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Deciphering The Indecipherable — The Dictionary of Branding
Welcome to the Scarcliff | Salvador Dictionary of Branding, the
most comprehensive glossary of branding and naming on the Web. Our
goal is to produce and maintain an up-to-date record of the terms
of art in use in our field, including the latest branding concepts,
naming styles and techniques, tagline types, and commercially-useful
linguistics terms.
Each entry is cross-referenced if appropriate and includes examples
from the marketplace wherever possible. Please contact us with your
suggested additions and corrections.
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Range Brand (branding, marketing)
Any brand which extends across several usually related categories.
Gilette's Oral-B range brand, for example, includes power
toothbrushes, manual toothbrushes, whitening products, interdental
products, floss, toothpaste, and mouth rinses. A corporate range
brand extends across several industries or sectors, either vertically
or horizontally. General Electric and Mitsubishi are
examples of corporate range brands. Compare Megabrand.
Reduplication (linguistics, brand naming)
Any repetition of syllables within a brand name, such as the initial
two syllables of Boboli Italian bread crust. Reduplication is relatively
rare within English, but it is a common word formation technique
within many other language families, including Malayo-Polynesian.
Referent (linguistics, brand naming)
The concrete object or concept symbolized by a brand name. The shared
referent of Coca-Cola, Coke, and ‘The Real
Thing’ is the Coca-Cola brand soft drink.
Retronym (naming, verbal branding)
Any category name coined in response to the development of a new
category name, in order to avoid confusion as the result of a cultural
or technological change. In other words, a noun that has been forced
to take on an modifier in order to remain meaningful. For example,
the terms ‘acoustic guitar’, ‘analog watch’,
‘live performance’, ‘real cream’, ‘snail-mail’
and ‘whole milk’ have been coined in response to the terms
‘electric guitar’, ‘digital watch’, ‘pre-recorded
performance’, ‘non-dairy creamer’, and ‘skim
milk’, respectively, as retronyms for the nouns ‘guitar’,
‘watch’, ‘performance’, ‘cream’, ‘mail’,
and ‘milk’.
Rhyme (naming, verbal branding)
A mnemonic device in which two or more words correspond in sound.
Root (linguistics, verbal branding)
The semantic kernel from which a set of words is derived by phonetic,
morphemic, and/or semantic change. For example, the semantic kernel
of the words ‘black’, ‘blue’, ‘blond’,
and ‘blush’ is the Indo-European root *bhel-, which originally
referred (several thousand years ago) to the colors seen in a fire.
Compare Semantics.
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