PowerBook, Pentium and BlackBerry got their names from one source.

We use things every single day, and call them by name. I'm calling on the iPhone. I drink Fresca (shuffle!). But the names do not appear just like that. In fact, this is someone's work - great work.

John Colaptino of New Yorker offers a fascinating look at something that sounds deadly boring: a company that gives names to things from other companies. But this is far from the case. Simply stunning research data, torment and enlightened guesswork are included in the created names of things that will cling to us and our dollars. The company in focus, Lexicon, has very impressive achievements: Pentium, PowerBook, BlackBerry, Dasani, Swiffer and others.

They make the names sound simple.
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Blackberry RIM was going to give the name MegaMail (ha!). It causes nothing but anxiety and neurosis. Why not call it more elegant, but a little more resolute and more menacing? How about a blackberry (blackberry)?

Pentium? It consists of titanium (titanium) (a strong, powerful chemical element) and penta , a Greek prefix meaning five, indicating that the microprocessor has jumped from 486 to 586 architecture. Before Lexicon was hired, Intel was selling chips without a name, only with a number. It is difficult to imagine that someone will worry about the new 986 - although, interestingly, i7 has recently become entrenched.

And the PowerBook is the great-grandfather of computers that most of us use now. Kolaptino describes Apple's skepticism about the name. There is nothing in it except the union of two ordinary words. “Yes, these are two ordinary words put together, but there is no such thing as a PowerBook.”

We are surrounded by a view of this despotic alchemy. Ordinary nouns created in huge enterprises, and digital phenomena that change our daily lives. So what is Facebook? Why so much attention is paid to HTC - just three letters? Twitter, Flickr, Bing - they mean absolutely nothing! But all these words made their way to our neurons, wallets and aspirations. They flood our eyes with the magic of marketing, and then we imagine that we have appropriated them to ourselves. I will take a photo of it. I'll google it. Just check Facebook.