Nearly everything has been named by someone. Book? Kid? Company? Country? At one point someone declared that we would all call it something.
But have you ever noticed how restrictive we are in choosing how we name things? Sure, you can name something whatever you’d like, but for whatever reason we tend to name the same types of things in certain ways. Sure, you can name a boy child Henry or Silas or Aiden or George, or even go “extreme” and name him Phineas or Absalom or Arrow or Ranger. But in the end, don’t all those names seem pretty similar? Each are single words, two or three syllables, and around 5-7 letters. Why doesn’t anyone think to name a kid “C3P0” or “The Doors” or “High the Sunshine” (well, ok, some people aren’t afraid to do something like that.)
Boys are named a certain way. Girls are named a certain way. Bands are named a certain way. Medicine is named a certain way. You get my drift. Humans are conformers. If a category’s names follow a pattern or a vibe, then we’re usually going to follow right along with that.
Anyways, I’ve listed the “top 10” of a handful of categories below to illustrate the point. These entries were taken from easily-found “top 10” lists.
The next time you’re naming something, I challenge you to category-jump. The world could use more medicines named Metallica and kids named Folklore.
Books
Don Quixote
A Tale of Two Cities
The Lord of the Rings
The Little Prince
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
And Then There Were None
The Dream of the Red Chamber
The Hobbit
She: A History of Adventure
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
A bit heavey on “The”, “And”, and “Of” , but solid group!
Bands
The Beatles
Eagles
Led Zeppelin
AC/DC
Pink Floyd
Aerosmith
The Rolling Stones
Metallica
Van Halen
Fleetwood Mac
Quality. I’ve always loved band names.
Boys
Liam
Noah
Oliver
William
Elijah
James
Benjamin
Lucas
Mason
Ethan
Girls
Olivia
Emma
Ava
Sophia
Isabella
Charlotte
Amelia
Mia
Harper
Evelyn
7 of them end in “a”!
Board Games
Gloomhaven
Pandemic Legacy
Brass
Terraforming Mars
Twilight Imperium
Gaia Project
Through the Ages
Spirit Island
Great Western Trail
Scythe
Companies
Apple
Microsoft
Alphabet
Saudi Aramco
Amazon
Tesla
Berkshire Hathaway
Tencent
JP Morgan Chase
Countries
China
India
United States
Indonesia
Pakistan
Nigeria
Brazil
Bangladesh
Russia
Mexico
Movies
Titanic
ET
The Wizard of Oz
Star Wars
The Lord of the Rings
Snow White
Terminator
The Lion King
The Godfather
The Jesus Film
2020 Albums
Folklore
Fine Line
Map of the Soul
After Hours
When we Fall Asleep, Where do we go?
Frozen II
What You See is What You Get
Chromatica
Lover
Legends Never Die
Medicine
Levothyroxine
Lisinopril
Atorvastatin
Metformin
Amlodipine
Metoprolol
Omeprazole
Simvastatin
Losartan
Albuterol
Nonsense, the lot of it. It’s like scientists are trying to one-up each other on how crazy they can make their brand new drug sound.
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