Wanderful: The Story Behind the Name

“Mickey Mantle needs a new name.”

That’s how I first heard about the assignment, when a colleague told me about his client named Mickey Mantle and his yet-unnamed interactive children’s book company.

To name a publisher, imprint an imprint, title a maker of titles; this would be a dream assignment.

The resurrection of an old brand would be the inception of this new one. Living Books, the products that created the category of highly interactive children’s books, was dormant for years. Broderbund was the original publisher and in a series of acquisition/mergers/spin-outs and ownership changes, Living Books ended up as the property of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Despite a decade of great success, new stories in the Living Books series were not released, and the software languished without updates to newer operating systems for PC and Macs.

Mickey Mantle, once Broderbund’s VP of Engineering/CTO and now an entrepreneur, struck a deal with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to re-publish the Living Books series, which includes about 20 individual stories each by a variety of noted authors, including Mercer Mayer (Little Monster), Marc Brown (Arthur), Jan and Stan Berenstain (Berenstain Bears), Dr. Seuss and others. For today’s kids, the assets from the original CD-ROM titles, like  graphics, animations, sound and music, would be used directly by a new technology platform developed by Mickey’s team running on iPads and iPhones, Android mobile devices, and current Mac and PC computers.

Once again, Living Books would live, but it would have to do so under a different name. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt allowed the Living Books content to be re-published so long as the Living Books name remained theirs. That required the new publisher to use a new moniker but could include an attribution that the stories were “originally published as a Living Book by Broderbund Software” and the display of a small Living Books logo accompanying the attribution. The new name would have to coexist and contrast with the former one.

The original Living Books logo

I interviewed the founders of the company: Mickey Mantle; his wife, Natasha Krol, a PR and marketing veteran; and Mark Schlichting, an expert in child education and language development, a children’s book author and illustrator, the creator of the hysterical, award-winning Noodle Words app, and the original creator of Living Books.

I learned from them that Living Books and its reincarnation were richer, deeper and far more interactive than other e-books. Every page of every title features a multitude of tappable elements. With a dozen or more things to do on each page, children linger longer. Their attention, knowledge and imagination are strengthened as a result.

The new brand had two key facets: education and play. Because education is sometimes framed as work – homework, schoolwork, et al. – I first believed these ideas stood in opposition. Indeed, the pedagogical foundation of Living Books 1.0 was rigorous enough that thousands of schools incorporated them and accompanying teaching aids into their curricula. Even today, some schools keep legacy Macs or PC systems around just to retain access to Broderbund’s wunderkind series.

In our discussion, Mark explained to me that play actually enhances learning. If kids have fun while learning, they will engage more deeply and eagerly with the materials. The new brand and its name would have to convey that these interactive books are both educational and fun in order to appeal to kids, parents and educators.

The new name would also have to stand out in the absurdly crowded iTunes and Android marketplaces (500,000 apps and counting). Presented with a list of hundreds of interactive book choices, the brand name needed to leap off the screen to catch the attention of a busy parent or impatient child.   

I wrote name objectives that assimilated and synthesized the interviews and background research into one page. With the criteria for name development and selection established, creative development could commence.

Quoting Maurice Sendak, who passed while this naming project was in development: Let the wild rumpus start!

The Internet was my creative playground. I discovered inspiration researching children’s words, vocabulary acquisition and development, “Dolch” words, fairy tales, games, verbs, exclamations, and children’s word play. Foundational words like fun, happy, laughter, tickle and learning were fed into corpora engines, word lists and other online naming powertools like Wordnik, Sketch Engine, and OneLook. Specialized children’s sites like Lanternfish supplemented my longstanding resources, as did primary research with my nieces and nephews. Watching the kids, who age from 4-7, play with a beta version of Living Books on my iPad demonstrated its power; they threw themselves into the stories and played with rapt attention.

Here’s a list of some of the creative searches I did online. Please consider this list a handy resource for your naming projects:

action verbs
animal sound verbs
baby talk
cvc words
double letter words
first verbs
first words
frequentative
fun words
funny laughter words
happy-happy joy-joy
i am talking
idioms for kids
idioms in education
laffterglow
language acquisition
language development
the first words that children learn
learning words
list of verbs
meanings pictures sentence list
movement-fast
movers and shakers
my dogs words
my little ponies
of imitative origin
onomatopoetic
phrasal verbs list
place names of distinction
potionbook
punkin words
rhyming words
songs
sounds
stragglers
that’s funny
time to be cute
verbs
verbverse
wander
wander rhyme
wonder
wonder rhyme
wordplay is child’s play for punsters
words my 19 month old daughter says
words used by or to young children

I also used Sketch Engine quite a bit. Here are some of the terms searched for this project. Bear in mind that Sketch Engine requires a paid subscription (well worth it!) and thus links will work only after you've logged in:

fun

book

laugh

learn

play

playful

smart

tickle

wander

wonder

These lists illustrate how different resources can be used to delve into one idea, and the surprising sources of inspiration that can come up when you’re freely exploring (my little ponies!). These offer glimpses into a naming mind.

 

The stories in Living Books are playful and multidimensional, and I strived to create names that were, too. Making frequent use of a specific creative technique – letter substitution – generated scads of such names. It’s the same method I used to name Fanhattan and BrainForest.

The words wonder and wander, being one letter apart, were already mingling. I researched all English words that contain wonder, and respelled those results with an a. Thus, wonderful became wanderful.

Wanderful is packed with paradoxes. It brings together many ideas, yet is perfectly simple. It is a new word that feels familiar. It is as surprising as it is comforting. Wanderful describes the books, full of joy and the invitation to explore. It describes the free-form play afforded by Living Books’ expansive and non-linear interactivity. It describes whimsy and curiosity, delight and enrichment.

After preliminary screening, Wanderful was presented along with 30 other candidates. The client team deliberated and chose Wanderful plus a few backup names for full legal vetting. Upon clearing, Wanderful was adopted as the final name.

The wonderful Wanderful identity designed by Wild Out West

The Wanderful icon, now available at an iOS app store near you!

It might be coincidence, or maybe zeitgeist, that the day before Wanderful was announced in June, the New York Times Sunday Review featured this passage in an article about presence and happiness:

“In a modern world, when can we come closest to our original, thought-free happiness? Well, the Harvard psychologists noted that, after sex, the two activities during which we are most fully in the present, are conversation and exercise. Rousseau saw this as well; but forget the treadmill: he lost himself in mountains and valleys and, while walking, conversed with himself. Indeed, ‘Reveries of the Solitary Walker’ is a manifesto on the benefits of wondering while wandering.”

The Wanderful brand launched ahead of the books themselves. Starting today, Wanderful Storybooks will be sold in the iOS app store for $4.99 each. Android and Kindle versions will soon follow

It’s a Wanderful launch party: Mark, Anthony, Mickey

Congratulations Mickey, Natasha and Mark: What a Wanderful world this will be!

Look for Wanderful on the iOS app store, Facebook, Twitter and on their home page.
 

Lytro, the Camera of the Future: Named by Operative Words

I've had the privilege of naming many innovative technologies in my career. But none have garnered the kinds of headlines that Lytro, a new computational photography company, has:

“Lytro Is the Camera of the Future" (CNET)
“Lytro: the ‘magic camera’ that's blown our minds” (CNET)
“Lytro Launches to Transform Photography with $50M in Venture Funds” (TechCrunch)
“Lytro’s Camera Lets You Shoot First and Focus Later” (New York Times)
“Lytro Camera to Shift Focus of Photos” (Wall Street Journal)
“Lytro Camera Lets You Focus Photos After You Take Them” (Wired)
“Camera Startup Promises a ‘Picture Revolution’” (Venture Beat)
“Lytro: The $50M Tech that May Change Photography Forever” (Fast Company)
“Lytro Changes the Way We Take Photographs” (CBS News)
“No focus, no problem! Out of focus pictures soon to go obsolete” (Examiner)
“The Making of Lytro” (K9 Ventures)
“The Future of Digital Photography” (PCWorld)

The list of headlines like these goes on and on.

When I was invited to name the company, then named Refocus Imaging, I could tell this was going to be a special project. The clients were fantastically brilliant, and there was great chemistry between us. My enthusiasm, which typically runs on the high side, was boiling over.

I was giddy over the opportunity to name the future of photography. Photography has always been near and dear to my heart: My father is a retired photographer and cinematographer, and I take pictures, too. I studied optics in college under David G. Stork, and, at Landor, named other photography technology (like Photoshop Lightroom and HP Instant Share). 

I can’t go into details about the strategy or alternative names I developed for Lytro, but I can say the project was dreamy from start to finish. Charles Chi, Lytro’s Executive Chairman, feels the same:

“Anthony was a pleasure to work with.  Very professional and effective.  I highly recommend him and would work with him again.”

Thank you, Lytro, for engaging me on this amazing assignment!

And congratulations to the Lytro team for their continuing success.

UPDATE: July 27, 2012
Sequence Branding, who designed the Lytro identity system, has posted a thoughtful piece about naming. They reference the Lytro naming and say a few kind words about yours truly. Thanks, Heather and the rest of the Sequence family!

UPDATE: July 8, 2011
The gratitude I expressed above is actually incomplete. Until now, I couldn't reveal my partner on the Lytro branding project. Now I can say, it’s Sequence Branding who hired Operative Words to create the name, Lytro. Sequence developed the brand strategy, the kick-ass logo and look and feel system, and the admirable tagline "Picture Revolution" for the company now known as Lytro.

Thank you, Sequence, for inviting me to collaborate with you on this once-in-a-lifetime assignment!

- Anth

Where are the most creative names?

This question was asked by a namer on the LinkedIn VERB forum:

Where do you think the most creative names are? Cars? Internet companies? Racehorses? My personal favorite is Boat Names...and here is a site with 10,000 of them. What are your favorites?

It's an interesting question. Pondering its answer has led me to some interesting observations and conclusions.

First, what's creative? I'd venture that creative here, as elsewhere, means unexpected juxtapositions. So any name will be creative if either:

(1) the name itself is an unexpected juxtaposition of sounds, words or word parts
(2) the name is a real word applied to an unexpected context.

Thus:

It is by virtue of their essence or referent that names are creative.

Browse through a list of products for kids and you'll find lots of names that are intrinsically creative. Rhyme, alliteration, reduplication and letter substitution all lend a fun, playful and off-beat bent. These same techniques are used, for better or worse, as web-based company names.

These child-like brand names are creative by their construction, rather than their context:

Bugaboo
Chuck E. Cheese
Tinker Toys
Etch-a-Sketch
Lincoln Logs
Balloon Lagoon
Cadoo
UmBongo
Juicy Juice
Hannah Montana

Names for web-centric companies, driven by the perceived need for an available dot com domain, can also be creative by construction. Many are...but to a fault.

Joost
BooRah
Meebo
Squidoo
Bebo

I discuss the pitfalls of these types of names in The Washington Post.

Brand names can be creatively constructed without being silly:

Sony
Tivo
Kodak
Pantene
Centrino

Here are some I've developed:

Wanderful (interactive storybooks)
Chemetry (safer, cleaner chemical production)
Lytro (the world's first commercial light field camera)
Brainforest (idea development software)
Flying Spoons (Embassy Suites casual dining restaurant)

I am particularly fascinated by creative names which are not born creative, but become creative when thrust upon a product unexpectedly. Names that are metaphors or borrow from far-flung domains tickle our imagination and offer layers of meaning that simple wordplay can't match.

For example, Sanctuary would be an expected, uncreative name for a spa. But as a name for ultra-powerful security software, Sanctuary is quite creative.

There are entire categories of products that, by their nature, demand creative names. As a general rule:

Products that defy literal or objective description have creative names.

Consider perfumes.

Perfumes are ethereal. Their scent is chameleonic, as variable as skin. Perfumes are subjective. Their names are rarely descriptive. Instead, they boast attitude, exude mystique and incite with provocations.

Perfume names are creative because they are arbitrary. A rose-imbued perfume called Rose would not smell as sweet as one named Eden or Chianti or Renoir.

I think Kane would be an excellent name for rose-scented perfume.

Here are some creative perfume names:

Joy
Opium
Obsession
No. 5
Grey Flannel
Poison
Envy
Happy
Chance
Mania
Flowerbomb (though rather descriptive, this succeeds because it confidently yet imaginately flaunts category convention)

Wines are also ripe for creative naming. Like perfumes, their beauty is subject to the beholder. The relationship of the liquid in the bottle to the name on the bottle is mostly arbitrary.

I like these names:

Conundrum
Earthquake
Lost Vineyard
Lolita
Incognito
Anomaly
Summer in Napa
Frog's Leap (the cork says "ribbit")
Layer Cake (a suggestive name that's marvelous)

I gave a winery the name Scribe. Though in and of itself interesting, it's this name's potential to inspire great packaging, merchandising and promotions that really excited my clients.

Cheeses and cocktails, like wine, perfumes and other hedonic products, also lend themselves to creative names. Cocktail naming holds a special place in my heart. My very first professional naming gig was in 1989 at Waxman Wool Advertising in San Jose, naming cocktails for the Hotel de Anza. Oh, how I'd love to see my first naming list from 20 years ago.

Like other things that defy description, band names are invariably creative. I recently bought All Known Metal Bands, a hard-backed, black-clad tome listing thousands of heavy metal band names. Each name offers a different perspective on the dark side of humanity.

Some choice morsels:

Fatal
Rancid
Rupture
Organ Harvest
Kreditor
Ravine
As I Lay Dying
Sarcoma
Made in France
Totem
Lady Winter
Nightfall

I named a friend's band, Marrow. Their music isn't metal, but it is dark. If you're the kind of person that prefers Fuck You, Penguin to Cute Overload, you'll want to give them a listen.

Perfume, wine, cheese, cocktail and band names are categorically creative because of the arbitrary relationship of name to product. There are exceptions, chiefly those that follow very traditional naming conventions. The name of the source, whether person (winemaker, cheesemaker, perfumer, guitarist, celebrity sponsor, etc.) or place (district, appellation, region, farm, etc.), or ingredients makes an obvious, indistinct, uncreative, fall-back moniker.

To wit (or lack thereof):

Dave Matthews Band
Beringer Wines
Rum & Coke
Napa Valley Vineyards
California Premium Cheese
Chateau Lafitte
Carlos by Carlos Santana

There's one category of creative names that's not just arbitrary, but intentionally obfuscatory: code names.

Code names deliberately hide what they refer to. Companies use code names internally for products in development. Some companies have established nomenclature systems for theirs. Intel code names their chips based on "geographical names (since they can never be trademarked by someone else) of towns, rivers or mountains near the location of the Intel facility" (Alviso, Klamath, Covington, etc.). Apple used cats as code names for versions of its operating system; the cat is incorporated into the official product name (Panther, Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard, etc).

Though it typically begins life as a ruse to obscure, a code name will become part of a company's everyday lingo as it's used by employees and becomes familiar to them. When typed in emails and product specification sheets, and uttered in hushed tones around the water cooler, the code name sheds its strangeness. And, as observed by fellow namers in this article, "a popular code name can help engineering teams build an emotional attachment to the product". When it comes time to brand the product for the real world, the code name might be the most compelling name in consideration.

One unintended benefit of code names is that, by virtue of their arbitrariness, they are also likely be clear as trademarks.

Code names can actually make great go-to-market brand names:

• They are arbitrary and don't directly refer to a product's features or design. They won't age or become outdated like feature-based names.
• Code names are often based on imaginative metaphors. They can trigger many personal associations and thereby foster an emotional bond.
• They are often free to use as a trademark.

This is why a code name will sometimes be adopted as the final go-to-market name. These brands started as internal code names:

Saturn
In the 1980's, the Big Three were fighting Japanese car makers for dominance of the US market. GM believed their struggle was analogous to the U.S.-Russian space race three decades prior. In that spirit, GM executives code-named their new product initiative Saturn, inspired by the Saturn V rocket that first brought man — a U.S. man — to the moon. A vehicle called Saturn won the space race; maybe it could win their race too. A different kind of car name was a great way for GM to demonstrate this would be "a different kind of company, a different kind of car". GM recently shuffled off the Saturn brand. It's been bought by the Penske Automotive Group.

Ford Taurus
I have heard, though can't find the original source, that the name Taurus was inspired by astrology. Two people working on the project discovered each others' wife was a Taurus. Despite its basis in astrology, and regarded as a pseudoscience or superstition by many, the Ford Taurus became one of America's best-selling cars.

Apple Macintosh
Yes, another code name.

As a namer who has faced the challenge of selling-in arbitrary names, the success of code names encourages me. A name that would be difficult, if not impossible, for me to rally an executive team around, stands a better chance if it sneaks by through the subterfuge of a code name. The exposure effect makes the client more and more comfortable with the name over time. Thus what was once arbitrary may become inevitable.

It would be instructive if my clients gave me a list of possible code names for whatever I'm naming. I should try that sometime.

Results are not always rosy when a code name is revealed to the public. One notorious example has changed how many high-profile companies choose theirs:

Apple meant no ill-will when its Power Macintosh 7100 was code-named Sagan. They chose Carl Sagan because his trademark catchphrase, "billions and billions", reflected their hopes for astronomical revenue. But the astronomer took offense, perhaps because other Apple code names included an anthropological hoax and a scientific pariah (Piltdown Man and Cold Fusion, respectively). Sagan sued Apple and lost. Apple, none too happy it was sued, then changed the product's internal code name to BHA, for Butt-Head Astronomer. Sagan sued again and lost. The Apple team finally changed the internal code name to LAW, Lawyers Are Wimps.

The lesson for companies is that if a code name leaks, litigation or embarassment could ensue. Code names are not be chosen lightly.

An instance of an ill-chosen military code name was Operation Infinite Justice, the U.S. Department of Defense's named response to the 9/11 attacks. Muslims took offense to the name, believing that only Allah can mete out infinite justice. This code name, it was thought, would make the military's job harder, so it was quickly changed to Operation Enduring Freedom.

Military "code words", like those in the private sector, are also creative though they are constructed using a prescribed, regimented methodology and approved set of source words. I wonder if the name Operation Infinite Justice followed the Department of Defense guidelines, or if it was created ad hoc?

This page details Department of Defense code name, nickname and exercise term nomenclature. Fellow verbivores will salivate over the Code of Names Handbook (pdf) which lists all two-word code names prior to 1983.

Here are some creative examples. Some seem fitting; others ironic:

Beartrap: USN, classified anti-submarine aircraft program
Big Belly: Conversion program to enlarge conventional bomb load of B-52Ds, 12/1965-
Big Stick: A new Navy bomb-carrying canister for use on A-4, A-6 and A-7 attack aircraft
Blow Hole: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency effort connected with target location and identification
Cold Flare: Study of solar flare activity at high altitude, in preparation for polar or high-altitude supersonic flights
College Girls: High level intercept activity against U-2
Face Lift: An Air Force recovery procedure
Idealist: CIA codename for development of U-2
Ranch Hand: Operation, spraying of more than 18 million gallons of 'Agent Orange' and other herbicides from UC-123s over South-Vietnam, 1962-1971

So, where are the most creative names?

Products for kids
Web-based companies
Perfumes
Wines
Cocktails
Bands
Code names

Find lists of those things and you'll find the most creative names.

The case for coining

I argue with myself.

I just can't help it. When a problem needs to be solved -- like which name I should recommend to a client -- I'll look at every angle of each proposed solution in light of its objectives. Each of their strengths and weaknesses grapple tooth and nail for supremacy as The Optimal Answer.

It's a bit like professional wrestling but without the leotards -- or the predetermined outcome.

I take comfort knowing there are others like me who, in their efforts to solve a problem, argue with themselves.

I learned this as part of my participation in a Center for Creative Leadership program, where I was assessed for my Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. This well-established (though sometimes questioned) personality test determines a person's specific personality type. According to the theory of MBTI, all six billion people on the planet Earth fall neatly into sixteen personality types.

Me? I'm an ENTP:

Extroverted (not Introverted)
iNtuition (not Sensing)
Thinking (not Feeling)
Perceiving (not Judging)

ENTPs are The Innovators, The Originators, The Lawyers, The Explorers, and The Visionaries.

They also play The Devil's Advocate.

Although a person's MBTI is codified as a pat, four-letter word (like ENTP or ISFJ), there is actually a continuum along each dimension. A numeric score along this continuum reflects the degree to which one is Extroverted or Introverted, Thinking or Feeling, and so on.

It turns out, I'm unusually compelled to argue and objectively consider all sides of an argument.

My own MBTI test revealed that I am almost 100% Thinking, having scored a 59 out of 60 along the Thinking-Feeling continuum. This reflects that I'm governed by head more than heart. I'll always follow the logical, objective, fact-based path over the one that makes me (or others) just feel good.

And so, here I go again in typical ENTP fashion, arguing with myself.

As I wrote in Real words make better brand names, I believe that real words rich with meaning generally offer advantages over made-up words like Kodak.

I also noted that coined names are not utterly bereft of benefits. In the spirit of devil's advocacy, I'd like to build on that and go further into the benefits of coined names and share what makes for a good coined name.

Distinctiveness
A coined name is more likely to jump off the page than one that's a product-relevant, real word. Humans are hard-wired to notice things that are different, so a word you've never seen before stands out.

Trademarkability
Made-up words are more likely to be available for trademark clearance than a real word.

Domain Availability
Online companies gotta have that dotcom domain name. That's why so many have adopted misspelled real words or entirely made-up ones.

Flexibility
Coined names are less likely to reference a specific feature or function than real-word names. Coined names, being more ambiguous, can withstand changes in a company's or product's features, benefits and positioning.

International Appeal
In non-English speaking markets, they generally prefer non-English names. The projects I've directed throughout Asia, Europe and the Mideast revealed to me that, for those audiences, the sound of a name is more important than what it means. Euphony often trumps semantics in non-English speaking countries.

Consensus Building
It's easier for a group to agree on a name that means nothing. Names that are real words will trigger associations, and those associations can become liabilities when picked apart by a large or risk-averse group.

It's no accident that big branding agencies like Landor and Interbrand have a lot of coined names in their portfolio. They attract large, risk-averse clients that have large decision-making teams. There's often someone in the room who "poisons the well" by sharing their own negative, albeit subjective and idiosyncratic, reaction to a real-word name. Large companies also tend to research names to death by using focus groups.

Like I said, it's easier for a group -- any group -- to agree on a name that means nothing.

Given these benefits of coined names, why do I still generally recommend real, meaningful English words to clients?

• Real words, especially "arbitrary" ones such as Apple, Amazon and Feather, can be just as distinctive, trademarkable and flexible as coined names.
  
• They are more memorable than coined names. Words that trigger emotions or images are particularly memorable.
• Because they are easier to recall, real-word names are more likely to be shared with others by word-of-mouth.
• They can inspire marketing campaigns, product and feature naming and messaging. Names that don't mean anything won't do this, unless it's just to clarify how to pronounce their name. Take a bow, Geico and Aflac, for turning your lemon names into lemonade.
• Thanks to their superior memorability, shareability and campaignability, arbitrary real-word names are cheaper to build than coined names. [I'd love to see those differences quantified. Any ideas?]
  

Coined names still hold an advantage over real words in their appeal to non-English speaking markets, and they are easier for large and risk-averse companies to stomach.

So, let's pretend you're a Fortune 500 company and you're planning to spin-off a big division that will focus on international markets. I'd suggest you include real-word brand names in your mix of name candidates along with coined names.

Up to now, I've painted coined names with a broad brush. But in truth there are good coined names and bad coined names.

What makes a good coined name? In a word: Naturalness.

A natural coined name is one that follows a language's naturally-occurring phonetics (individual sounds), phonology (how those sounds are organized) and morphology (how words are formed). The trick here is that languages differ in these dimensions. If your brand name is going to be marketed to Chinese, German, Hindi, Japanese, and Arabic speakers, you have to aim for a lowest common denominator, linguistically speaking.

Here are a few tips:

• Avoid stringing consonants together, as many languages disallow that in their phonology. In Japanese, for example, the name Hasbro is pronounced "ha-su-bu-ro". The brand Adidas, formed from its founder Adi Dassler, will be pronounced the same the world over. It has a universally-natural "open" syllable structure of alternating consonants and vowels.

• When combining morphemes (salient word parts) to create new words, use the same source language. A Greek morpheme should be paired with another Greek morpheme. Mash together morphemes from different languages and the resulting name might feel contrived. Compare Interbrand (Latin+Anglo-Saxon) to Lenovo (Italian+Italian). Interbrand, who actually created the name Lenovo, served their client better than themselves.
  

• Pair prefixes with roots, or roots with suffixes. A name that combines prefixes, roots, or suffixes in ways that don't naturally occur will feel contrived. The name InBev unnaturally combines the prefix "In" with the first part of the word "beverage". There are no English words that have "bev" in the middle, so InBev feels unnatural. Another example: Compare Aricent (unnatural) to Lucent (natural). Aricent is based on "arise" plus "ascent", but "ari-" is not a real prefix. Lucent, on the other hand, is built from the productive Latin root "luc-" (meaning light) and the "-ent" suffix, also from Latin and also a common suffix.

• Consider your consonants. Brand names with phonemes that don't naturally occur in other languages will be pronounced differently, with an accent. This is not disastrous, but it's something to be mindful of. It's well-known that "l" and "r" are pronounced the same in some Asian countries, so "Red Hat" sounds the same as "Led Hat". In Japanese and Spanish "v" is pronounced "b". The sounds "th" and "sh" are fairly uncommon, so those will change, too.

Here's the story of Lululemon, a brand name that was specifically created to sound foreign to its target audience:

It was thought that a Japanese marketing firm would not try to create a North American sounding brand with the letter “L” because the sound does not exist in Japanese phonetics. By including an “L” in the name it was thought the Japanese consumer would find the name innately North American and authentic. Chip [the company founder] felt that the distributor had paid a premium for the “L” [in their original name, Homless] so he challenged himself to come up with a name that had 3 “L’s” for his new company.

• Use a real foreign word. Back in the day, I gave the name Kanisa to a "knowledge management" company. The word comes from an African language called Lingala and means "you must think". It has no obvious meaning outside of central Africa, but the story behind the name is relevant and it's easy to say the world over. And Samsung might seem made-up, but it's actually Korean for "three stars". Like the trademark attorneys say, "What's arbitrary to one man is fanciful to another". [OK, they don't really say that, but perhaps they'll start.]
  

• Try swapping out just one letter of a known word. Zune came from "tune" and Viagra from "Niagra".

There are other coining techniques you can find here.

Keep in mind the principle of naturalness and your coined brand name might not turn out half-bad.

At least, that's what I'd argue.