11.08.23

There was a diplomatic kerfuffle recently when the leader of a certain South Asian nation sent out an invitation in which she referred to herself as the “President of Bharat.” It set off a wave of speculation: Is India changing its name? We won’t get into the details of Hindi versus English usage and political implications here, we just thought it was a timely way to plug our classic SPotlight “7 Key Strategies to Effective Naming.” This whitepaper includes examples of “types” of company names, and we thought it was interesting (in a naming nerd kind of way) how several country names also fit into this framework:

Portmanteau (names formed by combining two or more words)
Tanzania (a combination of Tanganyika and Zanzibar)

Latinesque
Australia (southern land)

Acronyms
Pakistan (evolved from “Pakstan” an acronym of regions including Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir and Sindh)

Straightforward Descriptions
United Arab Emirates

Names of Founders
Bolivia

Geographical
Central African Republic

Promissory
Costa Rica (rich coast)

So if you’ve got a country – or a company or a product – to name, SullivanPerkins is here for you.