I do have sympathy with the Pajamas Media guys for the name headaches. I named Entertainment Weekly — and always hated that name because it was boring and obvious and when you talk as fast as I do it’s hard to say. I’ve been trying to help name another venture and after 20 minutes I get headaches hearing word-association games gone wacky. It’s a lot easier naming kids. Anyway, after the Pajamas whiplash, blamed on a naming company, I saw a link to this post with advice on naming, which in turn pointed to a naming company’s blog. There are whole industries now to optimize search and invent names. Whatever happened to making widgets?
: And to see just how bad the name shortage is, look no farther than Emily Chang’s eHub, an unintentionally hilarious list of names gone over the edge. Names are hard. Very hard.