Branding and strange phonetics...

Need a lawyer? Try...

Apr 26th 2011, 21:50 by R.L.G. | NEW YORK

IMAGINE you are trying to think of a name for a legal-services auction site. (A client needs a simple will; he describes it on the site, and lawyers bid on the job.)  What did you come up with? 

All right, now think of another. Then another.  Do this one billion times.

Was any of the billion names you came up with Shpoonkle?  I'll bet it wasn't. But it was someone's name for exactly such a company. Today's deadline day so no time for more commentary here; just read Nancy Friedman, a branding and company-naming expert, on why your first billion tries did not produce Shpoonkle.
Addendum: Deadline having passed, I realised on my trip home why you probably didn't come up with "Shpoonkle": it's forbidden by English phonotactics (basically what sounds can be strung together in a native English word.  "gork" is nonsense, but obeys English phonotactic rules; "gkor" is nonsense and violates the rules.)  The sh- sound plus another consonant like p* can't begin a native English word: we have shmuck, shmutz, schmaltz, shmendrick, Sturm und Drang and so on. But they're all German or Yiddish, which is why Big Legal Brain mockingly called Shpoonkle "the new Yiddish-language lawyer bidding and matching service". It's one thing to come up with a name that violates English orthographic rules, I suppose. Flickr and PwC and Yahoo! have all in their way done their worst, and haven't suffered too much for it, because their names remain naturally pronounceable. It's another thing to violate English's rules of pronunciation; I have tried and failed to think of a company that has done so successfully with their brand name in English. If anyone can think of one, let us know in the comments. Otherwise, I leave you with the words of Robert Niznik, Shpoonkle's founder:

Some people don’t like change, others don’t like what they don’t understand or better yet don’t want to understand... Well, get ready, Shpoonkle is here and we are ready for the mainstream.  Kleenex, Blog, Xerox, and yes even Internet were silly names people mocked and thought were ridiculous too. Now these words are part of our every day language.

Shpoonkle: could it be the next internet?

* I originally wrote that sh + consonant is forbidden, but Ben Zimmer notes that of course shr- is allowed, as in "shrimp" and "shriek". r is unusual in being a "liquid" consonant, often barely noticeable in itself and only seen in its colouring of a neighboring vowel.

Source: http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/04/branding