Naming briefs #7
Critiquing Sixt, Solovair, Straedgy, and Sway.
In the naming business, a naming brief is a detailed written document that serves as a road map for name development and legal review. (Read more about the naming brief here.) The naming briefs in this newsletter are something else: short reports on names I’ve spotted in the wild or in my reading. This report is the seventh in a series; see the intro to Naming Briefs #6 for links to previous Naming Briefs.
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Sixt
The sign I photographed in San Francisco says “Sixt Rent a Car,” but the Sixt website says “Sixt Rent the Car” (emphasis added).
The definite article is definitely no accident.
Sixt is an old company but a relative newcomer in the North American car-rental space. It entered the U.S. market in 2010, in Florida, and now has about 100 locations nationwide. The surge came during the Covid pandemic, when Sixt bought 10 U.S. airport locations from a competitor. In 2022 Sixt launched in Canada. They mean business with “premium”: Sixt has an exclusive arrangement with Cadillac, and its fleet also includes models from BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Mini, and Land Rover.
And the Sixt brand name? It’s an eponym. The Sixt company was founded in 1912 by Martin Sixt; it was the first car-rental company in Bavaria. It survived both world wars despite having its entire fleet confiscated twice by the German army.
And what sort of surname is Sixt? It’s predominantly European and comes from Latin sixtus, a variant of sextus (“sixth,” as in “sixth-born”).
Solovair
Another old brand with an intriguing name. Solovair, founded in 1881, is a British shoe company based in Wollaston, Northamptonshire, where the shoes are manufactured. When I first encountered the name, I wanted to read it as “solo” + “vair,” which sent me down a furry fairy-tale rabbit hole: Vair means “squirrel fur” in somewhat antiquated French, and there’s a convincing theory that when Charles Perrault wrote Cendrillon (“Cinderella”) in 1697, the heroine’s pantoufles (slippers) were made not of verre (glass) but of vair (fur). You can read more about it on the Haggard Hawks blog.
But no: Solovair is simply an altered spelling of “sole of air.” Altered spellings can be tricky, but this one is delightful. It suggests comfort and even love, hiding there in the middle of the word. And there’s the Cinderella connection for nerds like me.
Solovair is a subsidiary of the Northamptonshire Productive Society (NPS). From the Wikipedia entry: “NPS shoes are known for their Goodyear welt technology which is used in all their shoe production. This particular technique is needed to fix the Solovair sole onto ‘Soft Sole Suspension’ boots and shoes.”
Straedgy
From the nearly sublime to the utterly inane.
This, my friends, is what we in the business call a shitmanteau: a cack-handed mashup of two words that should never be mashed.1 OK, so you provide a strategic edge. (Like who doesn’t.) But how about a pronunciation advantage? A speaker of Modern English looks at that /ae/ in the middle of the name and starts wondering whether she’s been transported to the realm of Æthelred the Unready and needs to take a cram course in Anglo-Saxon.
This is not a confidence-boosting feeling.
For what it’s worth, Straedgy, which is based in London, Ontario, is “a digital experience enterprise dedicated to the creation of revenue growth, in all forms and in the broadest definition.” (Possible translation: We want to make lots of money, and we don’t want to spend a dime on a naming consultant.)
And speaking of confidence, here’s something else Straedgy says about itself: “We strive to develop relationships with confidants, creatives, coders, cognitives, and culture. That way, we function as the conduit of their excellence, rather than as consumers or proprietors of services.”
I’ve become grudgingly accustomed to “creatives” (noun), but cognitives? People with, um, cognition? And, by the way, confidant means “a person with whom one shares a secret or private matter.” (Raise your hand if you’re now humming the theme to “Golden Girls.”)
And if “Straedgy” makes you think of “strategery,” here’s your reminder that George W. Bush never uttered that word. It was comedian Will Farrell, portraying then-candidate Bush in an October 2000 SNL skit, who first used it.
I’m indebted to the folks on the American Dialect Society listserv for bringing Stra-eh-ji to my attention. Let’s not give it another moment’s thought.
Sway.
That was kind of a bummer, so let’s close with a really good name.
I learned about Sway in “Solving the Plastic Crisis with Seaweed,” a recent installment of Molly Wood ’s climate-trends newsletter. Sway is working to replace the plastic in packaging with compostable, replenishable seaweed, which I think is brilliant and hopeful. (“Seaweed” is such an inadequate word for a whole universe of ocean flora.) The company is based in San Leandro, California, just a few freeway exits from where I live. The CEO and founder is Julie Marsh, which is a pretty good aptronym, wouldn’t you say?
Why do I like Sway? For starters, it doesn’t describe, it suggests. (Reminder: Descriptive names are less distinctive and more difficult to protect than suggestive names.) Picture kelp in its native habitat. What is it doing? It’s swaying in the ocean currents.
Sway has an additional apt connotation. The mission of the Sway company is to move the culture in an earth-friendly direction: to influence behavior and sway buying decisions.
It’s a short, lovely word with deep roots in the language and long tendrils that connect with similar sw- words like swing and swivel and sweep. Does the seaweed company own Sway.com? Nope: That URL belongs to Microsoft, which uses it for presentation design software. The seaweed-packaging company’s web address is even more appealing: SwayTheFuture.com.
Thanks to trademark lawyer Jessica Stone Levy for that coinage!
I hope that when people google straedgy, the first thing they find is “Possible translation: We want to make lots of money, and we don’t want to spend a dime on a naming consultant.” 🤣🤣🤣
I fear that "straedgy" is how an increasing number of people would indeed pronounce "strategy." See also "Mah-hah-ahn" (the island on which I live).