{"id":19698,"date":"2022-05-19T10:44:50","date_gmt":"2022-05-19T14:44:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ceros.com\/inspire\/?p=19698"},"modified":"2022-05-19T10:44:51","modified_gmt":"2022-05-19T14:44:51","slug":"ly-ify-startup-names","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ceros.com\/inspire\/originals\/ly-ify-startup-names\/","title":{"rendered":"The Name-ified Startups Are All Grown Up. What&#8217;s Next?"},"content":{"rendered":"<span class=\"rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">Reading Time: <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\">4<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minutes<\/span><\/span>\n<p>Success breeds imposters, especially in the business world. There\u2019s always going to be an entrepreneur looking to ride the wave of another\u2019s ascent. Some jack the product, undercutting the incumbent\u2019s price or adding additional features; others borrow liberally from the leader\u2019s messaging or marketing. Often, the latter strategy means blatantly ripping off the company name.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ten years ago, seemingly every new startup structured its name to end in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/technology\/archive\/2013\/07\/pitfalls-cleverly-named-startup\/313154\/\">-ly<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/hbr.org\/2013\/08\/how-quirky-startup-names-becam\">-ify<\/a>. At the time, it was little more than a nuisance for branding snobs who were super-plugged into the startup scene. But these little companies grew up, and now, all these similar-sounding names make up some of the biggest in their industries. There\u2019s Calendly and Templafy, Optimizely and Expensify, Grammarly and Proposify. And that barely scratches the surface; there are <a href=\"https:\/\/thenameinspector.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ify-names-chart-20141.pdf\">literally hundreds more<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"position: relative;width: auto;padding: 0 0 73.86%;height: 0;top: 0;left: 0;bottom: 0;right: 0;margin: 0;border: 0 none\" id=\"experience-6283bce5e847c\" data-aspectratio=\"1.3539823\"><iframe allowfullscreen=\"\" src=\"\/\/view.ceros.com\/ceros-marketing\/hard-drive-carousel-01-2-1-1-1-1-1\" style=\"position: absolute;top: 0;left: 0;bottom: 0;right: 0;margin: 0;padding: 0;border: 0 none;height: 1px;width: 1px;min-height: 100%;min-width: 100%\" frameborder=\"0\" class=\"ceros-experience\" title=\"Startup Names Collage\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"\/\/view.ceros.com\/scroll-proxy.min.js\" data-ceros-origin-domains=\"view.ceros.com\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<p>This is more than just a trend; the rise in copycat company names is plaguing tech. Ripping off another company\u2019s naming structure is reductive and embarrassing\u2014c<em>ome on<\/em>, where\u2019s the originality? But the copycats are also everywhere, and there will be more in the future. So what might be coming next?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>In the late-20th century, every digital company wanted to be \u201c-soft,\u201d thanks to the inspiring success of a little software company from Redmond, Washington. A few of those firms, like IT company System Soft or Ubisoft, the creator behind video games like <em>Assassin\u2019s Creed<\/em>, are still around.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then, in the early 2000s, dropping vowels was all the rage\u2014most commonly seen in brand names ending in \u201c-er\u201d or \u201c-ed\u201d that drop the penultimate letter. Flickr (the earliest prominent example), Tumblr, Scribd, Grindr, and Blendr all misspell words in the same way. Even Twitter was founded as \u201cTwttr\u201d in 2006. This trend is still around\u2014DAZN and MSCHF, two companies founded after 2015, disemvowel themselves in other ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And, yes, it was all about being namely and namified in the late 2000s and early 2010s. The \u201c-ify\u201d names can be pretty clearly attributed to Spotify. Daniel Ek, the founder and CEO of the music streamer, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.quora.com\/How-did-Spotify-get-its-name\">said that the name was actually an accident<\/a>. He and cofounder Martin Lorentzon were shouting ideas at each other across rooms, and Ek misheard a Lorentzon suggestion as \u201cSpotify.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The \u201c-ly\u201d names have a more intentional origin story, though it doesn\u2019t make any of the copycats look smarter. There\u2019s the obvious connection to the adverb, the function of which is to tell us more about an action or idea. But the structure might have also been motivated by the desire for an attractive website address. The URL shortening service Bitly made creative use of Libya\u2019s country code top-level domain to get the URL <a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\">bit.ly<\/a> (which now redirects to <a href=\"http:\/\/bitly.com\">bitly.com<\/a>). Another company that used Libya\u2019s TLD was called Musical.ly, which would later merge with another platform. Maybe you\u2019ve heard of its new name: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2018\/8\/2\/17644260\/musically-rebrand-tiktok-bytedance-douyin\">TikTok<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"position: relative;width: auto;padding: 0 0 70.92%;height: 0;top: 0;left: 0;bottom: 0;right: 0;margin: 0;border: 0 none\" id=\"experience-628565c3c0eee\" data-aspectratio=\"1.41011236\"><iframe allowfullscreen=\"\" src=\"\/\/view.ceros.com\/ceros-marketing\/metaverse-digital-marketing-sidebar-3-2-2?heightOverride=890\" style=\"position: absolute;top: 0;left: 0;bottom: 0;right: 0;margin: 0;padding: 0;border: 0 none;height: 1px;width: 1px;min-height: 100%;min-width: 100%\" frameborder=\"0\" class=\"ceros-experience\" title=\"Outdoors PQ1 Copy\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"\/\/view.ceros.com\/scroll-proxy.min.js\" data-ceros-origin-domains=\"view.ceros.com\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<p>To make matters worse, most companies aren\u2019t using these suffixes in a way that even makes any sense at all. Christopher Johnson is a linguist who used to run a blog called The Name Inspector. The suffix \u201c-ify,\u201d he notes, is usually meant to turn a noun or adjective into a verb\u2014getting \u201cdiversify\u201d from \u201cdiverse,\u201d for example. <a href=\"https:\/\/thenameinspector.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ify-names-chart-20141.pdf\">In an analysis<\/a> of new company names from 2007 to 2014, Johnson found 338 \u201c-ify\u201d names. Nearly 50 of those names gratuitously tacked on the suffix to words that are already verbs, including Employify, Knowify, and Debuggify. \u201cThat shows this is no normal English morphological process,\u201d Johnson writes. \u201cRather, it is a naming fad run amok.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Perhaps it wasn\u2019t an issue when all these companies were nothing more than seed-stage startups trying to make it big in a dog-eat-dog world. And perhaps the name of a tech company isn\u2019t as critical to success as is the name of a beer or clothing brand. But now that many of these companies actually <em>did<\/em> make it big, they\u2019re stuck with conservative, copycat names that only conjure images of other businesses. How many times have you actually said <em>Spotify<\/em> when you meant to say <em>Shopify<\/em>, or vice versa? \u201cThey\u2019re bad names and there\u2019s no excuse for it,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/technology\/archive\/2013\/07\/pitfalls-cleverly-named-startup\/313154\/\">wrote<\/a> Rebecca Greenfield for <em>The Atlantic<\/em>, in a piece that was published <em>nine years ago.<\/em> Just imagine how many more companies have adopted that naming structure since then.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>So what\u2019s next?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The consensus has been shifting the past few years. Joanna Glasner, a contributing columnist for digital publication Crunchbase News, has published an annual report on startup names since 2017. Glasner\u2019s early reports seemed to indicate that weirdly named startups were in decline\u2014she claimed <a href=\"https:\/\/news.crunchbase.com\/news\/startup-names-may-have-passed-peak-weirdness\/\">in 2019<\/a> that \u201cstartup names may have passed peak weirdness.\u201d She echoed that sentiment <a href=\"https:\/\/news.crunchbase.com\/news\/startup-naming-trends-2020\/\">in 2020<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But all of a sudden, that weirdness came roaring back. Glasner\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/news.crunchbase.com\/news\/startup-name-trends-2022\/\">2022 report<\/a> indicated that wacky names\u2014like disemvoweling, intentional misspelling, and, yes, the \u201c-ly\u201d suffix\u2014were as popular as ever. Athol Foden, president of corporate naming consultancy Brighter Naming, theorized that could be because, well, most \u201cnormal\u201d company names have been taken at this point. \u201cA lot of what\u2019s driving things is people saying: \u2018I really want to name it that but the domain is taken,\u2019\u201d he said to Crunchbase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The number of tech companies that adopt more modern, unique TLDs, like dot-io or dot-xyz, has been steadily <a href=\"https:\/\/www.icdsoft.com\/blog\/what-are-the-most-popular-tlds-domain-extensions\/\">increasing<\/a> since 2015.&nbsp; Anecdotally, Web3 companies seem to be fans\u2014consider Mirror.xyz, a digital publisher, and Sound.xyz, a music streamer. Because the names of these companies are common nouns, the TLD is usually included when saying or writing the name of the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So before you become the founder of Businessly (don\u2019t get any ideas\u2026), take a second to stop and think. Coming up with a great company name might be harder now than it was 30 years ago, but that\u2019s not an excuse to accept the first thing that pops in your head.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"myclass\">Ripping off another company\u2019s naming structure is reductive and embarrassing\u2026 but it\u2019s everywhere. 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