Re: [atlarge-discuss] 006 Deciding Name for Organisation

[**star*walker** <starwalker@swva.net>]

Friday, August 09, 2002 * 12:56 PM EDT USA

At 07:07 AM 8/9/2002, eric@hi-tek.com wrote that Richard Henderson wrote:

> www.TheVoiceofThePeople.com
How about www.TheVoiceofThePeople.us  ???

We need to be sensitive to what translations from English into other 
languages will be of any name. Car manufacturers have gotten into a lot of 
trouble and expense in naming their models.

www.TheVoiceofThePeople.us (or some such similar) should help us avoid 
something like that. Catchy English acronyms are likely to get us into 
trouble if they have directly translatable equivalents in other languages.

Actually the initial "The" is unnecessary in the above formulation. Before 
adopting such we would have to be absolutely 100% sure that's in fact what 
we would be in the largest, broadest and absolutely democratic sense

Otherwise we'll be no better than the incredible number of named 
organizations whose names cleverly signify the exact opposite of what they 
are, serving only to market and co-opt the real thing. The outstanding 
example is all those places named "The People's Republic of..." I don't 
know a one that is (or has been) democratic, republic meaning "governed by 
representatives of a widely based electorate."

On the other hand consider the complete meaninglessness (initially, until 
they tarnished themselves) of the names Exxon (they paid $6 million bucks 
to come up with that name, changing from Humble Oil) and Enron.

Tis a bit of a minefield to be carefully stepped through.

Finally, we ought to keep in mind Steve Case's (AOL) mantra: "Market share, 
market share, market share!" That's all he ever wanted. The rest followed 
and is legendary history now.

The same is true for us, though with quite a different goal than Mr. Case.

/s/ Joey