Ask HN: Stuck with an unpronounceable product name

[throwaway190620]

Hi everyone,

Throwaway account. Been on HN since 2008, but first time asking anything.

Here's the situation - we have a mature desktop product, IT-oriented, with a very good reputation and strong loyal following of people who know about it. Started as a side project, so didn't spend much thought on naming it and just picked something. It finally grew to a point of being worthy of proper marketing and promotion and... that name choice is now a problem. It is hard to pronounce and it doesn't sound nice if you manage to do that.

This complicates things when trying to sponsor video channels and podcasts for obvious reasons, but these are one of our best options for reaching people we are interested in.

Obviously, we can rename it, but this translates into a massive amount of work, in part because of several years worth of accumulated support/kb/forum material, all of which refers to the existing name.

Another option is to adopt the "Called Hahaha, but written HxHxHx" approach. This feels needlessly complicated if not forced.

Third option is to launch a clone of the product with a different name, use it for capturing the ad traffic and then direct it towards the original product. This seems workable, but also a bit too experimental for comfort.

---

Anyone's been in a similar situation before?

Do you have any experience with renaming a _mature_ product?

Thanks!

[kowdermeister]

Just do the rebranding, it's better to do it on the long run. Yes, it's a huge amount of work, but it could be done in a finite amount of time. The two names can co-exist, like

    New name (formerly HxHxHx)

Furthermore not all name updates are equally important, some can be done with a DB find and replace some is shit manual work, but you can hire for this job someone.

Read about stories how companies did this before. Currently I can think of one case that's ongoing: Taxify -> Bolt. They still have the Taxify logo on their cabs in Hungary but the app updated to Bolt (taxify).

[tompark]

It feels awkward while it's happening, and you keep referring to it by the old name, but later you get used to the new name.

Like iPython notebook to Jupyter notebook.

And Hudson to Jenkins. I remember at the time having a hard time remembering the new name, still referring to it as Hudson, but when writing this I actually had to search for the old name because I forgot it.

[adrianmonk]

Not only can they co-exist, personally I think it's most effective and natural (at reaching people) if, as an intermediate step, you establish a "real" brand that includes both names.

If you're renaming from "Foo" to "Bar", rather than jumping straight to "Bar (formerly Foo)", you establish a brand "FooBar", leave it that way a long time (years?), and really cement that in people's minds. Once everyone recognizes it as "FooBar", you can later drop half and people will still recognize "Bar".

Also, if don't include both old and new monikers as first-class parts of the brand, then in communication people will sometimes drop "formerly Foo". For example, if it's a mobile app, is your app icon label going to be "Bar (formerly Foo)"? No, it's going to be "Bar". (But "FooBar" could be an app icon label.) So there will be contexts where people choose not to mention the old name, weakening the reinforcement of the connection to the old name.

[pessimizer]

> They still have the Taxify logo on their cabs in Hungary but the app updated to Bolt (taxify).

This might be a solution: wait for a fairly large UI overhaul or reskinning, announce that reskinning with the name that you want the product to have, then slap the new branding on the reskin while maintaining the company with the old application name (this is assuming the the company is named after the product.) That way, whether people use tho old name or the new name, they're talking about the application or the company that has a single application.

You might even be able to gaslight many old customers into thinking that the product never had a name change, and that the split always existed.

[jballanc]

Everyone's missing the more obvious (recent) massive rebranding: Comcast to Xfinity.

[paxtonab]

A good example of this is "eShares" now known as Carta.

Here is their rebranding announcement:

https://carta.com/blog/eshares-is-now-carta/

[throwaway190620]

> The two names can co-exist

That's what I'm wondering the most actually.

I think the least intrusive way to do it is to introduce a literal clone of the product under a different name. Make it clear that it is the exact same things as the original.

What I can't find is any examples of anyone doing this. Also, not sure how would the mighty Google react to these shenanigans and if their automata won't decided to delist both products just because it looks fishy.

[legitster]

Marketing wankateer here. This is a really great question even for professionals.

It's super hard to make a judgement call without knowing the name - keep in mind one of the options here is that you are overreacting. Changing a name can be really, really bad if you don't do it right. But here's a couple of things you should do:

- Approach this as a UX problem. Is the name negatively affecting people's ability to approach or remember the brand? Do people actually need to know the exact spelling of your company name in order to discover your product?

- Check with existing customers to see how they pronounce the name. Or if they have trouble with it. You may find customers already have their own fun or cute ways to say it, and you can formalize these alternate pronunciations. It can be a great nod to the community.

- Can you simplify the name but keep most of it? Kind of like Dunking Donuts going to DNKN.

- Others have the excellent idea where you add to the name and slowly turn it into an acronym. Very few people care that UTM actually stands for Urchin Tracking Module. But it gave a nice shoulder period for forums and naming to not be too confusing.

If you do go the route of a complete rename - yeah, it's better to rip off the bandaid at once and be done with it. But you had better follow some best practices:

- Plan on a HUGE marketing spend afterwards to break in the new name.

- Don't just pick something random and trendy out of the grabbag of available domain names. "HxHxHx is now Grokly!"

- Spend good money on an SEO expert so you don't royally screw up your web presence.

[mrpotato]

> Approach this as a UX problem. Is the name negatively affecting people's ability to approach or remember the brand? Do people actually need to know the exact spelling of your company name in order to discover your product?

Reminds me of the STIHL commercial from a couple of years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWSynIB68rE

tl;dw people are interviewed and each person says the company name differently. The video starts the sales pitch with "No matter how you say STIHL..."

[throwaway190620]

This is very helpful. Thanks a bunch!

[crucialfelix]

I pronounced a certain webserver "en-jinx" for years until I finally realized it was "engine x". Which is a really daft name. Should be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGQXRICAEAE

The Beatles is also a really bad name for a band but they managed it.

[homonculus1]

Wow... "engine x" makes a lot more sense than "en-ginks".

[throwaway190620]

Beatles is a pun, it's good because of that.

[sundarurfriend]

I used to stare at the name every time and try to pronounce it like a word in an African language (like Ngoba). Felt like such an idiot when I figured out what it's supposed to be.

[coldpie]

I still mentally pronounce it "en-gee-eye-en-ecks".

[tinus_hn]

Not to mention Apple, their record label.

[boca]

I did the same until I read your comment! Thank you. Learning never stops.

[aasasd]

> > Other than the fact Linux has a cool name, could someone explain why I should use Linux over BSD?

> No. That's it. The cool name, that is. We worked very hard on creating a name that would appeal to the majority of people, and it certainly paid off: thousands of people are using linux just to be able to say "OS/2? Hah. I've got Linux. What a cool name". 386BSD made the mistake of putting a lot of numbers and weird abbreviations into the name, and is scaring away a lot of people just because it sounds too technical.

— https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.unix.pc-clone.32b...

[yongjik]

I'm pretty sure Linus was joking...

[itcmcgrath]

I've been around a company that was 180+ years old (so rebranding was non-trivial ;)). They switched to an acronym based on the original name, so there was was 1) a direct link between old and new, 2) old branded tgat was mussed wasnt a big deal for bew customers, and 3) everyone called it by the acronym going forward.

A similar approach might work for you and allow an incremential phase out of the old brand over time. Instead of HxHxHx, it's now HITD (HxHxHx IT Desktop)

[nullspace]

> I've been around a company that was 180+ years old (so rebranding was non-trivial ;))

It's not fair to mention this and NOT tell which company and link to the story about this! :)

[kangnkodos]

KFC is 180 years old?!

[notacoward]

I used to work for a company called Revivio. It was quite funny hearing sales/marketing folks try to spell it out over the phone without sounding like they were singing Old McDonald. Thanks, self-styled genius marketing VP!

[SAI_Peregrinus]

"Romeo Echo Victo India Victor India Oscar" (or similar) is probably the only way to not sing that spelling.

[endriju]

'"Third option is to launch a clone of the product with a different name, use it for capturing the ad traffic and then direct it towards the original product. This seems workable, but also a bit too experimental for comfort."'

You might also have the option to twist the above - similar to what I did with my product http://exmerg.com. I created a copy of it at http://gridoc.com and directed the traffic from the old product to the new one. Users gradually started going directly to the new one (gridoc) and the original web is now almost forgotten.

[billwear]

Years ago, HP had an incredibly powerful product (secure banking server, using NSA's CMW code), placed in all 325 of the largest banks in the world (not kidding) with a very stupid name. I've forgotten it, but it was a humdinger-darlin'-dumba$$ name that meant something sexually grotesque in Swedish or something. I took over as the product manager in 2000, and immediately went for the rebranding. Granted, HP was large, but the rebranding went absolutely great. First, the customers were actually happy to not have to refer to this mature product by a stupid name, and second, the uptake increased almost immediately to encompass about another 150 large banks, who said, "yeah, we wanted the features, but we weren't going to tell our customers we were protected with the "VirtualVulvaScraper" (or whatever the $#%^&&*@!! name was). It only worked to our advantage to do this, and it paid off at every stage. Never underestimate how relieved a customer will be to see a product they like grow up and start using more elegant branding.

[mosdl]

Mongo is another example

[maxxxxx]

I am not a marketer but it seems to me that people are too concerned about things like naming, icons and others. There are successful products with bad names (it took years to find consensus on pronouncing “azure”). Craigslist is successful without constant redesigns. At a minimum make only name change and then keep it. I have seen products go through several changes and they pretty much always were in decline and it seemed renaming or redesigning was the only idea management had left.

In short I don’t think it’s that important.

[Splognosticus]

> it took years to find consensus on pronouncing “azure”

Really? That one's a real word. It's got a correct pronounciation[1].

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=pronounce+azure&rlz=1C1CHBF_...

[cheschire]

There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things. -Phil Karlton

[lacampbell]

it took years to find consensus on pronouncing “azure”

I don't think there's a consensus. I certainly don't call it "ah zherr" like microsoft do.

[throwaway190620]

I can assure you that you are fundamentally wrong. First impression is exceptionally important and the name/icon is the first thing anyone sees.

[SippinLean]

I worked at Time Warner Cable when they got acquired by Charter, and rebranded to their "Spectrum" cable product.

We got a customer email that went:

"Great, you went from being The Worst Company to Speculum, you're literally f*cking us!"

Point is: rebranding is hard and expensive, but it will get more expensive the longer you wait.

If you doubt it's possible for a _mature_ product, remember Kinko's?

[nlawalker]

> If you doubt it's possible for a _mature_ product, remember Kinko's?

Yes: it's now called "the copier place" - still frequently shortened to "Kinko's" - because FedEx is where one goes to ship packages (or where one avoids going when they want to ship packages, if they've had any experience there).

[perennate]

If your concern over a rename is more about the work in updating material than the potential loss in revenue due to confusion about the name, then I think you should rename, since it'll be worth the effort in the long run.

[dirktheman]

Matomo handled this very well, they communicate 'Matomo formerly known as Piwik'.

On a slightly related note: I uses to work for a travel company that merged and got a new name that was horribly unpronounceable. Good luck answering the telephone with 'TQ3 Travel Solutions' when English isn't your native tongue. I have some choice words for whoever came up with that name...

[Operyl]

It's a hassle, but it's not impossible.

For example, Matomo (previously Piwik): https://www.google.com/search?q=piwik

[docker_up]

Change the name. Any other solution is foolish and short-sighted.

A terrible name is something that is haunt you for the rest of your time at the company. Just have the page links properly managed so that they mention the new name and the old name. In 6 months, no one will care or remember the old name.

Internally, you can refer to it as the old name, and you can keep the filenames as is. It's a pain but that probably isn't worth the effort to migrate.

[pryelluw]

Yes, I've done it before. It wasn't a software product, but it applies.

Had a client who had written a collection of really interesting books. They sold well given that the client is a world renowned scientist.

The latest book sold well during her live presentations but poorly online/offline.

The reason was that the name absolutely sucked. It was just awful.

The client wanted to rewrite the book and re-launch it with another awful name. I just told them to rename it, change the cover image to something related to the new name, get a new isbn, and ship it.

They worried about about people recognizing the product. And well, it really wasnt a big deal. All materials were updated with the new name and a press release was sent to sort of make it official.

No one cared. People loved the new name (I came up with it!). The book sold really well.

I told them to use this as a funny anecdote when presenting the book. They did and people loved the story.

So, go ahead and change the name, the branding in all related materials (you can even lazy out and include a pop up that states the change and not update anything else), and post a press release. Have everyone refer to it by the new name and get on with sales.

If you have any specific questions feel free to reply or email me.

[indeed30]

This instantly made me think of Qbserve.

[alanpage]

Do the rebranding now, before you get so big that you have to spend HUGE sums of money to get people to understand the pronunciation.

Don't be Rakuten, who spent millions on a Super Bowl commercial, and gave away thousands in stacks of cash, to get people to understand it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6sxz4vuxRg

[kangnkodos]

Can you add an additional name? HxHxHx - DesktopThing

Over time, you could transition to using the additional name more and more, and finally, rename the product.

[Jugurtha]

I like how the balena team executed with a name change and an open source release.[0] They went over the reason of the name change (evolution of scope) and clearly stated they wanted to introduce the new name with a splash:

> We wanted to introduce the balena name to the world with a splash, and what better way to do that than releasing our open source server.

Also, the OpenERP --> Odoo change.[1]

[0]: https://www.balena.io/blog/resin-io-changes-name-to-balena-r...

[1]: https://www.odoo.com/blog/odoo-news-5/post/the-odoo-story-56

[rmetzler]

If your company and the product share a name, rename one for a year and then transition fully to the new name.

You could also launch a second product with a different focus but complimentary to you first one. If this gets traction, rebrand your original product to a name based on your second product.