What’s in a name? Quite a bit, when it comes to businesses and products, says Christopher Johnson, aka The Name Inspector, a Seattle-based consultant who helps companies create names that indelibly brand their products and services.
Johnson, who earned a doctoral degree in linguistics, got into the name game by working for a naming company while earning an undergraduate degree. In graduate school, he worked part time for Lexicon Branding Inc., which helped develop such well-known names as Pentium, PowerBook, OnStar, BlackBerry, Dasani, Febreze and Swiffer.
At Lexicon, Johnson honed his craft by writing name descriptions for clients, in which he’d explain
