It’s no secret that finding a good name for a company is no easy task. We’re not exactly blown away by Microsoft, IBM, Compaq. They have no imagination.

There are some names that aren’t too bad. Names that aren’t too clear about what they mean can be decent, because they sorta make you wonder. Adobe sounds kind of exotic and interesting. Amazon has just the right amount of familiarity and positive association. FedEx is extremely obvious, but somehow snappy all the same, it has just the right amount of consonants. In contrast, UPS is worthless. Intel is also pretty good, you don’t know where it comes from, but it’s a positive sounding word. Oracle is a name with potential, but the company profile is just so overwhelmingly boring enterprise that they could just as well be called BigYawn. One of the best names is Nero. It has an interesting historical association, plus it’s relevant to the function of the software.

The Web2.0 names are all pretty dumb. They don’t have that boring cubicle feel, instead they sound like cartoon strips. And most of them mean nothing, but in such a way that you know they mean nothing, there’s nothing to figure out. Which makes it dull. Like Google. Even if that meant something, would anyone care? No.

But if there’s one company that never gave it more than 2 minutes of thought, it’s the World Marketing Champion, Apple.

Apple — For the favourite fruit of co-founder Steve Jobs and/or for the time he worked at an apple orchard, and to distance itself from the cold, unapproachable, complicated imagery created by other computer companies at the time — which had names such as IBM, DEC, Cincom and Tesseract

What a useless name that is. It’s dumb at face value, and it’s not a pun that would keep your brain busy for 3 seconds. It’s just an apple. Even Nail would have been a better name, cause then you don’t know if it’s the body part or the construction tool.

For a company whose primary concern is image you would think they’d decide to change it at some point. Or can’t they come up with anything? Then again they’re not exactly known to break the bank for product names either. Apple Computer, Macintosh, Mac, eMac, iMac, MacPro, PowerBook (wow, everyone, a new adjective), MacBook, MacBook Pro, Mac mini, iPod (the most creative one so far). Then there is the software line where again they have spared no expense. iChat, iPhoto, iMovie, iWeb, iDVD, iLife. Yes, all products for creative people, you can really feel the ideas percolating.

And the latest? The iPhone. Boy, that must have been tough to invent.