"WHAT'S IN A NAME...

….that which you call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”.
Now that’s the trouble with proverbial generalizations.
Mohavra No. 62 is often cancelled by mohavra No. 45. Now ‘two heads are better than one’ is countered by ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’.

But on the subject of brand names, life goes deeper than proverbs.
Let’s reflect on names that inhabit our lives - names given to children upon birth; names of retail brands, even names of food items or dishes.
And on a rainy Tuesday evening, one is tempted to start in the reverse order!
‘Ah food!’ when we say and stretch languidly, images flash first, followed closely by their names. A ‘butter chicken’ sounds like a chicken with gravy. ‘Fish Fry’ leaves little doubt on what it’s about. Once ‘bhindi’ is understood and ‘sabzi’ has been accepted to mean ‘vegetable’ (which must have itself been coined one day!), ‘bhindi ki sabzi’ is easy to fathom.
But where did ‘khichdi’ come from? Or ‘sub’? In fact what is so ‘french’ about ‘french fries’? All mysteries if you really consider, but does that make them less understood. Why did McDonald's not bother writing the word ‘burger’ in its name? Why did subway create a whole new type of sandwich or hotdog, likening it to a ‘sub-marine’, when it doesn’t have to be eaten under water! Why did ‘Papa Johns’ spring up all over America as a chain of Pizza outlets, with the word ‘pizza’ subsumed in the tonality of the name.
Now this is where the answer lies. Sometimes names lower the cost of marketing and multiply the effectiveness by focusing on the tone and not the rationale.

Imagine how it would be if every child who took birth was called ‘Child’ and maybe given a number say ‘1’ or ‘2’ and so on, with records maintained by the government. Actually, rationally speaking it would even help obviate the need for a census, or voter id cards!
But then names have a way of rolling on the tongue, seemingly meaningless but loaded with meaning, suggesting origin, striking a chord with those in the same cultural ecosystem, finding a flavour.

There are afterall two key qualifiers of consumer insight. One that it appears easy and obvious in hindsight, but was difficult to arrive in foresight, given its edgy and disruptive nature! And two, its abhorrence and rejection of proximate analysis (superficial logic) and adoption and seeking of the ultimate analysis (getting under the skin, almost like a root cause analysis, but behavioural and societal in nature)

Now there are many ‘Ritus’, ‘Amits’ and ‘Sanjays’, but they tend to be names of children who were born in India in a certain period of time. And that time is up. Today, ‘Sanjay’ has been replaced by ‘Ishaan’ and a surprising number of ‘trendy’ infants have been christianed such but will grow up to realize that when the class teacher calls out names, she might mention the rare name of ‘Ishaan’ some 8 times out of 50.

Coming back to food, what does ‘khichdi’ mean? My grandparents asked me to have it when I was unwell. The argument that ‘rice and dal’ were eaten otherwise too, fell on deaf ears! Call it ‘khichdi’ and it turns therapeutic! Call it ‘rice and dal’, and it is suddenly meant for healthily burping individuals. But then popular culture changes all. Afterall the khichdi, despite grandmother’s limited imagination, was quite tasty. Which is why, now upon growing up, when it confidently sits bang in the centre of an appetizing gujarati thaali, it acquires a whole new meaning.

A decade ago, Eicher launched the ‘Eicher City Map’ and while the company was discussing the ‘naming’, a conservative marketing viewpoint arose saying let’s not call it ‘map’ because maps are the large unwieldy fold-outs and this is in book form like the London A to Z, which goes to the extent of even giving house numbers. Vikram Lal the chairman then, had a simple counterpoint. He said that once the ‘Eicher City Map’ is launched, the meaning of ‘map’ would change! He was right. There are now two types of maps in India and Eicher is one of them. Like the khichdi!

The son of ‘Awdesh Kumar Singh’ now drops the ‘kumar’ and modernizes the ‘Awdesh’ to ‘Sameer’ and the resulting ‘Sameer Singh’, returns stylishly to his roots with cricketing support by naming his son ‘Yuvraj Singh’, who sheds his moustache and dons grey blue contact lenses. Remember light eyes earlier suffered rejection as ‘kanji aankhen’.
Consider this: McDonald's, a complicated name resonates with children.

The moral of the story - interesting names work best. Now that’s easily understood in hindsight, isn’t it?
Have a great dinner. Eat khicdi but drop a dollop of butter in it and tell the dietician that butter comes from milk. And ‘milk’ means ‘health’.