Does Collanos Make Sense?

[Gil Heiman]

Not that we will change our company's name, but we are curious...

[beaubien]

Wow, to be blunt, not really. I recognize that "unique but meaningful" names, especially within the context of a "globe chock full of languages", is a deep and wide subject. Changing the name of a company is expensive and often you will loose critical brainshare doing so.  (As in I wondered why AT&T gave up its 100 year old name ... whoops now they are back). How about considering just changing the name of the product, and keeping the name of the company?

A couple of asides: Be careful what you wish for: We use a CMS tool called Mambo, for our web site which changed it's name to Joomla. I just bought a 2006 book on Mambo at the local bookstore. I personally think these guys moved in the wrong direction, Mambo was cool, but Joomla is hard to say and is meaningless. Also, there is a concept called branding, as in "you don't need. or even want, your product name to be the company name." It pigeon holes you. Imagine if Microsoft was "Operating Systems-R-Us"?

We also had a nice email/fax/voice integrated voice mail system called Callware, and that company re-branded the product as "Collabra" ... and went under. So be careful, I'd advise you tread lightly.

[purplebooks]

I don't get the name but I don't understand Amazon either. I think the product is more important than the name. (I think Engelbert Humperdinck showed that.)

[csummers]

No, don't like the name what-so-ever.  Nearly everyone that I've introduced the product to has the following reaction - "Collanos ? ...what does that mean?  And now it's just a total joke.  Here are some of the way it's referred to:

Colonoscopy
Colon-2-Colon
C-2-C
Peer-Colonic

And the most interesting, was when one new user after waiting for hours to get connected and online ...immediately IM'd everyone saying "hey! my colon is now online". 

At least with Groove, you could make some cool references ... "I'm groovin today", "get your groove on", "I'm in a groove", ... or "groove this!" 

So no, the name doesn't make sense.  Does it have to ...nope ...sure doesn't.  But it helps if it does.

/Clint