What's in a name?

Time was when a company's name described its business. You knew that the US Steel Corp. made steel (well, mainly) and the Pennsylvania Railroad ran trains (well, most of the time). But do you know the business of AMR Corp.? You probably use AMR's services quite frequently because that's the parent company of American Airlines, a perfectly good name that describes its business and is easily memorized. So why bother with AMR? And I'll bet you consume Diageo's products without even realizing it—the company owns Burger King.

But what do you make of Agilent Technologies? That's the noncomputer half of the former Hewlett-Packard. And how about Agere Systems? That's the microelectronics group of Lucent Technologies, which in turn used to be the manufacturing arm of AT&T (largely Western Electric and Bell Telephone Laboratories). Many of these manufactured names come about because the company wants to be seen as more than just an "instrument company" or more than an airline.

Of course, names change as companies are merged into competitors or morphed into conglomerates. My Boston-based bank used to be called "BayBank" (after the Massachusetts Bay of colonial fame). Then it became absorbed into Bank of Boston, which in turn became BankBoston. That didn't last too long as BankBoston was merged into Fleet Bank (a Rhode Island company!). I'm still not sure I trust a bank with the same name as a leading enema. I liked BayBank much better.

High-tech companies face a tough problem in choosing a name. In the laser field, all the good laser names were taken a long time ago and the same can be said for names with "optics" in them. Thus we get manufactured names such as "Quantronix" or "Synrad." Some companies still manage to resist the attraction of the cute and go for the basics, such as my own personal favorite the "Universal Thread Grinding Company," which is a real no-nonsense name. No "UTG Corp." or "UTG Systems Corp." here, thank you.

But Universal Thread Grinding is the exception. Here's a little test: match the following company names listed on the left with the products or services listed on the right. The names are all taken from the July 2001 issue of Laser Focus World (about which, more later). The correct answers are at the bottom of the page (no peeking and no prizes!).

My point: none of the company names give you any hint of the company's main business. Of course, you may have recognized some of the names because you have done business with a particular company or you may have seen their advertising or direct mail. No doubt the companies' founders thought they had a good name and had some solid reasons for making their choices.

So it was with this magazine. Laser Focus World started life as a newsletter focused on lasers (if you'll excuse the expression), whose editor called it simply Laser Focus. The "World" extension was added much later by a publisher with grandiose plans to dominate the world of lasers and electro-optics. We've often thought of changing the magazine's name because the coverage of the publication goes far beyond lasers, but our strong brand recognition wins that discussion every time.

And that's the name of the game: Does your company name have brand recognition?