1378: Business' Names Sep 19, 2018

Following off of yesterday's post, the principles that apply to the creation of new words also apply to companies. Traditionally, businesses were named after owners, or just say the name of the product with the name of the towns it was from, or another defining feature. When these stopped being so localized, the tendency was to shorten, either by abbreviating or initializing, or changing the name to something catchier, as to be more distinctive. As business shifted over to the internet and to apps, not only could fewer names be used, but shorter names that were easier to type were highly sought after to attract the most customers. Due in part to the scarcity of short names, and also to try to sound edgy, many startups would use variant spellings of ordinary words like Lyft™ from 'lift', or would simply make up words that were easy to remember. Context is significant in the history of names.