Ensure your company lives up to its name

We name our children, pets and homes hoping they will live up to these names. In this, of course, nature, nurture and chance do their magic to make the name and qualities denoted meet - or not. So, a Sushant could well be unusually restless, a Noor exceptionally dim. But when naming companies, the name is supposed to be endowed with the entity's qualities - whether it's Google, from 'googol' (1 followed by a 100 zeros), or Reliance, that exudes qualities one can rely on. But, sometimes, some folks get this terribly wrong. Take US investment app company Robinhood founded by Baiju Bhatt and Vlad Tenev in 2013. Their intent in naming it after the English folk hero-outlaw was, in their own words, to 'democratise financing'. But even as 'stealing from the rich and giving to the poor' was not Bhatt and Tenev's business model, Robinhood now finds itself mirroring its looted-booted name. It's been settling lawsuits this year for outages restricting its customers from trading, as well as for 'hacking' customer accounts in 2020.

Charactonym is the term for the naming of fictional characters that suggest distinctive traits they possess in the name themselves - like 'Robbin' Hood'. Click here to see the list of 10 charactonyms compiled by economictimes.com. Why don't you add names of characters (or companies) to this #nameshavequalities roster? And choose your company name wisely.