Thursday, September 07, 2006


Brand names create global language looks at the presence of corporate names in multiple languages. Botton (in the article) says that it's good - that it's a way of developing a global language. Is it? Is that a good thing?

PARIS (Reuters) - Brand names have become so abundant that in France they account for two out of every five words an average person knows, according to a study being carried out by French branding company Nomen.

Shocking as that may sound, Nomen Chief Executive Marcel Botton says the trend is creating a new international language that helps people communicate in foreign countries.

"The distinction between brand names and ordinary words is becoming quite blurred," Botton told Reuters.


"This is bad news for companies that have invested a lot of money in branding a product, but for the general public I see advantages. Brand names are more international than words and they are creating a new Esperanto, which I rather like."


Esperanto, an artificial international language invented in 1887 as a second language everyone could learn, never took off.


Learning brand names, on the other hand, is subconscious, as names seep into our brains through advertisements and shopping.


English speakers use trademarks like Frisbee, Hoover and Walkman as ordinary words, causing some to spread abroad. France uses "Kleenex" for tissue and "Scotch" for adhesive tape.


"You hear people abroad asking for well-known brands of food or drink when they don't know the word in the foreign language. It's irritating for Coca-Cola when rival products are treated as the same thing but it makes people's lives easier," Botton said.


Botton, who created such company names as Vivendi, Wanadoo, Arcelor and Vinci, began testing people in August to see how many brands they recognised and how many dictionary words they knew.


"It crossed my mind this would be an interesting study, as it seemed people knew more and more brands and fewer words."


Botton's team chopped up the French dictionary -- which lists around 100,000 words -- into bitesize chunks which were read out to different people within a test group. A list of 20,000 brand names was also split into chunks and read out.


While the study is not complete, the results so far suggest the average French person knows some 3,000 words and is familiar with around 2,000 brand names on top of that -- suggesting that 40 percent of total vocabulary consists of brand names.


Botton said there were enough possible permutations of pronounceable one-, two- and three-syllable words to cover several billion new brand names.