Big name hunters: when it comes to creating a successful product name, no detail is too small.

Wordcraft: The Art of Turning Little Words into Big Business by Alex Frankel Three Rivers Press, 2005, 256 pages

Interested in knowing how the BlackBerry, PowerBook and Pentium got their names? Pick up Alex Frankel's Wordcraft and read all about it.

The art of naming turns out to require an interesting combination of skills. Getting product names right can transform businesses into powerhouses and propel products into the lexicon of everyday life and use.

This book describes Frankel's personal journey into the world of big naming at Lexicon in San Francisco, where geeks and trivia geniuses work alongside linguists with Ph.D.s and advertising, marketing and journalism types. Frankel describes his surprise at doing something fun and being paid well in the process: "I decided to put my journalism career on hold... trading my work as a journalist (one dollar per word) to work full-time as a namer (US$25,000 plus per word)."

Frankel also delves into well-known Landor Associates, famous for creating such brand names as JetBlue, Lucent Technologies and Altria. To his credit, he doesn't glow unduly about naming institutions and offers insights into names-gone-wrong situations. He also covers Wood Worldwide, famous for naming drugs such as Viagra.

"Creating a word that others will copy is vital," writes Frankel. Whether it's an expression like "Whatssup?" (used for a beer commercial), a product name or an idea, it's critical to create something memorable.

From words triggering meaning to significant brands turned into verbs (FedEx, Roller-blade, Google and Xerox come to mind), he explores the complexities of naming. Ultimately, he claims the task of namers is to understand how to create specific meaning for their clients and then launch those new names into circulation.

Even the cover art for Word-craft illustrates how names are made, Frankel says. The cover, he explains, "borrows a W from the fast-food chain Wendy's--an old-fashioned-looking piece of type selected by a modern hamburger purveyor to suggest the flame-broiled Wild West; the more recent O from Orbitz, a manufactured font that, with circling arrows embraces the idea of continuous, uninterrupted travel; the extended R from Rolling Stone magazine, which subtly conjures the rock 'n' roll injunction to 'keep on truckin"; the sans-serif D from Dunkin' Donuts, which announces itself through color more than style; the classic C from Campbell's Soup, an image that epitomized a longtime American brand and calls Warhol to mind; a second R, this one from RCA, an acronym-turned-name with letters that once stood for the forgotten Radio Corporation of America; the A from ABC, another acronym but one that has a distinctly modern and unusual design; the Firestone F--another brand that made it through a life-threatening public relations crisis; and the T from Tums, a made-up word that is itself an abbreviation of the informal child's name--tummy--that this ubiquitous consumer product targets."

For those who love words, Wordcraft offers a peek into the world of corporate consulting. It provides insights on why clients might pay thousands for a single word. And it reveals what Frankel calls "living at the intersection between creativity and corporate strategy."

Katherine Woodall, ABC, APR, is a principal at Towers Perrin in Arlington, Virginia.