Two sciences matter: how people process a string (fluency, symbolism) and how offices classify a mark (distinctiveness, confusion).
Neither science is a baby-name chart, and neither is a luck table.
Findings
- Courts / offices — Spectrum of distinctiveness
Generic and descriptive marks fail or weaken; arbitrary and fanciful marks are stronger.
- Laham et al. (fluency) — Easy names are liked more
A small psychological input — not a substitute for clearance.
- Ramachandran / Köhler lineage — Hunches about vowels
Useful for shortlists, not for destinies.
- Lieberson (contrast) — Baby fashion ≠ brand fashion
Parents and product managers copy for different reasons; do not use SSA as a brand tool.
- Trademark litigators — Sound-alikes matter
Phonetic similarity can block you even when spelling differs — see also Icelandic-style ears, commercialised.
- Localisation teams — Rude collisions
A repeated, expensive finding: someone skipped the mouth test abroad.
Mechanisms
- Distinctiveness — How far the string is from describing the goods.
- Priority — Who filed first in that class and place.
- Phonetic confusion — The ear as a legal fact.
- Handle scarcity — A practical veto the statute never wrote.
Debates
- Invented word vs real word? — Empty register vs instant meaning. A cost debate.
- Should brands sound like people? — Warmth vs trademark weakness vs the ethics of occupying a personal-name space.
- Is a lucky kanji brand okay? — As decoration in a market that expects it, maybe; as a claim in this atlas, no.
If a finding cannot change a filing or a pronunciation test, it is decoration.