What’s in a Name?

Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, the Teapot Army had to walk into mine. It took about five minutes, by the way, of identifying items within reach on my desk and stringing them with the most ridiculous combinations of nouns we could possibly muster before we managed to divine such a singularly spectacular name from the heavens above (enter: the gin). It was a tough call between “Teapot Army” and “Kinda dried-out whiteboard marker I should probably chuck out”, but we got there in the end.

So what’s in a name? Last week I was approached by a friend asking what he should call his new band. After reading me his shortlist (including a name I swear to god sounded like a furry adaptation of Starcraft and something to do with clams) he said to me “The name itself isn’t important; no matter how stupid it sounds, over time people will just associate it with what you do until you can’t imagine calling it anything else.”

Let’s review: The Beatles? Check. Wal-Mart? Check. (I mean wtf, really.) Coca-Cola? It’s named after one of the original ingredients; the leaves of the good old coca plant, providing us with sweet sweet cocaine since 1859. DOUBLE check. You’d want to hope the name’s not important in their case.

Another great example of the sheer ridiculousness of some of the names out there is the late “What Brand Are You?” website – a prank which automatically generated the stupidest company names the creators could think of – which backfired in 2003 when it was discovered people were actually registering the names they got from the site.

So, to haughtily answer my own title question: fucking nothing is in a name, my friends. So grab a cup of tea and get ready to kick back and read the least tea-related rants and reviews this side of your mum’s good china cabinet right here with the Teapot Army; a blog by any other name would smell as sweet. Just don’t inhale too much. You never know if there’s cocaine involved.