In 1915, California farmers came together to change the name of avocado, a pear-shaped fruit with skin of pebbles and a large hole in it. They knew that the Aztec word, it was difficult for Americans to pronounce, and the Spanish version of the name, avocado, was equally difficult for them. The new fancy name which agreed, avocado, sounds vaguely Latin America, but avoids problems of pronunciation of English speakers.

California farmers wisely recognizes that a product is not familiar with the name of a family is hard enough in the market, and where it also has a name, sound whose patterns are unknown to the ears of the public, that is a barrier too successful.

Foreign names for companies or products sometimes very well in the American market. We also see a lot of pseudo-foreign names – created by misapplication of spelling patterns in foreign languages. For example, "Soleil" is French for sun. When a suntan lotion puts a circumflex accent mark over the "o" in "Soleil" that created false French. These names may appeal to those who have a superficial knowledge of foreign language – enough to recognize foreign implicit but not enough to identify your application as wrong.

Use the four items listed below to ensure that the brand and giving its name from a more foreign flavor to hold your creation with a name seriously disadvantaged.

1. Is the spelling to uncertainty? A Chinese appliance company using the Haier brand name for its Germanic involvement of technical quality. However, with spelling, an English speaker would pronounce it more or Hayer.

Similarly, imagine someone who is facing the brand name first Pricci. Can be thought of as an Italian name, but that still leaves open the possibility that must sound like a "sermon" or, as PREEsee – or even a blatant spelling of "expensive". Doubts about the pronunciation of advertising mouth word hurts.

2. Is there diacritics? These include accent marks, the umlaut (two dots over a vowel, common in German), o-bar in Danish and Norwegian, the tilde (squiggle that little extra "n" in a few words in Spanish) and many others. Sometimes these are added, It needed to be correct in the foreign language that is the origin of the name, and sometimes, as with the sunscreen with an additional circumflex, they are added only for the effect. Either way, the strangeness of the signal marks and do a slow reader and explore how to say the word.

Note that many people do not know how to type special characters. And on the web, some browsers and email readers not to interpret the special characters correctly. Accordingly, the names branded with the accents, circumflex, umlauts, tildes and O-bars often get killed for writing. (I have avoided their inclusion in this article for that reason.) If media coverage and bloggers to leave them out, then your brand becomes inconsistent.

3. The name seems totally prohibit writing to your audience objective? Not surprisingly, no one, as I write this, has not yet hooked the domain XuStore.com despite pronounced "Shoe Store" because the name of Xu (Hsu also written in another system of transliteration) flummoxed Westerners who do not speak Chinese. I understand that the common name of Vietnam, Nguyen nWEN pronounced, but that's one that many Westerners are faced for the first time, do not even dare to try.

A company name may also appear to prohibit foreign mainly because it is long and contains the syllables that have to be carefully probed. For example, both Kamehameha Comets, the name of a king of Hawaii, and Vneshtorgbank (a company Russian big now called Bank VTB), would give many Americans pause.

4. Is your target market no idea when it comes to foreign languages? A customer base that has traveled extensively and knows of one or two languages other than English generally has a hard-to-say the name of foreigners who stay more calm in the house of the population English-only people.

My advice is that a "yes" to more than one of the four questions indicates that too high a risk for appointment. Only a "yes", however, could be a great invention. Remember Haagen-Dazs? This premium ice cream brand has a major thrust of his false name Sweden. Despite the umlaut over the first "A" and curious alphabetical sequence, has only one pronunciation likely – and sophisticated, well aware of consumers took to it like, well, an exquisite pleasure.

Marcia Yudkin is Head Stork of Named At Last, a company that brainstorms catchy company names, product names and tag lines for clients around the world. For a systematic process of coming up with a snappy and appropriate new name or tag line, download a free copy of “19 Steps to the Perfect Company Name, Product Name or Tag Line” at http://www.namedatlast.com/19steps.htm.

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