Help us choose a company name!

[wibr]

@OneEye I am signing up for betatesting the German material :-)

 

@Basil Lingo might be a little close to Duolingo

 

here is the best I could come up with for now: Inlago

[oceancalligraphy]

Tried to match the Chinese name...

 

Efflorescence

 

Efflorescence Language Learning

 

or just plain

 

Intelligent Language Learning

[OneEye]

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. Keep 'em coming.

 

Pleco is a type of fish. Hence the logo. But I do think imron's general idea is sound.

[imron]

I know Pleco is a fish, my point is I don't think any Chinese language learner things of the fish when they hear the word Pleco - they'll think of the Chinese dictionary.  Same with Anki.  The products themselves have defined the word in the circles where they are used.

[Shelley]

ILLS - Intelligent language learning system

 

Elephant language learning system ( elephants being famous for their long memory)  ELLS

 

Or along the lines of just using a single word not really related - Elephant

 

E - efficiant

L - language

E - education

P - personal

H - help

A - and

N- new

T - techniques

[mikelove]

One small note on picking a generic term from a different domain like "Pleco" or "Apple": I believe Chinese law does not (generally) recognize that sort of trademark, so you may have a hard time enforcing it against ripoffs (not that that's particularly easy anyway).

[lechuan]

How about Big Convenient Language Learning? 

[Edward Phie]

How about HippoChinese

well basically Hippo from the word hippocampus part of the brain that developing in learning language process

[OneEye]

Again, we're looking for a name that won't tie us down to just Chinese. But maybe HippoLing or HippoLang. I'll add it to the list, thanks!

[mikelove]

There's already a "HippoDICT" Chinese dictionary app in the App Store, FWIW - doesn't seem have been updated since 2010, but it might create some brand confusion if people go looking for your products by name. (also, in theory they might be able to make a trademark claim against you since they were using the name in this context first)

[Edward Phie]

sorry I didn't know that, yeah it will be violate the trademark regulation if there are two products that share a name...

I will think another name that maybe helpfull

[imron]

Jumbo

 

Logo can be a Jumbo Jet - gets you where you want to go.

 

It also sounds a little like 久茂

 

Avoid variants such as Jumbo Lang and Jumbo Ling to avoid connotations of 'jumbling'.

[ilovelamp]

LangGO = language on the go (considering your ambitions for apps)

Makes sense and sounds like a made up word.. Lango. Which actually is a language in Uganda.. but I'm sure nobody has ever heard of it.

[OneEye]

OK, thanks everyone! We'll be discussing the names this week and hopefully we'll have a decision soon!

 

On a related note, we'll be doing a crowdfunding campaign in the coming months to fund the rest of the research. I'll be the one running it, and I'm getting some ideas together for perks and such. We've talked about things like a videos explaining how to learn characters, a live webinar and Q&A session about our system, a free copy of the dictionary, etc. (in no particular order there). If anyone has any ideas for perks you'd like to see or that you think would encourage people to donate, please feel free to PM me or post here. I think our dictionary itself will be awesome enough to get people excited, but I also want to be able to offer extra stuff to people who help us out.

[OneEye]

So we've now gone through all the names submitted by people here and elsewhere. We've decided upon Outlier Linguistic Solutions, with the idea that our products are aimed at making you the outlier, ahead of the curve, etc., and also that our point of view is different from the rest of the herd.

 

So right now we're hard at work developing the dictionary. I'm working with some directors and animators to create a few videos about our system for understanding characters, which I'll post here when they're ready. I'm really excited to start talking about it, but I can't reveal too much just yet.

[Shelley]

I had to look that up in the dictionary,outlier how do you pronounce it?

 

From the dictionary it means one who is in the open or apart from others, an outsider or a detached portion of something and also a separate outcrop of rock.

I can't get the sense of "ahead of the curve" in my head.

 

Don't want to sound like I am being pessimistic, just playing devils advocate to enable you double check your choice.

 

Are you sure you want a name with the word lier in it. The first thing I thought not knowing the meaning of the word was out lier as in not telling the truth.

 

This is just my opinion, you have probably batted this around till you are all blue in the face and are satisfied with your decision but i just wanted you to be sure.

[OneEye]

Here's a dictionary entry with an audio recording. (Note, it's Outlier, not Outliar. We lie/stand out from the rest. ;) )

 

In statistics, an outlier is an "observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample" (from that link). "Ahead of the curve" is something I think a lot of people associate with the term after Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers: The Story of Success popularized the term several years ago. We think we stand out from (and ahead of) the pack in that we're teaching the real system behind Chinese characters, which is something that isn't available in any other book in English, as I discussed here and here. With our method, you'll have a very accurate understanding of how characters work, which will give you a better intuition about possible meanings and pronunciations of unfamiliar characters than even most native speakers (and we've done studies which support that claim, publication forthcoming).

 

I do appreciate the feedback, but we're all happy with the name.

[imron]

Don't want to sound like I am being pessimistic, just playing devils advocate to enable you double check your choice.

Pretty common term for anyone with any sort of mathematics and/or technical background.  There was also quite a popular book published a few years back called "Outliers".

[Shelley]

Thanks for the explanations and taking it as it was meant (to be helpful).

 

Okay hadn't made the lier/liar distinction. Point taken. My bad spelling showing up

 

Hope it goes well for you, I will look out for it.

 

Thanks imron for your input, just goes to show you do learn something new everyday, maths is not my strong suit, but I am sort of technical.

[Basil]

One Eye,

 

Congrats on the name (even if you are jumping on the Malcolm G. bandwagon a bit), it is a solid choice.

 

I'm looking forward to your first product, if you need overly critical reviewers, I'll be happy to nitpick.

 

Still think you should have gone for LINGOctopus though...