Is our name that weird? 
July 10th, 2007
So I was working on a project today and I had to plug into the Google News API.. I tested it with our Company name and out came this article:
An Account Registering Frenzy – Sign up for Nothing (Jeremy Wagstaff)
The article essentially says that a big part of Web2.0 are the insane number of new services requiring registration.. we register, provide tonnes of personal data.. then forget about the service.. Now our idle account is sitting out there in a veritable boneyard of abandoned services.. So why was our name mentioned? Because the author was coming up with a list of silly-sounding Web2.0 names (of actual companies) and must have stumbled across ours at some point (I’m guessing from RobotReplay).
Is “Nitobi” really that wierd-sounding? I didn’t think so before now. Yeah ok it’s not an English word or compound-word like “Elastic Path”, or “Adobe”.. It’s not someone’s last name “Dell”, “Eaton’s”, etc. I don’t think anyone needs to defend it by pointing out the plenty of other silly names that have done just fine (hint: “Google”, “Yahoo”, “Flickr”, etc).
But why did we choose Nitobi?
First and foremost, we wanted a name that was:
- Short.
- Domain available.
- People can spell it / say it.
Meeting those criteria was hard enough. Next we wanted something that spoke to our team. We happen to be located in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia, home of my alma mater the University of British Columbia, where you will find the incredible Nitobe gardens– a Japanese botanical garden. We felt it was a symbol that represented a lot about who we are: a pacific rim city, and an outdoors-oriented bunch of people. We changed the ‘e’ to an ‘i’ to avoid bugging the real Nitobe gardens, and we had a name!
If anyone has any thoughts on our name or branding.. or on web2.0 names in general… would be cool to hear what they are!
BTW.. if you want a Web2.0 name generator: http://www.lightsphere.com/dev/web20.html
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 10th, 2007 at 3:19 pm and is filed under business, nitobi.com, branding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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July 11th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
I think Nitobi is a great sounding name and your approach and path to it makes totall sense. Surely with (argh) squatters registering anything using common english words, you have to get creative with your nomenclature, which indeed, has led to a vast regsitering frenzy of oddly spelled and curiously conceived brandnames.
When asked about the origins name of Zhonka! (a Washington State DSL provider i am partner in), we would say “it was the only domain name left.”
PS Remember Elastic Path used to be Ekkon (hard to spell, confusing to pronounce and carried meant little or no meaning). Elastic Path is much preferred me thinks.
July 12th, 2007 at 12:36 am
Alexei, I’m the author of the article in question. You’re pretty much right about how I came across the name, and probably among all the ones on offer I could have chosen better. It was a tongue in cheek piece, and certainly I was passing no comment on the product itself! (And SayZu sounds interesting, by the way.)
Jeremy
July 12th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
Thanks Jeremy. Oh for I appreciate the tongue and cheekiness. I think you’re actually bang-on about there being a bit of a problem with the sheer number of crazy startups requiring signups these days.. that’s one of the reasons I think universal login ventures like OpenID (http://openid.net/)and Sxip (http://www.sxip.com/) are really interesting.. You can manage one account for all your online services (potentially).
July 12th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
Dave – I actually really like your new name. “Elastic Path”. It has a good ring, its memorable, easy to spell, etc.
Zhonka – Broadband for $15? That’s crazy cheap!