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Comment by chaz | Hacker News Reader

> exhibiting no common sense or creativity

I think it makes perfect sense to name products with words that exist (like "Sprite", "Mustang", and "Tide"), or a compound word made up of 2+ words. Making up new words ("Pepsi", "Camaro", and "Clorox") can be a lot more risky, especially if it's a consumer brand.

What would you have named Facebook Paper instead?

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I don't even know what Facebook Paper is and don't care. However as you mentioned, compounds, even of the simplest kind, are a GREAT idea. The important thing is that, even if you lack the common sense or creativity, it is completely and fully unreasonable to not expect someone else to make the same bad decision. Open letters, heartfelt emotional addresses and displays of surprise are not a thing that should happen and instead, if one feels the need to go ahead and use one of the top 300 english words, one should be fully prepared for legal battles ahead.

In short: Hire a gaggle of lawyers before using any of these verbatim: http://simple.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Most_frequent_1...

Compound words can cause the same consumer confusion, which is why I don't see it as any different from one word. You'll definitely get a call from corporate counsel if you launch a truck called the F-151, a burger named the Huge Mac, or an energy drink named Blue Bull. Naming things is hard.

You're confusing things here, this is about the reaction to someone else introducing a product named the same, or similar to your own badly named product. You're describing the situation where one is the person who does the introduction of the second product. Related, but different things.

"Coming soon: Baby by Google!"

iPaper? Wait, that's what Apple will call their version. Facebook should have gone with Notebook (a paper product ending in book) :).

ThePaper

Fapper

Pages, they're what books are made of.

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