The Brands That Invented Their Own Words

There's a letter George Eastman particularly liked. "The letter K has been a favorite with me," he wrote in 1906. "It seems a strong, incisive sort of letter." When it came to naming his photographic company in 1888, he had three requirements: the name had to be short, it had to be pronounceable in any language, and it had to begin and end with K. He ran combinations through his head until one stuck: Kodak. It meant nothing. That was exactly the point.

Eastman wasn't making a compromise. He was solving a problem that had no obvious solution — how do you name something that doesn't exist yet, in a category that doesn't exist yet, for a global audience that speaks dozens of languages? A real word brings too much baggage. An invented word is a clean slate.

Häagen-Dazs: The Most Successful Lie in Food Marketing

In 1960, a Polish immigrant named Reuben Mattus was selling ice cream in the Bronx under a series of forgettable names. His product was good — richer, denser, more expensive than competitors — but it looked like every other carton in the freezer aisle.

His solution was audacious: he invented a fake Scandinavian name. "Häagen-Dazs" means nothing in Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, or any other language. The umlaut over the "a" is grammatically impossible in Danish orthography. The whole construction is phonetically awkward for actual Scandinavian speakers. But to American consumers in 1961, it looked European, and European meant premium.

Mattus added a map of Scandinavia to early packaging to complete the impression. The product was made in the Bronx. None of this was disclosed. It didn't need to be.

The name worked because it felt right for what the product was trying to be — not because it described anything true. That's a distinction worth sitting with. Häagen-Dazs didn't succeed because consumers researched its Danish roots. It succeeded because the sounds and shapes of the word gave them permission to believe it was special.

Etsy: A Name With No Definitive Origin

Rob Kalin, who co-founded Etsy in 2005, has given contradictory accounts of where the name came from. One version: he was watching Fellini's 8½ and heard a character say "etsi" — Italian for "and so." Another version: he simply made it up. In a third account, he wanted something with no Google results at all, a blank slate he could fill with meaning himself.

The contradictions don't matter. If anything, they're an asset. A name without a definitive etymology can't be wrong — and after two decades, "Etsy" doesn't mean "and so" or "nothing." It means handmade goods, independent sellers, and a particular aesthetic of craft and care. That meaning was built entirely by the people who used the platform.

This is the counterintuitive power of the made-up name: you're not inheriting meaning, you're earning it. That's harder work upfront, but the result is a word that belongs entirely to you.

Skype: An Accident of Domain Availability

The original name was "Sky Peer-to-Peer." When Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis abbreviated it for their 2003 product launch, they got "Skyper." The domain skyper.com was taken. They dropped the R.

What's instructive here isn't the accident — it's what happened after. A meaningless five-letter word became globally recognisable within a few years, to the point where "Skype me" entered everyday language as a verb. No descriptive name could have achieved that. "InternetPhoneCall.com" was never going to become a verb.

The accidental quality of Skype's origin actually underscores something: the name's success had almost nothing to do with the naming decision. It had to do with the product and the timing. But the invented word didn't get in the way — and a generic, descriptive name might have.

Google: The Misspelling That Changed Everything

In 1997, Larry Page and his collaborators were brainstorming names for a search engine project. Sean Anderson suggested "googol" — the mathematical term for 10¹⁰⁰ — to convey the scale of indexed data. He typed it into a domain registrar as "google." Page checked, found google.com available, and registered it the same day.

The misspelling stuck. There's an argument that it was better for it. "Googol" is a technical term with an existing definition; "Google" belongs to no one except the company that named it. Twenty-five years later, it's a noun, a verb, and one of the most valuable words in any language.

What These Names Actually Have in Common

None of them describe what the product does. None of them were obvious choices. Most faced internal resistance — "it sounds strange" is the most common objection to invented names, and it was levelled at several of these.

What they share is phonetic credibility — they sound like they could be words, which makes them feel trustworthy. They're short enough to remember, distinctive enough to be unmistakeable, and they arrived as blank slates that the brand could fill with whatever meaning it earned.

That last part is harder to appreciate before you've tried to trademark "Photo Exchange" or buy the domain "QuickShipping.com." But ask anyone who has, and they'll tell you: the blank slate is a feature, not a limitation.

Eastman understood this in 1888. Mattus understood it — pragmatically, commercially — in 1960. The lesson hasn't changed.