Trademarks Lexis and Lexus (was nexis is baffling)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 4/9/07, Dave Wilton <dave at wilton.net> wrote:
>
> Ben Zimmer wrote:
> >Fun fact: When Esso/Enco/Humble Oil needed a consolidated company
> >name, they enlisted the help of the late Dmitri Borgmann, the father
> >of recreational linguistics (author of _Language on Vacation_ and
> >_Beyond Language_ and founding editor of the magazine _Word Ways_).
> >The story goes that he was hired to come up with an eye-catching name
> >unlike any word in the English language, yet still reminiscent of
> >"Esso".  He offered "Exxon", unique since no English word contains two
> >consecutive x's.
>
> Do you have any source for this? This is not the standard account for how
> "Exxon" was chosen. According to the usual story, the name was generated by
> a computer (one of the first such uses of computers in marketing) based on a
> number of criteria (2 syllables, had to start with E and have and O in the
> second syllable and have a double consonant (not necessarily a double X) so
> it resembled "Esso," had to be free of other trademarks worldwide, etc.).
> Six words, out of over 10,000 originally generated, met the criteria and
> after extensive market testing "Exxon" was chosen.

I recall reading about it in the pages of _Word Ways_, but I may have
some of the particulars wrong. Perhaps Borgmann was called in as a
consultant to select the final choice from a computer-generated short
list.

At the moment the only source I can pull up is Borgmann's obit in the
Chicago Tribune (Dec 11, 1985):

"Dmitri Borgmann, former Chicagoan and word whiz who received $10,000
for developing a new name for the Standard Oil Co. of New
Jersey--Exxon--has died at age 58. ... About 19 years ago he began a
career in writing and as a result of his books he was commissioned by
Standard Oil to develop a new name for the company."


--Ben Zimmer

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