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Review of LiteratureMost organizations select a name based on their abilities and goals, their organizational style, and their intended audience. For example, an organization would not call itself 'WebSavvy,' a very descriptive name, if its employees had no web experience, nor any desire to attain it. A button-down, conservative insurance company probably would not select a name like 'Zappppp,' which relies on onomatopoeia and metaphor. Similarly, a test preparation service would probably not misuse metonymy and association, naming their company 'Flunk's Testing,' if they wanted to build enrollment. Each of these linguistic tools has its place in naming, although their application often requires skill, att- ention to nuance, and most frequently, a well-defined methodology to evaluate competing approaches and determine the most advantageous name strategy. The many naming tools and styles to choose from are listed in the Table 1.
It is widely recognized that brand names play a crucial role in marketing products and services and in their acceptance by the public(Charmasson 1988). The process of developing brand names can be effe- ctive when sufficient linguistic research is done in preparation before launching products and services. The linguistic component of the naming of brands includes three parts: phonetically, a brand should be easy to pronounce and pleasant to be heard; morphologically, it should be short and simple; and sem- antically, a brand should present a positive connotation (for the details, see Huang and Chan <1997(2)>. The linguistic component is the essence in the naming of brands because it directly affects the function of brand names. The function of brands is to make the branded products or services recognizable and dis- tinguishable for promoting and selling in the market. A brand competes better when it is legally protected from the adaptation and imitation from any potential competitors. However, the degree of market promotion and the legal protection that can be derived from the use of a commercial name depends almost entirely on the intrinsic characteristics of the syllables, words, and phrases (Charmasson 1988). Chan and Huang (2001) and Huang and Chan <1997(1), 1997(2), 2001> conducted a series of studies on Chinese naming of brands using content analysis from a linguistic perspective. Huang and Chan (2001) found the three requirements of Chinese naming of brands were: morphologically, it was of two- morp- heme compounds with a structure of modifier-noun, phonologically, it had the second syllable high toned, and semantically, it had a positive connotation. Huang and Chan <1997(1)> found that a good brand name in Chinese is of two-syllable length, of an H-H tone combination, of a positive connotation, and of a noun-noun morphemic structure. Similarly Huang and Chan <1997(2)> confirmed the four linguistic principles in Chinese branding in general. A Chinese brand name is preferably two-syllable structured; it has a modifier-noun compounding pattern; phonologically, the second syllable of the brand is high-toned; and semantically the brand is positive. There exist few studies that investigate Korean brand names from a linguistic viewpoint. Exceptionally H-W. Lee (1998) conducted case studies of Korean advertising language from a linguistic perspective and proposed that the advertising language should be analyzed based on pragmatics. The author insists that the meaning of language is considered as integrating sentence meaning and context knowledge. The author also suggests that further studies should be directed to the effects of linguistic approaches to advertising upon consumers' cognitive responses. Still, as mentioned earlier, few studies exist that investigate Korean brand names and propose principles in terms of main linguistic areas in a com- prehensive and systematic way. |
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