What’s in a name?

One more time, from Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, act two, scene two:

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet…

On Thursday, CRMchump reported a story that read just like any other acquisition announcement running on this page weekly, but there was one vital difference.

March 15 saw one Consona Corporation officially closing its acquisition of KNOVA Software, Inc in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $47 million. Nothing different for this reader of dozen of press releases and online trade media until the line about Consona’s status as “the business formerly known as M2M Holdings, Inc.”

(Yes, at the time, CRMchump promised more on that particular aspect of the story by Friday’s end. Well, hopefully you’re down with the old saw “better late, etc. etc.” By the way, apologies, too, for not reporting the name change on the 8th; my newest daughter was newly born and i was off the blogging for a short while. Again though, better late…)

Now, “M2M” carries some weight. This company made a half-dozen acquisitions in the past eighteen months and turned in record numbers for growth in 2006. In fact, this “tremendous growth” is somehow what led to the name change: After the results were in, “the executive team at M2M Holdings Inc. decided a new name was needed to describe the unified vision behind its growing line of world-class enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management solutions. That’s why … they will officially rename their holding company Consona Corporation (Consona).”

A bit odd-seeming at first, the reasoning soon becomes clear, with Consona vice president of sales and marketing Tom Millay explaining that “M2M Holdings was never intended to be a widely-known name. We started the business with the Made2Manage product and … keeping the ‘M2M’ as part of the holding company name has caused confusion in the marketplace.”

Fair enough, but why “Consona,” exactly? After all, CRMchump is ever fond of aesthetically interesting company names, but this one is a bit … um … abstract, isn’t it? It’s a bit cold-leaving. One wonders, too: Is it “CON-sun-ah” or “con-SONE-ah”? This is not empirical from the spelling.

Consona CEO Jeff Tognoni went on to explain in the announcement that “the new name is derived from the concept of ‘consonance,’ which describes the perfect alignment of elements within a single entity.

Oh.

Um, should you really have to explain the meaning behind your company’s name? If so, should you really then have to give the definition of the word?

(Incidentally, a tight definition of “consonance” is provided by the Merriam Webster online dictionary: “harmony or agreement among components.”)

Tognoni went on to say that “We like the meaning because it emphasizes the aspects of our strategy that remain central to each line of business within the company. First, we strive to build high-fit software that closely aligns with the business processes of our customers. Second, we encourage our people to be similarly aligned in order to provide excellent service and support…”

So, why not “Aligna”?

(Surprise, surprise: www.Aligna.com is taken by a business consulting firm called AlignOrg. On the front page is a statement reading “Alignment is the harmony or congruence between the numerous organization choices and the desired results.” Kind of like “consonance,” actually.)

Over at a website called Vitamin – or possibly Think Vitamin – is a piece by Michael McDerment well worth your time, entitled simply “How to name your company.”

Far too extensive to be quoted at length here, McDerment sets some early (and easy to examine in CRMchump) guidelines on “Generating A Good Company Name.” The five main characteristics, according to McDerment, are:

1. It’s easy to remember.

2. It’s easy to spell and requires no explanation.

3. It describes your business category.

4. It describes your benefit.

5. It describes your difference.

Three more “constraints” that, writes the author, “I like,” include:

1. It has to be one or two syllables long – no more.

2. Each syllable starts with a strong consonant (B, C, D, G, K, P, Q, T).

3. It’s fun to say (”…that just rolls off the tongue”).

Examples that adhere to all of the above include Best Buy, PayPal and QuickBooks.

Meanwhile, “Consona” doesn’t fare too well at all; indeed, that’s an 0-for-8 from this informal list.

However, this represents just one list from one dude, listed as an “entrepreneur” on the site he writes for. Surely, back when it was M2M, the company employed a naming agency, an interesting industry in and of itself.

Check out the following part of the company description provided by The Naming Company (presumably named by itself, eh?).

“Using a Name Team™ of no [fewer] than ten experienced namers, we compile a master list of 600 names or more on a typical project. We then narrow it down to a manageable list of only the most memorable and marketable names to present to the client. Our turnaround time is just ten business days and the process is simple and painless.”

Similar organizations can be checked out at NameDevelopment.com, Naming.com, ad transfinitum.

Naming stuff: That’s what i want to do for a living. Is it too late for me to change careers…?