An Updated List of Bad Company Names

Written by Dana Oshiro / July 5, 2009 8:14 PM / 18 Comments

A few years ago the Unofficial Dreamhost Blog circulated a list of the worst domain names. Domains like therapistfinder.com (Therapist Finder) and molestationnursery.com (Mole Station Nursery) seemed to top the list as the worst of the worst, while penisland.net (Pen Island) had members flocking to the site to see what all the fuss was about.

We cannot stress enough how important it is to choose a good name when you've found it. Below is an updated list of great companies with bizarre names or domains. Consider this a cautionary tale.

1. Doostang.com: Founded in 2005 by Harvard, Stanford and MIT students, Doostang helps young professionals accelerate their careers. In this case, acceleration actually sounds like a bad thing; nevertheless, it's nothing that can't be prevented by a little Pepto Bismol.

2. Twubs.com: Twubs is the hash tag-based aggregator that helps event planners broadcast a live conference stream and organize event-related social media. Surprisingly this event assistant runs faster than he looks.

3. fTags.com: This site provides real time twitter streams on niche topics and aggregates them to one place. Unfortunately an ftag sounds a lot like a "tramp stamp", so if it were up to us we'd be aggregating your tweets to a tattoo elegantly etched above your buttocks.

4. BLEWS: We last mentioned Microsoft's BLEWS in an article on media bias deconstruction. The name is a portmanteau of blogosphere and news. For a brilliant project built on the principles of natural language processing, the name doesn't just blow in the present tense, it blew and continues to do so with grammatical errors.

5. Putacart.com: This site is best known as the shopping cart widget that goes anywhere. Something tells us Spanish language users might not want to go there without a condom.

If you've got more nominations for bizarre names, add them to the comments below.

Photo credits: Dennis Mojado,

Comments

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www.piggme.com Whether it refers to pigs or pygmies, it is just odd.

Posted by: onakiser | July 5, 2009 8:38 PM

I still think the worst is Microsoft latest response to Google ... "Bing.com" ... are we supposed to tell our friends we binged them? I binged this?

What were the Marketing Dept thinking?

Posted by: Nick d'Angelo | July 5, 2009 8:53 PM

@Nick d'Angelo

I think its "Bing; Banged; Bung" ?

So someone at MS must have thought I'd be funny if one could say "I banged [insert name]" without technically telling a lie.

Either way, idiotic name that's for sure.

Posted by: Jannis Gundermann | July 5, 2009 9:08 PM

How about http://www.scatissue.com (SCA Tissue)

Posted by: Matt | July 5, 2009 9:13 PM

http://www.floort.com

What the heck is a Floort?

Posted by: doug | July 6, 2009 12:07 AM

I wrote a post on this very idea last week - based off of our AboutUsBotGoneBad category - we get some funny ones over here - http://blog.aboutus.org/2009/07/01/camelcase-wikiwednesday-your-website-identity/

Posted by: MarkDilley | July 6, 2009 12:19 AM

Funny!

Consider http://www.nycanal.com/ . Wouldn't have thought it.... :)

Posted by: Barbara Ling, Virtual Coach | July 6, 2009 3:18 AM

I'm always somewhat concerned by name of the RSS advertising provider "Pheedo" http://www.pheedo.com/

Posted by: Richard K | July 6, 2009 3:45 AM

When the UK utility company Powergen opened up in Italy their website was briefly but memorably registered as Powergenitalia.com.
I'm not saying what fotoLibra.com stands for, apart from great service, low prices etcetera etcetera.

Posted by: Gwyn Headley | July 6, 2009 4:18 AM

yes, it is important to chose a good domain name

Posted by: eshare | July 6, 2009 5:00 AM

PutaCart! LOL. Can't stop laughing about this.

Posted by: UFC 100 Live Stream | July 6, 2009 6:22 AM

once dealt with a company by the name of The Dickey Grabler Co.

Posted by: andre | July 6, 2009 6:31 AM

You guys should fix something... penisland.com should read penisland.net. The link is correct and leads to penisland.net. As you'll discover penisland.com is a completely different story.

Posted by: Matt Clark | July 6, 2009 7:41 AM

Wow...thanks for catching that Matt. That was almost an unintentional goatse-style debacle.

Posted by: Dana Oshiro | July 6, 2009 7:51 AM

You guys are quick.. thanks for fixing that I tried making a little funny with the .com url on twitter this morning, and discovered the mix up.

Posted by: Matt Clark | July 6, 2009 7:53 AM

One of the most recent highlights of bad company naming is probably Nigaz, the Nigeria Gazprom joint venture.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/30/russia-nigeria-gas-name-blunder

I can't tell how it sounds to Russian native speakers, but it's just so wrong in English...

Posted by: Christian | July 6, 2009 8:37 AM

hanks for fixing that I tried making a little funny with the .com url on twitter this morning

Posted by: porno seyret | July 6, 2009 1:30 PM

Great post, made me laugh out loud. Thanks Dana, I needed it.

For those stuck with a ridiculous company name - get a great one at www.purrple.com.

Posted by: Yair 'Jay' Harel | July 6, 2009 6:24 PM