A Multi-angle Study On Brand Names

As we all know, almost everything in this world has a name. Sometimes a good name can really help a lot. This is especially true to products. In most cases, a good name can greatly promote the sales of the product bearing the name. On the contrary, a bad name can hurt the sales of the product. If two products are of the same or similar quality, consumers will tend to buy the one bearing a good brand name. So it is practical to carry out a study on brand names. Brand name study involves not only knowledge of languages, but also that of marketing, culture, translation, psychology and aesthetics. Therefore, brand name study will surely provide insights into language study and marketing study, which will accelerate the construction of marketing theories and linguistic theories. At the same time, the study of brand names will be conducive to the study of culture, translation, psychology and aesthetics. Thus it is necessary to carry a multi-angle study on brand names. At present various kinds of articles concerning brand names are available, but until now no article from multi-angle study on brand names has been found by the author of this article. So the author of this article attempts to carry out a multi-angle study on brand names, although maybe far from being adequate, hoping it could provide some insights for brand naming. The structure of this article mainly covers the following parts: introduction, marketing analysis, linguistic analysis, cultural analysis, translation analysis, psychological analysis, aesthetics analysis and suggestions on how to give good brand names. The introduction part mainly includes: The reason for choosing this topic and the values of this article, literature review, the significance for studying brands, the world market trends for branding, the rationale of the present study and the objective of this study. Brand name is included in branding strategy. While branding strategy is a major issue in marketing strategy. So firstly a marketing analysis on brand names is carried out. A name is a word, a letter or a combination of them. It is clear that it is a language item. And the science of languages is called linguistics. The linguistic analysis mainly includes phonological analysis, morphological analysis, lexical analysis, syntax analysis, brand name linguistic characteristics. Language is an important element of culture. So a cultural analysis on brand names should be carried out. This part mainly studies how culture is reflected in brand names. "Faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance", put forward by Yan Fu, is considered as the principles of translation in China. These principles can also be applied into the translation of brand names. Five translation methods concerning brand name translation are suggested by this article.Psychology is the science of behavior and mental process. This means psychologists use the methods of science to investigate all kinds of behavior and mental processes. The study of psychology, especially that of consumers' psychology is indispensable to brand naming. Aesthetics is the study of beauty. It is possible that a brand name has more potential for penetration and memorability if it is rich in associative possibilities. The association can be resulted in the beauty of pronunciation, graph and imagination. It is necessary to look at brand names from aesthetics aspect. At the last part, it is suggested that when giving a good brand name, marketing, linguistics, culture, translation, psychology and aesthetics should all be taken into consideration. Only in this can good names be given easily.