Naming is hard.

Often, when explaining to someone what I do for a living, their response is, "that sounds awesome."

And it is.

Unfortunately, they have no idea how challenging it can be from time to time.

When explaining to "guy at bar," for instance, that I get paid to show up at work and 'name' things every day, he immediately envisions a large, eighties-movie-style 'creatives' room
(à la Big)—replete with ping pong tables, massage chairs and multi-colored bean-bags—where goateed guys sit around playing Sega and eating Doritos all afternoon.

This couldn't be further from the truth.

In reality, naming is an art and a science—a skill that requires focus, careful strategizing and years of practice. Like any discipline worth its weight in PowerPoint slides—strategy, simplification, design—there’s a prescribed process for achieving best results.

Lately, and on an ever-increasing basis, I've noticed two major problems engendered by the 'naming is easy' attitude.

The first is the tendency for people outside the skill-set to think they're experts just because it deals in words—a medium most are familiar with.

This manifests itself in collaborative brainstorming groups, preliminary long-list reviews and/or internal email threads and, if nothing else, makes for interesting encounters when we namers are forced with figuring out creative ways of telling others their ideas are "a bit awkward."

The other, more dangerous and highly prevalent issue is one that's widespread throughout the consulting continuum: client subjectivity.

Most of us have been there.

You're in the presentation, sharing for the first time your highly-refined, much-agonized-over list of ideas, and within a span of three minutes, they’re all gone.

Why?

"I don't like it."

"It reminds me of spiders."

"It's weird."

"I don’t like the letter 'q.'"

"I had a car in the eighties with that name and it broke down all the time."

"It rhymes with "broke."

"It can’t start with 'e'—no matter what."

Like I've said, naming's a complex beast—one fraught with emotions, opinions and subjectivity at every step of the process.

Just remember, a lot goes into creating that final list you see—immersion, study, brainstorming, critiquing, long-listing, legal checks, short-listing and much more. So next time you’re ready to dismiss hours, days – weeks – worth of work over subjective issues, remember: there's more going on in the 'creatives' room than just Mad Men-style martini lunches—there's shrimp, too.