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August 7, 2009

Why We Love Coining New Product Names From "Twitter"

What is it about the name "Twitter" that we love so much - or love to hate?

The microblogging service has spawned hundreds of tie-in software applications and not a few slang terms, from the common, like "tweeple" (a portmanteau of "Twitter" and "people") to the obscure, like "tweskank," a girl who tweets while on a date.

Collectively, these are known as - wait for it - "twords."

Many of the software tools (TechCrunch has a list of the most popular, and there's a Squidoo lens that attempts to be comprehensive) have "twords" for names. Of course, if you're creating a product that's a tie-in for another product, it makes sense to have the names tie in, as well.

While a few of these applications, like Monitter, opt to use rhyme to make their relationship with Twitter known, others use some variations in word choice between "twitter," "tweet," and "twit," but almost everyone wants to include that magic "tw" sound.

There are actually very few words in the English language that start with "tw," and most of them are related in some way to the number two.

The "tw" phoneme comes from the Old High German "zw," and the parallel persists to this day: modern German for "two" is "zwei."

The word "twitter" itself is first attested in English in 1374, also from Old High German. "Tweet," on the other hand, wasn't coined until 1845. Both words are onomatopoetic, imitating the sounds made by birds. This is somewhat ironic, as human tweeters on Twitter make no sound at all.

Another irony is the fact that "twitter" first appears as a verb; there was no linguistic reason to choose "tweet" as the verb to describe the action of posting on Twitter. Whatever Ev and Biz may think, language and the AP Stylebook are on the side of those who say "I'm Twittering."

Either way, frankly, it sounds silly. But all unfamiliar sounds seem funny to us. That's part of the appeal of the "tw" in Twitter: it's rare and strange.

That makes it this season's equivalent of the dropped vowel so popular in Web 2.0 names from pre-Twitter days. And before you know it, you'll start taking all those "twords" for granted - no matter how difficult some of them are to pronounce.

Technorati Tags: Twitter Branding, Twitter Naming, Twitter Linguistics, Twitter Terminology

Posted by Diane Prange at August 7, 2009 8:43 AM
Posted to Brand Naming | Branding | Linguistics | Naming | Product Naming | Technology

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