Admittedly, “Hades” wasn’t even among the options when we reviewed potential product names for our client. We considered various Latin names for new products, which were intended for use in many target languages.

Initial situation

Our client is a machinery supplier with a high share of exports. The company assigns product names according to a standardized formula. The product names have to go down well in all 30 countries our client exports to. This means they should not only sound good to German ears but also, for example, be easy for Portuguese customers to pronounce and ideally evoke the desired association. Against this backdrop, Gemino was asked to review a list of suggestions for potential product names and single out the linguistically good ones for the customer to take their pick.

We use a standardized procedure to create a shortlist from the longlist.

Approach

Our linguists, in this case as well, concentrated their research and evaluation of the names in the different language regions. The result is a linguistically and culturally approved selection which provides our client with a shortlist from which they can choose before the names undergo a final check by the subsidiaries and the legal department.

At the beginning of the project, we reviewed the profile and number of linguists. We also define meaningful evaluation criteria. This resulted in a specially developed evaluation matrix according to linguistic, cultural and phonetic aspects. The briefing for the linguists specifies the exact evaluation procedure. For example, we specified the exact number of hits to be viewed in the most popular search engine for each region (which isn’t always Google) in order to evaluate the name for specific criteria.

The result

The result comprised a list of evaluations for the potential product names as well as an executive summary. Interestingly, a certain name frequently and independently received positive ratings across multiple language regions.