majors.
A morpheme is the minimal meaningful language unit. It is simply the smallest unit of language which makes sense: cog, van, a, ad, tent; these are all language units with specific meanings (morphemes). Any further division will result in a meaningless word string. Constructional Linguistics is involved in creating neologisms, "newly invented words" or "made up words," by taking various morphemes and arranging them as deemed fit to create new words with new meanings.
Companies such as name labs (poets and writers also) take advantage of what is called "poetic license" in some aspects of literature to create new words from scratch. These is good news for anybody who simply can't find the word to describe a situation. Just make one up.
Name Labs constructs a word and then checks that it actually means something impressive (or at least non-controversial). For example, Acura means accurate and excellent. Sometimes a word that is good for one thing is not so good for something else; Mortein, which means dead insects, is good for an insect killer, but it would be horrible for a brand of coffee. If it carries negative connotations they start all over again. Before starting to assemble the morphemes the company collects background information on the client and its competitors. This lets them have an idea of the client's focus and direction, and helps them find a way to phonetically represent it in the name.
Next: Phonemes over Spelling >>
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