Brand equity: What's in a name?

NEWDELHI: A famous entertainer once joked that quite like the Rolls Royce he tooruns on reputation. That may or may not have been true for him but it certainlyis true for famous names revered worldwide as ''brands''. While there is lot ofresearch and marketing involved in building and sustaining brands, in case ofsome of the leading brands spontaneity did the job. They took shapemore on impulse. A company that just happened to invent a small transistor radiocalled it Sony from the Latin word ''sonus'' (sound) and the English word ''sonny''.This product line became so famous that the whole company was renamed, and therest, as is often said, is history. Pepsi, the poor man''s drink, got its namequite unsurprisingly. It was originally promoted as relief from dyspepsia, afancy name for indigestion. (''Dys'' is ''poor'' and ''pepsia'' is digestion inLatin).Coca-Cola was scripted into the flowing letters that make uptoday''s famous logo by founder Dr Pemberton''s bookkeeper. He got this idea fromCoke''s original formula of a cola nut ingredient and traces of cocaine. Coke wassold as a brain and nerve stimulating tonic then. Predictably, a lubricantoriginally based on a derivative of castor oil from castor beans started sellingas Castrol. Similarly, a cream for women needed a feminine name and what betterthan a feminine form of Latin ''niveus'' that meant snowy. Thus evolvedNivea.Volvo, the Swedish motor vehicle manufacturer founded in 1925by Gustaf Larson and Assar Gabrielsson, meant “I, Roll� in Latin.They started out by manufacturing ball bearings. At times, mythology inspiredbrands. Mazda got its name from Ahura Mazda or Ormuzd in Zoroastrianism, thespirit of the supreme good. Nestle''s Milo comes from a Roman athlete in Greekmythology named Milon who was famous for his feats of strength.Legend has it that he once carried a four-year-old bullock throughthe stadium in Olympia. When technology replaced myths, brands still workedwonders. Xerox got its name from Xerography which is an electrostatic method ofproducing images sans negatives or sensitised paper — a technologyinvented in the US by Chester Carlson in 1938.Motorolacame from ''motor'' and ''vitrola'' as the company produced car radios originally. Asearch engine that did not want to restrict itself to just a few billion choicesnamed itself Google. The mathematical term GooPitroda says he began working onit in 1994 and filed for a patent in 1996. gal is a very, very big number,literally with about a hundred zeroes after one.Amsterdam andRotterdam — the two important Dutch ports that have global presencethrough ABN (Algemene Bank Nederland) and AMRO (Amsterdam-Rotterdam Bank). Itwas an initiative of The Netherlands Trading Society established by Royal Decreeof King Willem I. The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Ltd,established in 1865 to finance the growing trade between China and Europe iswhat we famously know as HSBC. Closer home, brands like Dabur camefrom the modest doctor whom people affectionately called Daktar, Daktar Burman.This is much like Adolf Adi Dassler, who named his product Adidas after hisbrother founded a rival sportswear company, Puma.