What’s in a (Brand) Name?
More Than You Might Think

by Kay Hafner

"Misuse of a trademark is serious business to businesses. If a company isn’t vigilant about upholding its trademark, the trademark can be revoked."

When you select a name for your child, your pet or a fictional character, you expect other people to learn the name and get it right—especially when it’s in print. Seeing your daughter’s name mangled in the school play program is as annoying as having a book reviewer refer to your main (male) character Trace as Tracey. Such errors are infuriating because they’re stupid and unnecessary. One more round of proofreading or an extra phone call to confirm the facts is all it takes to avoid trouble.

In this same way—but with more time invested and more money on the line—businesses search for names for their companies or products and they expect those who use those names to get it right. Right spelling and punctuation. Right usage. There’s no excuse for sloppiness. 

Right Spelling, Right Punctuation: As wordsmiths, we have as much responsibility to spot the extra letter in Plexiglass* as we do the proper use of it’s and its, or the need for a capital letter on Hanukkah. You wouldn’t send a query addressed to Writers* Digest or a story to Zooetrope*, so be equally careful when writing an essay singing the praises of Armand* Hammer baking soda or having a character order a Dr.* Pepper. If you write about using White-Out* to correct your mistakes, it’s like saying that Betty* Davis was a great actress. [*See below.]

Right Usage: Perhaps you’ve heard about nylon, linoleum and kitty litter? They all started out as trademarked brand names.  The death knell to a brand name is when it becomes a lowercase generic term. This, ironically, happens because the one or two-word brand name is so familiar and common, so succinct and to the point that we use it a shorthand for the whole category of products.  

While we think of brand names as proper nouns, because of their capitalization, the intent is for them to be adjectives. Wite-Out is one brand of correction fluid. Rollerblades are one brand of in-line skates. Velcro is one brand of hook and loop fasteners. Xerox is one brand of photocopiers. The trouble is, these products were almost too successful. Even after similar products came on the market, many consumers had already fallen into the habit of using the popular brand names as synonyms for the nouns they described.

 What To Do? 

Don’t blame your spellchecker, just check your spelling. Some brand names appear in computer dictionaries or your standard paper versions. It’s worth a try to start there first. If not, fire up your browser and type the word as you think it should be into your favorite Internet search engine. Many websites use misspellings as alternate keywords, so might just find what you need through this back door. 

One website I found to help in the search for proper spelling and usage is the International Trademark Association’s trademark checklist (www.inta.org/tmcklst1.htm). The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (www.uspto.gov) has an extensive searchable record of trademarked words and phrases called the Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS). It’s fascinating and comprehensive, but rather cumbersome. 

It’s hard to find something that's misspelled. If all else fails, perhaps a trip to the store will satisfy your quest. When in doubt and on deadline, at least find a way to mark your text, perhaps with brackets around the questionable word, so your editor knows you were at least trying to get it right. 

 Why All The Fuss? 

Yes, companies gain exposure and free publicity from even incorrect spelling and usage. Yes, many companies are willing to excuse minor mistakes as honest errors, as long as there is a correction and a promise to be more careful in the future. Yes, many such errors and mistakes are below the radar in terms of litigation. Is any of this reason enough to play fast and loose with brand names? Well, as the spouse of a lawyer I can tell you that lawyers eschew creative writing on the job and they have no sense of humor when it comes to their clients’ rights.  

Misuse of a trademark is serious business to businesses. If a company isn’t vigilant about upholding its trademark, the trademark can be revoked. Too many instances of lowercase "c" slipping by and Coke becomes just another generic word for a sweet concoction of brown sugar water.

One more interesting site I found is called the Database of American Proprietary Eponyms  (www.prairienet.org/~rkrause/brands.html), last updated in 1997 but a good source of trademarked names that are often taken for granted as generic nouns and misused in other ways.

Over the years I’ve seen various ads and articles in writing magazines about trademarks and they usually advise writers to use awkward phrases like "Kleenex brand facial tissue." I don’t know about you, but this extreme suggestion makes me reach for the bottle of Tylenol brand acetaminophen.  Even if you just do this on a first reference, it’s an unwieldy chunk of verbiage and, in my opinion, not very good writing. As I mentioned, lawyers don’t much care about aesthetics when it comes to such matters.

Try it if and when you can, but most of us probably agree that it's an insult to all that is beautiful and graceful in our language.

That said, I believe that we writers should be very concerned with this serious upholding of intellectual property rights. We own copyrights. We expect copyrights to be honored. Trademark infringement is a parallel problem in an overlapping universe. If we don’t honor the rules on that side of the playing field, we very well can’t yell foul when liberties are taken with our creations.

Why Bother?

With all these caveats and cautions, you might wonder why anyone would want to wander into the contentious territory of trademarked brand names at all. For one thing brand names can emphasize and underscore character traits, in both non-fiction and fiction:

The tiny bar had five beers on tap. Uncle Billy scoffed and shook his head as the waitress rattled off the names of four varieties from the local microbrewery. Then came an almost imperceptible nod at the mention of Budweiser. I fought hard not to suggest he try one of the new brews, especially my favorite, the honey porter. Uncle Billy didn’t want something new. He wanted something reliable. Something as reliable as his ’74 Crown Victoria. Something as reliable as the changing shifts at the mill. Something as reliable as Aunt Sally, who had never missed a beat in their 40 year marriage. Until now.

Such name dropping has to be done sparingly, though. It’s easy to overload on adjectives in general, and brand names are very potent adjectives. If you use them as a crutch because you can’t find the words to say something, don’t say it at all. Brand names should be little jewels to adorn your prose. Too many of them and it quickly turns gaudy:

Mira opened the door of the old, but sturdy, Maytag refrigerator to pull out the Purdue roasting chicken. While there she grabbed the vegetables, still in the white plastic Hannaford bag. With a Pampered Chef paring knife in hand she attacked Dole lettuce, hoping to work out her frustrations. It was no use. She and Gary were never going to work out. She looked at the Polaroid photo of him on the refrigerator door.  So cute in his Tommy Hilfiger shirt and Ray-Ban sunglasses. They’d met at Starbuck’s and broke up six weeks later outside a McDonald’s. It was a fast-food relationship with a very short shelf life. As she flicked her Bic lighter and watched the photo shrivel in flames in the sink, her Motorola cell phone came to life. The Caller ID showed Gary’s car phone number. Mira let it ring.

That’s an over-the-top example, of course, but it’s easy to see how just one brand name too many can turn your prose into a bad case of product placement or, worse, one big advertisement.

In nonfiction writing, especially essays or profiles, I think we all like the clarity and focus a specific brand name can bring to a scene. If a high roller at a casino asks for, and gets, Courvosier Cognac as he’s letting it ride at the craps table, it lessens the drama and uses more words to say he had some "top-shelf French brandy."