What’s in a name? Linguistic and legal aspects of company names, product and service names, trademarks, and brands

Names have been given to commercial actors and products for centuries, as well as to activities traditionally grouped together as “trades” but now more often viewed as “services”. In Western countries during the 18th and 19th centuries major changes took place in the use of such names, under the influence of social and economic factors including industrialization and mass production, the growth of international trade, and the development of new techniques of advertising. Modern practices deploying signs as commercial “names” differ from earlier, established conventions in a number of ways: (i) how particular names originate, now including many being invented or selected through market testing; (ii) their typical verbal structure and types of entity they are given to; (iii) the functions such names serve, combining reference to commercial entities with indications of origin and promotional effects; and (iv) the need for names used for commercial purposes to comply with specialized bodies of rules that govern them. Drawing on earlier work by the authors (individually, together, and with others) the authors show how such names can be understood better by moving beyond paradigms available within a single discipline and bringing approaches in law and linguistics into closer dialogue.