The Name Game

The tech world, and the world in general, was all abuzz today with Apple's unveiling of its long-awaited tablet product, the iPad. Essentially, it looks to be a would-be Kindle killer, a rectangular device that lets users read e-books, listen to MP3s, watch videos, destroy sharks with laser beams and more. Seems pretty cool and all, but there's one thing that's bugging me and apparently a lot of other folks: what's with that stupid name?

The jokes have already been made ad infinitum: iPad sounds like a feminine hygiene product. So how does something this huge and hyped and sweated-over end up with an obviously horrendous name? Somebody in the Apple marketing department is getting reamed out right about now. On Twitter today, the topic "iTampon" was actually trending higher than "iPad." That doesn't bode well. It'll be fun to see how they spin this.

But the iPad certainly isn't the first stupid product name. The dotcom boom led to plenty of idiotic company names: OK2Play.com, EcomEcom.com, Kerbango (I actually liked that one), the list went on and on. Guess they were thinking outside the lightbox.

But those pale in comparison to some of these product names documented at this blog: Golden Gaytime ice cream, Vergina beer, Pee Cola, Ayds diet supplements, and Shitto spiced pepper sauce.

Maybe the jokes about the iPad will die down eventually, but I'm betting Steve Jobs wishes he called it the iShitto.

As it turns out, MadTV was on top of this three years ago: