How to fix [Blank] & [Blank] names using only your delete key

Blank & Blank names are everywhere these days. I’m not talking about law firms like Latham & Watkins or names that play off of known phrases like Day & Age. I’m talking about names that take two words with no clear relationship, typically nouns, and arrange them on either side of an ampersand: Salt & Straw, Alice & Olivia, Heart & Dagger. Up the street from me in Berkeley there are two Blank & Blank names next door to each other that both feature birds.

This is unmistakably a naming trend — and like the trends that have come before it (vowel dropping, color+noun, Latin), it will one day fade into obscurity leaving out of date brands and unanswerable questions.

“Why did people’s pants used to flare out like that?”
“No one knows, dear.”

Unlike fashion and its constant cycle of trends, names and the businesses they represent are supposed to last longer than A/W 19. Changing your name is a lot more costly and time consuming than buying a new pair of pants or getting a new haircut.

Names are supposed to last the life of a business, sometimes even longer thanks to brand sales and auctions. Looking at you Madewell.

Trends are short. Names are long.

Which brings me to another thing a lot of people are looking for in a name: brevity. One of the most common requests we get at A Hundred Monkeys is short names. This is beyond trend. People have been asking for short names for as long as I can remember. I’m not saying short names are bad — many of them are good, but a name is already a small package conveying a lot of meaning. You can convey a lot more nuance and subtlety in a two or three word name (and run into a lot less trademark trouble along the way).

So if there’s one lasting effect of Blank & Blank names, I hope it’s that they help people realize that names don’t have to be so short. Now there are three word names everywhere. It would just be better for everyone if the word in the middle of these names wasn’t a trendy ampersand.

So where does the ampersand come from?

The ampersand dates back to the first century C.E. when old Roman cursive made a ligature combining “et,” the Latin word for “and.” This ligature evolved over time to form the “&” we know today. The word “ampersand” comes from the mid-1800s stemming from the phrase “and per se,” meaning “and by itself.” It was often written after the words “a,” “I,” and formerly “o” to indicate that the writer was referring to the word and not the letter.

“And by itself” poetically suggests a simple fix to the proliferation of ampersands in names. Just use the words by themselves. So many Blank & Blank names would be better if they just dropped the ampersand.

Take the gift shop around the corner from me called Palm & Perkins. Palm Perkins is much better — it sounds like someone’s stage name. Take Heart & Dagger from above. Heart Dagger gets a much stronger reaction. Cedar & Rose? Try Cedar Rose.

It doesn’t work every time, but the easiest way to take trendy Blank & Blank names and make them more interesting and long lasting is a simple tap of the delete key.