Koo Sun-mo
Desk of International and Social Affair
smo009@hanmail.net

Do you know the name of a cool drinkÑ2%? Then, have you ever thought about how the name was given to it? There is a special reason that when your body lose 2% of water, you feel thirsty so the name of the soft drink, 2%, was made. As a result, it makes you think about 2% whenever you are thirsty.

Like this, when you give a name to some newborn products, you are doing something that can give a special flavor to the product. You will find facts about in this month issue of The UOS Times the brand namist who make peculiar names.

Brand namist is...

A brand namist is a person who makes names of products or companies. It is a derived word from name+ist. The brand namist makes unique names which can be remembered easily by many consumers. To be strict, however, the brand namist is not simply a christener. Although their final outcome occurs in one single name, but in order to coin the name they have to consider diverse characters of the products and market environments. So they are called brand makers.

What the brand namist do...

Brand namists make and study names such as brand names and service brand names, and complete all the naming process, let alone brand names. For example, famous names such as Dreamsys, TTL, and Judie are made by brand namists.

Naming process is as following. First when clients claim for names, namists do interviews with them and grasp their distinctive features. Then, they do the market analysis, study the related data, and compose particular names of its own products.

There are small number of namists in Korea.

In the past, the brand name was important but at that time, it was only for company’s name and did not mean many things. Nowadays, however, naming becomes so important that professional namists are emerging in our society.

There are just small number of namist here in Korea. Until now, about 400 namists work in 40 companies. On the other hand, in foreign countries, brand naming has appeared as a high quality industry and the number of namists are very large since 1960s.

How to prepare ...

If you want to be a brand namist, you have to have extraordinary ideas, skills for copy writing, and capacities of emotional and linguistic sensibility. The Names have to be fresh and sensitive so that they can be easily remembered by others. Moreover, it is better to have diverse fields of knowledge, creativity, sharp eyes and marketing skills.

Brand name no longer means a simple name, but it directly relates with profits so one who studies marketing theory is more favorable. Until now, there is no need of qualification for special major or certificates for namists but some majors are required for them like linguistics, business adminstration and advertisement. Linguistics teaches students the way languages are made and arranged elaborately so it can be helpful.

Students who studied business administration or economics know technical terms, marketing and environments and analysis of marketing. As for ads, brand is essentially ads and learning ad can be really useful.

Although you do not study these courses, you can be a competent namist if you have much imagination and basic knowledge of christening. It can be also good to study books on brands and naming and get plenty of knowledge and common senses from their reading.

The Brand name is no longer simply a packing of products, but is related with profits directly so that the name influence sales. Therefore the brand name will become powerful and influential and the need for namists will be growing dramatically.

In Korea, some Web sites open nowadays. They are namist, brandreport, powerbrand and etc. You can get more information there.
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