What’s the significance of Signify? In this name review, Alex Kelley of Catchword digs into this name change for Philips.

Here’s a sample:

Signify is retaining the Philips brand for their products, like Philips Hue. You may have heard of this colorful, smart-home enabled lights platform, which is perhaps the greatest innovation in home ambience control since the dimmer switch.

The company has well over a hundred years of name equity, the products are retaining the Philips name, and, aside from GE, Philips is the most recognizable brand in bulbs … so why make the change?

Click through to read the rest!

Over the past few years, a crowd of new companies has emerged across tech, finance and health—all sporting a first-name brand. “Oscar,” “Alfred,” “Lola” —they have the look and feel of a friend, a colleague, maybe even your cat. And that’s the point: Make a connection with consumers that even Dale Carnegie would appreciate.

The strategy seems to be working. Research shows that the more simple and human-sounding the name, the greater the company’s success. Brands with short, easy to pronounce names were viewed more positively by investors, a 2012 study published in the Journal of Financial Economics found. By reducing name length by just one word, companies can see a boost of 2.53 percent to their book-to-market ratio—a formula used to find the market value of a company—or $3.75 million for a medium-size firm, according to the study.

Check out this article at Bloomberg.com about the trend in personal names in startups!

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex leaves Windsor Castle in the Ascot Landau carriage during a procession after getting married at St Georges Chapel on May 19, 2018 in Windsor, England. (Photo by Karwai Tang/WireImage)

On Saturday, May 19 2018, Meghan Markle married into the monarchy, bringing her misspelling and all. She will begin signing letters as “Meghan,” and the spelling will spread as children get named after the Duchess. The name historically acquired an “H” when the Welsh name was confused with Irish ones.

The first Megan hardly died 50 years ago, but parents have gotten straight to the business of misspelling it. Megan Lloyd George (1902 – 1966) was the first woman MP in Wales and the daughter of a British Prime Minister. Before her birth, the name was merely a nickname for Margaret, but her parents made it a first name itself, according to the ANS’ own Cleveland Evans:

He explained authors confused Megan with the Irish last names Meighan and Mehegan, and in 1977, a character by novelist Colleen McCullough brought the mothership: Meghann.

Click through to this article at Macleans, written by Meagan Campbell, to find out more!

Accent marks are missing in place names all over the Bay Area. Many neighborhoods and streets are named after Spanish explorers. Some of those names once had accent marks. But now, without them, we don’t know if we’re saying them right. In this news story at KALW, you can listen to the different ways residents pronounce the name of their neighborhood in San Francisco. 

And find out about the history of San Francisco’s Portola district. Don Gaspar de Portola was a Spanish explorer. Historians believe he discovered the San Francisco Bay in the 1700s. He was also the first Governor of Spanish-ruled California, before it was a state.  After the miners struck gold and San Francisco rapidly grew, most people living here didn’t know about Portola. And those that did, forgot about him. How did a neighborhood end up named after him?