In the world of motorsport, fans were mostly confused this week when the unveiling of the new name for what was Petty GMS motorsport changed after buy in from seven time champion Jimmie Johnson. Richard Petty who was a seven time champion, took over the team decades ago from his father Lee and for a very long time it was called "Petty Enterprises". The team has lurched from mediocrity to mediocrity and has undergone a number of name changes; all of which have contained the name "Petty".
The most obvious name for the firm as it goes forward would have been to use the surnames of seven time champion Richard Petty and seven time champion Jimmie Johnson, and called it "Petty Johnson Enterprises". Job done. I would have thought that was a fait accompli but no. The group has decided to call itself "Legacy Motor Club".
"Legacy Motor Club" is in my not very well paid opinion, a name that sounds like a motor club for old people. It sounds like the kind of name that someone like the AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) would give to their motor club, for their members to go on lovely jaunts in the country to have tea and scones. If not that then "Legacy Motor Club" is the name that you should give to another motor club for old war veterans. "Legacy Motor Club" is not the name that one should give to a front line motor racing team.
Here's the thing about naming things. The name for a thing will eventually become normalised, even if it means absolutely nothing. Eventually the name for a thing will be nothing more than that - the name. To that end, the names "Omo", "Mars", "Chep", "McDonald's", and "Monster", all sound perfectly normal even though intrinsically the names do not tell you that they are for a washing powder, chocolate bar, storage pallets, burger restaurant, and caffeinated energy drink. Of themselves they don't tell you very much, if anything, about the product that they are attached to.
"Mars" has absolutely nothing to do with the Roman god of war, or the dusty red plains of the fourth planet. The name "Mars" comes from the surname of the brothers who founded the company and while there have been advertising campaigns which have made use of the inversion of the name to mean war and the red planet, a Mars Bar is a ubiquitous name all by itself.
So it is with naming children. You might feel that as a result of joining an amazing and unique individual with another amazing and unique individual in an act of rudey-doo, that the child produced needs an amazing and unique name to reflect the creation of an entirely new person. No! As they will outlive you when you are gone, and will have to spend an entire lifetime explaining their name to people they have only just met, then giving them an amazing and unique name is just a punishment for a crime that they didn't even commit.
A client of ours, named their child "Mychal". That sounds how you think it sounds but for Mike, it was a nightmare. When he turned 18 years old, on of the first things that he did was to change his name to "Michael". Job done. Changing his name to the name which everyone called him and which he should have been called in the first place, hardly seems like an an act of teenage rebellion does it? I note that when Michael and his wife had their first child, they named him "John". That's a nice sensible name which can become "Johnny" or "J" but those names will come as the result of life experience and the name" John will still sound perfectly sensible when the he is an old man and sees the rolling in of the 22nd century and the year 2100.
Naming a company or firm can be as simple as naming it after what it is, such as Khoder's Pizza Shop, Tasman Tank Co., or even giving it a punny name such as Bingo which is a firm that delivers skip-"bins" and makes them "go" away after you have finished with them. Even naming a firm an acronym which means nothing will eventually take on a meaning of its own. BHP stands for "Broken Hill Proprietary" and NAB stands for "National Australia Bank" and while there was initial outcry over the change of name of the bank, nobody blinks an eyelid at it any more.
If any name, even as one as confronting as the name "Sex Pistols", will eventually become so old hat that it just fades into the background, then is there anything actually wrong with "Legacy Motor Club"? Implicitly, no. The problem is that this name is so bland and so boring that it has already faded into the background. This name is already as dull as dishwater and the real irony of the name is that "Legacy Motor Club" already sounds like it has a legacy that nobody cares about.
This is the other side of naming a thing. The name "Monster Energy" sounds pretty normal now but it still sounds like it might be a little bit dangerous; which is what you want from a product that has to be placed in competition in a marketplace. The name "Mercedes-Benz" sounds perfectly normal now but even so, it is dripping with a history of aero engines, going to war, the worst motor racing disaster in history, stodgy luxury, and winning Formula One World Championships. "Mercedes-Benz" might kind of recall Karl Benz who invented the first proper petrol motor car but practically nobody thinks of Mercedes Jellinek for whom the first half of the name comes from. Likewise the name "Wood Brothers" sounds like it could be the name of a lumber yard but put that in context and it too carries its own history.
The name "Petty-Johnson" would mean absolutely nothing to the vast bulk of people who care nothing about motorsport. It would even mean mostly nothing to the people who like motorsport but do not follow this particular kind of motorsport. In context, Petty-Johnson" would drip with 17 championships and already has a history built into it. The name "Legacy Motor Club" already sounds like absolutely nothing of import. It is so boring that I doubt that it is even going to survive until the end of February. "Legacy Motor Club" is a name with no legacy.
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