Fig.1 with editable text Fig.2 with editable text
Fig.1 in curves Fig.2 in curves
Figure 1: Cumulative proportion surviving for named vs. no-name cafes (p<.001) We divided the sample into two groups: names with at least one meaningful word, and agnonyms, i.e. names without obvious meaning (ЧЕТВЕРГ
‘Thursday’, КОФЕ ДЕН ‘coffee something’, КОЛИЗЕЙ ‘Colosseum’ vs.
ЗОЛО ‘something’, УРЕОК ‘something’, КЕТАМА ‘something’). The absence of meaning did not affect survival. However, high-imagery restaurant (and not cafe) names (РЫБИЙ ГЛАЗ ‘fish eye’, МЯСНОЙ КЛУБ ‘meat club’) survive better than low-imagery ones (НОТА БЕНЕ ‘nota bene’, ПРАВДА
‘truth’). Names referring to big objects (ОЛИМП ‘Olympus’) survived better than names referring to small objects (ВИННЫЙ ПОГРЕБОК ‘small wine cellar’). Reference to color (СИНЯЯ ПТИЦА ‘blue bird’ vs. СИТИ ПИЦЦА
‘city pizza’) or lightness (ОГОНЁК ‘small flame’ vs. НОЧНОЙ ДВОРИК
‘night courtyard’) was not found to affect survival.
Animate names (ВЕЛИКИЙ СУЛТАН ‘great sultan’, АНДРЕАС ‘Andreas’, БЕЗУМНЫЙ ЦЫПЛЕНОК ‘mad chicken’, ФЕНИКС ‘phoenix’) survived better than inanimate ones (ДВОРЕЦ СУЛТАНА ‘palace of sultan’). Division of animate names into humans and animals, and division of animals into wild and domestic showed no difference in survival. Names with the meaning of ‘place’ survived equally to animate names, and both of them survived better than ‘things’, ’ideas’ and agnonyms. ‘Geography’ names (related to toponyms: КАВКАЗСКАЯ ПЛЕННИЦА ‘Kidnapping, Caucasian Style’ (the
121 famous comedy name), ОГНИ БАКУ ‘lights of Baku’ or to cardinal points:
ВОСТОЧНЫЙ ЭКСПРЕСС ‘Orient-Express’, ЮЖНАЯ НОЧЬ ‘South night’) had insignificant advantage in survival over the rest of ‘places’ (ДОМ БЕЛОГО ЖУРАВЛЯ ‘white crane house’). Names pointing to a country or big territory (РУСЬ ‘Ancient Russia’, ВЕНЕТО ‘Veneto’, КУБА ЛИБРЕ ‘Cuba Libre’) but not a city survived better than animate names. Names specifying the location of the facility in Moscow (НАГАТИНО ‘a certain Moscow district’, КОНСЕРВАТОРИЯ ‘Concert Hall’, ТВЕРБУЛЬ ‘unofficial acronym of well-known street’) are situated on the graph between the country and city groups, but do not differ significantly from either of the two groups. Location names survive significantly better than animate names (Fig. 2). The opposition of the topics of poor/rich and real/fiction in names showed no difference in survival.
named noname
0 4 8 12 16
Time, years
0,0 0,5
Cumulative Proportion Surviving
O < Animate
Animate ≤ Country
Cardinal < City ≤ Country points
O ≤ Geography
Thing = Idea = No meaning < Place = Animate
Fig.1 with editable text Fig.2 with editable text
Fig.1 in curves Fig.2 in curves
Figure 2: Survival in thematic groups of names.
Here and elsewhere we use the following notations:
Х<Y: names with X property have significantly less lifetime than names with Y property (p≤.05).
X=Y: names with properties X and Y have statistically equal lifetimes (p>.10).
X≤Y: names with X property have less lifetime, but not statistically significant (.05<p≤.10).
O – absence of property.
122 Ilia Baranov To study national connotation, we divided names into four groups.
International names (ЗОДИАК ‘zodiac’, ДОПИНГ ‘dope’) survived worse than Russian names (ДЯДЯ КОЛЯ ‘Uncle Nick’; ЖЕСТОКИЙ РОМАНС
‘cruel romance’, song genre and famous movie title). Names with distinctively
‘foreign’ semantics (ЗОЛОТОЙ ТАЛЕР ‘golden thaler’, МАРОКАНА
‘Moroccan’) displayed no difference separately from international and Russian names. Indefinable nationality (АОЗОРА ‘something’, МЕНЗА ‘something’) did not differ from foreignness.
International≤Foreign=Indefinable≤Russian
Congruency of the name nationality and the facility’s cuisine did not affect survival.
Names related to food and food service (ИЗЮМ ‘raisins’, СКАЗОЧНЫЙ ДАСТАРХАН ‘fabulous dastarchan’) survived worse than non-food names.
Food-related names were even less surviving than agnonyms.
The reference list of soviet names was compiled from a Moscow yellow pages book from 1983. We took into account only those names from the list that are present in the sample of 1999–2013, without regard to whether these are the same facilities or new ones (БЕРЕЗКА ‘young birch’, МЕЧТA ‘dream’). We found that restaurants with soviet names survived better than the rest, while cafes with such names survived worse than the rest.
Since it turned out that geographic connotation in the name is not connected with the facility’s cuisine, we assume that this effect is symbolic. Animate names sound less natural in speech (Заглянем в НАТАЛИ ‘let’s take a look inside Natalie’), but the relationship (and/or identification) takes over in this case.
Meaningful names survive better than agnonyms in both banks and clothing stores (BARANoV 2018: 189, BARANoV 2011: 133), whilst unclear meaning in food service names has no effect on survival. Search cost reduction is not manifested through the name nationality or its congruence with the cuisine of the facility but through the increased survival of names pointing to location.
This is consistent with the findings of BAI and PARK (2016) that descriptive names of the food service in Korea have no advantage over arbitrary names. We assume that the symbolic function outweighed the rest: unclear meaning seems prestigious, and the financial risk is not so great as in bank operations or when buying clothes. The survival difference in soviet names might be explained if we assume that cafe clients, as opposed to restaurant clients, are younger2 and
2 We did not find direct indications for the age difference between the customers of cafes and restaurants. The average bill in a cafe is lower than in restaurants, and young people have less income than older clients do. Therefore, we assume that the age of cafés clients is on average less than in restaurants. Nevertheless, we cannot exclude a greater propensity of young people to conspicuous consumption and thus to spending more.
experience no nostalgia for the past. Therefore, it is the symbolic function of the name, too.
Grammar
In Russian, the word ‘ресторан’ is of masculine gender; the word ‘кафе’ is of neutral gender. Among the restaurants, there are much more masculine names than feminine ones. Among the cafes, the masculine gender predominates less pronouncedly (Table 2). Feminine names (СУЛИКО ‘well-known Georgian female name’, АЙВА ‘quince’, ЛАКАДА ‘something of feminine gender’) demonstrated better survival than masculine names (РОЗОВЫЙ ФЛАМИНГО
‘pink flamingo’, АН САН ‘something of masculine gender’) regardless of their length, animacy and clarity of meaning, but only in the restaurant subsample.
Gender congruence with the type of facility did not cause any difference in survival.
Gender Total Restaurants Cafes
Feminine 30 25 38
Masculine 55 60 48
Other 14 16 13
Table 2: Distribution of names (%) by grammatical gender
Most often food service names are single nouns (ЧИ ‘something’, АРЕНА
‘arena’, БАКИНЕЦ ‘Bakuvian’) or combinations of noun+noun (ОМАР ХАЙЯМ ‘Omar Khayyam’, ПАША КЕБАБ ‘Pasha kebab’, ГАЛЕРЕЯ ХУДОЖНИКА ‘artist’s gallery’) or adjective+noun (ЗОЛОТАЯ БУХАРА
‘golden Bukhara’, БАЛТИЙСКИЙ ХЛЕБ ‘Baltic bread’). These three groups demonstrated no difference in survival. Rarer types like names containing verbs (САМ ЗАШЕЛ ‘you came by yourself’), pronouns (Я-ПОНЧИК ‘I’m the donut / little Japanese man’) or plurals (ПЕЛЬМЕНИ БУМ ‘meat dumplings boom’ or ‘we will eat meat dumplings’, ЖИЛИ-БЫЛИ – literally ‘[they] lived and were’, traditional beginning of Russian tales) were indistinguishable in survival from the majority. As there were very few acronyms (СВ ‘wagon-lit’, ГЛАВКУРОРТ ‘Main Dept. for health resorts’), alphanumeric names (ПЯТЬ МОРЕЙ ‘five seas’, 33 ЗУБА ’33 teeth’) and neologisms (ПАРИЖСК
‘Parisville’, ФУДВИЛЬ ‘Foodville’) in the sample, we were unable to evaluate their effect on survival.
The sample contained a small group of 43 names with the structure of prep+noun. Most of these names referred to a location: НА БАСМАННОЙ
‘at Basmannaya st.’ or a person: У АЛЕКСАНДРА ‘at Alexander’s’. These
124 Ilia Baranov names are not convenient in speech since they require a sequence of two noncompatible prepositions: let’s go to At Basmannaya. These preposition names survived better than the rest. The effect persisted when we controlled for length and number of words as well as within thematic groups ‘place’
and ‘person’. A similarly limited group of names with a visually comparable structure of article+foreign noun (ЛЕ ГАТО ‘le gâteau’) exhibited worse survival than noun+noun combinations:
Article+Noun<Noun+Noun<Prep+Noun
The morphologic commonness of the names was evaluated both within the sample and in the language.
To study commonness within the sample, the names were divided into words and the frequency of root morphemes within the sample was calculated. The commonness value of the name was calculated as the mean of frequencies of its morphemes. The threshold between common, or cliché, and uncommon, or non-cliché, names was determined as the highest value, provided that the cliché group contained a sufficient number of names for analysis. For the threshold value of 6 in 1-word names clichés survive worse than non-cliches.
Language clichés were defined through a similar procedure, with logarithms of the dictionary frequencies (LyAsHEVsKAyA–sHARoV 2009). Name survival worsened with the growth of dictionary frequency. Language clichés exhibited an effect on restaurant names and showed no effect on café names.
The advantage of the feminine gender in restaurant names could be explained through their relative rarity as compared with cafe names. Facilities with ‘other’
gender of the name are even rarer, however, according to LIEVEN et al. (2014), they may have less brand equity, and therefore do not have an advantage in survival.
Along with the main meaning, the At+noun structure in food service names possesses the connotations of ‘retro’, ‘local’, ‘home-like’, ‘personal’, ‘familiar’,
‘traditional’. Taken together, these connotations signal clients about both quality and risk reduction. The disadvantage of cliché names within the category is a result of insufficient search cost reduction. Presumably, linguistic commonness interferes with the Identification function of the name.
Graphics
The length of names in the sample varies from 2 to 35 characters (including spaces) with the mean of 8.1 characters or 1.3 words. The shortest examples are ЧИ, БО, ЩИ, and the longest name is НАЦИОНАЛЬНЫЙ РУССКИЙ ОХОТНИЧИЙ КЛУБ. Name survival displayed positive correlation with length. The same effect was observed for 1-noun names. For agnonyms the
effect was insignificant. For noun+noun/adjective+noun names the length effect was not present. For masculine names or names with the meaning of
‘bigness’ the length effect remained, while for feminine names or names with the meaning of ‘smallness’ the effect was not observed.
We assumed that the graphic legibility of the name equaled to the mean of its letters’ legibility. More familiar words can be recognized by their outline, while for unfamiliar words the priority of letter-based processing is more probable (yAP–BALoTA 2015). Limited research has been done on the legibility of the Cyrillic alphabet:
(1) Correct recognition share of blurred letter in fovea (koRShunoV 2011).
(2) Correct/incorrect recognitions in parafovea (alExEEVa–konina 2016).
(3) Recognition time of letters in fovea (ALEKsEEVA 2013).
(4) Letter perimetric complexity (PC), i.e. the ratio of letter perimeter squared to the letter area (TARAsoV et al. 2016: 6 ff.). The PC of the name was calculated as the sum of letter PCs divided by name length.
The results acquired through different methods had no mutual correlation;
therefore, we used all four legibility data sets in our experiment. Name letter legibility calculated through method (1) showed a tendency towards better survival of less legible rather than more legible names (p=.14). For nouns consisting of 6–10 characters the difference in survival reached significance.
Legibility according to methods (2) and (3) displayed no survival difference, but Kaplan–Meier graphs according to method (3) showed a tendency towards better survival of less legible names. According to method (4), less legible names survived better than more legible names.
Exploring letter shape we found that name survival was not affected by the percentage of angular (Г, Н), round (О, С), or symmetrical (Ж, Н, O) letters.
Names containing repeating letters and 2- or 3-letter combination (2- and 3-grams) had no difference in survival from names without such repetitions.
Survival of names containing letters and 2-grams frequent in the sample was equal to that of names without such combinations. Names with 3- and 4-grams frequent in the sample survived worse than names without these combinations.
Analysis of frequencies according to the frequency dictionary (lYaShEVSkaYa– sHARoV 2009), showed that names with frequent 3-grams survived worse than names with rarer 3-grams. The frequency of letters and 2-grams in the language had no connection to survival.
We calculated the ratio of right-handed characters to the total number of characters in the name (RSR). Right-handed names (RSR>0.6) survived better
126 Ilia Baranov than left-handed names (RSR<0.4) within the name length range of 5–11 characters.
Name length manifests itself as the most conspicuous and independent from other properties. We consider the length effect to be a reflection of service name tangibility that serves the risk reduction function of the brand. The absence of this effect in feminine names and names with the meaning of ‘smallness’ shows that gender and size semantics have stronger manifestations than mere length.
These may be called the strong (and less frequent) members in these opposition pairs.
Absence of the length effect observed in agnonyms might be explained by a number of reasons. Length can represent a stronger factor, in particular the number of elements of meaning within the name, for example the number of morphemes or frequent segments. Agnonyms might be viewed by the consumer as indivisible, i.e. conveying the same amount of meaning regardless of the length. The tangibility advantage of longer names is counter-balanced by the convenience and memorizability of shorter names. Agnonyms are unique and that signal could be stronger than the length. We assume that slight perceptual difficulties catch the consumer’s attention and signal about the quality, therefore they improve survival. On the contrary, typing discomfort interferes with the habitual function and leads to worse survival.
Phonetics
Pronunciation fluency was detected as absence of vowel or consonant clusters.
Our sample contained only 18 names with 3-vowel clusters (ХМУРОЕ УТРО). To these we added the most inconvenient 2-vowel clusters with А/О/Э as the second vowel (КУЛУАР, МАО, ГУЭЛЬ). Together these two name groups exhibited a tendency to survive worse than the rest (p=.07 for the cafes).
There were not enough names with 4-consonant clusters for analysis (БИРШТРАССЕ, ВСТРЕЧА). The group with 3-consonant clusters (190 names) can be divided into 4 types: XYZ, XXY, XYY и XYX, where different letters denote different places of articulation. In this case name survival increased in the following order:
XYX<O<XYZ=XXY=XYY.
Names beginning with consonant [v/f] followed by vowel (ВЕГА, ФАЗАНЧИК) showed worse survival than the rest. Names ending in -СС or starting with CVCVCV- did not demonstrate survival difference from the rest.
To measure vowel backness we calculated the percentage of front (и, е), central (а) and back (о, у) vowels within a name. No survival difference was found.
Stop consonants at the beginning of the name did not affect survival. Names starting with a consonant showed a tendency to survive better than names starting with a vowel (entire sample: p=.10; restaurants: no effect; cafes: p<.001).
We calculated the phonetic ‘badness’ of consonants as the product of the phonetic meaning from the ‘bad – good’ scale by ZhuRaVlEV (1974: 66) times frequency rank given in the dictionary (LyAsHEVsKAyA–sHARoV 2009). The phonetic ‘badness’ of the name did not demonstrate any survival correlation for both the entire sample and agnonyms. Palatalization of consonants did not affect survival. Names with a high share of voiced consonants survived better than the rest.
There are few names with prominent pronunciation difficulties within the sample. It seems that native speakers have sufficient phonetic intuition to create fluent enough names. Non-fluent names show a tendency to survive worse than fluent names. This is the habitual function of the name. Of all the effects of phonetic symbolism considered, only one was distinctive: a higher percentage of voiced consonants corresponds to better survival. We classify this effect as a brand quality signal, according to ZhuRaVlEV (1974) estimates.
Discussion
Results of the study are summarized in Table 3. We established survival effects for different linguistic properties and tried to assign them to the corresponding brand functions. In general, more successful names are more tangible: they are of high imagery, they are long and have the semantics of bigness; they contain a high share of voiced consonants. Furthermore, more successful names are less fluent: they contain infrequent letter combinations or words and have slight difficulties in reading. We suggest that such difficulties help service names to catch the attention of the recipient. Perception difficulties operate as quality signals and have a positive effect on survival, while communication difficulties (v-fluency, RSR-effect) interfere with the habitual function and thus affect survival in a negative way.
128 Ilia Baranov Relationship inanimate < animate person < At +
person’s
Table 3: Brand linguistics and survival effects
What is the nature of the revealed connections between the name properties and survival? There are four possibilities for such a connection: one influences the other and vice versa, both phenomena have a common cause, and an accidental coincidence. Firstly, most of the facilities were named before their activities began. Therefore, their lifetime cannot be the reason for the appearance of certain properties in the name. Next, let us suppose that the business success and the associated name properties have a common cause. For example, older firms might have access to more available names and thus are more likely to have selected better names (xinG–anDERSon–hu 2016: 67). Then, at the same period, place and type of activity, it should be sought in the competence of name givers, i.e. managers. It turns out that they were well aware, consciously or intuitively, of the properties that we have just established. Moreover, while for some properties it is possible to assume such intuition (a named entity is
better than an unnamed one; a unique formation is better than cliché), other properties are counterintuitive (a long name is better than a short one; low legibility is better than high), or were discovered at the end of the period observed (QWERTY-effect). Research data are contradictory for now, and as far as we know, are not set out in the form of a general theory. We share the gIRoTRA and ulRich (2012: 13) point of view about the low probability of the hypothesis that people with good business skills are as well versed in the commercial naming. Furthermore, in the period observed, the level of naming education in Russia was not high. Among more than 30 contemporary manuals on restaurant business in Russian, we did not find anywhere the subject of name benefits was discussed and 2/3 of them do not mention the name at all.
The first marketing papers concerning brand naming appeared at the beginning of the study period, however they were oriented to mass-market goods (and not services) and did not describe the correlations like ours (e.g. DyMsHITs 1999). Linguistic works on business name efficacy appeared in Russia (e.g.
RoMANoVA 1998), but was there at least one food service manager who would read them? Until now, there are almost no quantitative studies on commercial name effectiveness in Russian open sources3.
The third possibility, namely the random correlation between name properties and survival, cannot be completely excluded, but its probability in our findings is below the threshold (p<.05). Moreover, the name properties we chose are not arbitrary, but based on the branding theory and previously known researches.
The consistency of the obtained results and the literature data can also be interpreted in favor of the non-randomness of the correlations found.
The last option is to consider the ability of a name to influence, at least or most via audiences’ perception, the business success expressed in its market lifetime as the most probable reason for the correlations discovered. The mechanism of this influence may not be limited to a simple cause-effect relationship. For example, the clients can groundlessly attribute the cause of occasional failures of a certain facility to the name, then the number of visitors will decrease, things will get worse, and eventually the facility will be closed or renamed. That feedback loop or self-fulfilling prophecy (MERToN 1968: 475 ff.) can enhance the interaction of name and business, both positive and negative. Whatever the mechanism of this interaction is, the business survival appears to be related to the far from arbitrary name properties.
3 From the conversations with marketing analysts, the author got the impression that such studies are not in demand by the market, and the matter is limited to testing the variants of the name for
3 From the conversations with marketing analysts, the author got the impression that such studies are not in demand by the market, and the matter is limited to testing the variants of the name for