How Do You Pronounce "Aquent"?

We changed our name to "Aquent" back in 1999. It is pronounced with a long "a" (think: "agent") followed by a "kwent." The name has never been popular among naming pundits. About a month after we switched, Ruth Shalit, writing for Salon, said, "You could be forgiven for thinking that a functional, descriptive name such as MacTemps [our former name - Matt], for all its pedestrian clunkiness, might be preferable to a name like Aquent, which to the casual observer evokes something vaguely liquid, perhaps a mouthwash, and whose meaning only becomes clear, if then, when parsed by a listener who is profoundly familiar with the morphemic structure of Latin and ancient Greek." See what I mean?

Arcane morphemic structures aside, numerous commentators criticized the name for being meaningless, and Clay Risen, writing in 2002, gave it an "F." (He also pointed out, rightly though embarrassingly, that "... 'aquent' actually does have a meaning in English: It's a geological term for poorly drained human-altered soils--in other words, landfill," which many of our employees discovered when they Googled the name.)

After 9 years, you'd think that the ridicule would have died down but, sadly, it has not. As recently as this past Friday, Jim Ferry referred to the name as a "doozy" and snidely quipped, "Well, gotta go brush my teeth and rinse with Aquent. (Oh! They are a Temp agency? Nevermind.)" Ouch.

I understand why people mispronounce "Aquent," even though there are a lot of words - atypical, atheist, ancient, etc. - that start with a long "a." My theory is that folks see "A-Q-U" and immediately think "AQUA." Mispronunciation is practically unavoidable at that point. This mistake is so common and easy to make, we should have taken it into consideration and chosen a name that could be pronounced correctly more or less automatically by more or less any person reading it.

(To be fair, we did bring this up when the name was presented to us and, as I recall, the namegiver, Mr. Ira Bachrach of NameLab compared it to another name they had coined, "Acura." Seems like all we had to do was run a big ad campaign, like Honda had, to firmly lodge the correct pronunciation in the minds of the consuming public. Turns out that's kind of expensive and not totally appropriate for the B-to-B space. Alas. On a side note, NameLab also came up with "Olive Garden," if only they'd given us that one!)

At the same time, I don't quite get the criticism which faults the name for being made-up and meaningless (except when the criticism points out that someone else had already made it up and that it does have a meaning after all - but let's move on). These same folks don't seem to have a problem with companies, restaurants, or other products being named after people - McDonald's, Gucci, John Deere, Mercedes, Van Halen, Orange Julius, etc. - even though, as words, those names don't strictly speaking mean anything either. Could we have avoided this whole tempest in a teapot if we had just claimed, "Our company is named after one of its founders, Johnny Aquent"? Probably.

But that's not even the real issue. We actually chose "Aquent" precisely because it didn't have a specific or commonly known meaning. Why did we do that? Because we're a company that tries a lot of different things and we didn't want, on the one hand, the name to paint us into a corner the way "MacTemps" did. On the other hand, we didn't want to have to come up with a new name and a new brand identity every time we made forays into a new area of staffing, as we had done with Portfolio, WebStaff, and 1-800-Network. The "empty vessel" appealed to us on account of its flexibility and we especially liked the fact that it gave us the opportunity to make "Aquent" mean something.

Coming up with a name that is memorable, meaningful (specifically in the context of your business), and, more importantly, flexible enough to allow for a company's growth and evolution over the long haul, is difficult. There are lessons to be drawn from our experience, and with hindsight some of they may seem pretty obvious, but the one lesson you should NOT draw is: Choosing a problematic, spoofable, or just plain odd name will ruin you. It won't and it hasn't because, ultimately, your business isn't about your name. It's about whether you provide a real service that meets real needs for real people.

Do that and you won't care what people call you, as long as they call you.

Image Courtesy of rkimpeljr.