Some names are easier to pull from memory because they break their category's pattern and because the mind retrieves real words more reliably than invented ones.
The naming mistakes that cost the most pass on launch day and send the bill months later. Here is each one, and the cheap check that catches it first.
Most names that fail were not bad names. They passed every test at launch and broke later, in one of four ways. Each mode, and the signal that predicts it.
Processing fluency is how easily a name moves through the mind, and the mind quietly trusts what moves easily. The science, and the levers that set it.
An invented word that means nothing became a verb for a category. The reason is in the sound, three soft L sounds, a doubled lu, and a name effortless to say.
A plain-English glossary of the science that decides how a brand name lands, sound symbolism, processing fluency, optimal incongruity and the rest, each defined with the research behind it.
The choice was never safe or polarizing. It is where your name sits on one curve, and the names that win break the category's pattern just enough to be noticed while staying easy to say.
Run a 60-second test on yourself, see why the effect has held for almost a century, then turn the two phonetic dials a founder actually controls.
Most naming guides chase the wrong target. Fifty years of linguistic research says polarizing beats memorable, and the sound a name makes does more work than the meaning. Here's what to do instead.