II. Fill in the blanks in the sentences below with one of these words taken from the reading

I. Answer these multiple-choice questions to see how well you understood the reading.

Exercises

1. According to the reading, what role do focus groups play in naming companies and products?

(A) They help naming companies determine if a name is acceptable.

(B) They think up original, attractive names.

(C) They make sure that a name has not already been trademarked.

(D) They select names from a list.

2. What does the author say about Kentucky Fried Chicken?

(A) It may change its name in the near future.

(B) It has tried to prevent its name from being shortened.

(C) It prefers to be known by initials rather than by its full name.

(D) It may soon merge with another corporation

3. What do the initials E and A refer to in the name IKEA?

(A) Nothing; they are meaningless initials.

(B) They refer to the founder's first and last names.

(C) They are the first letters of the Swedish words for design and firm.

(D) They refer to the founder's farm and a nearby town.

4. Which of the following name changes is an example of morpheme construction?

(A) 3M in place of Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing

(B) Nabisco in place of National Biscuit Company

(C) Widget Works International in place of the U.S. Widget Corporation

(D) Nu Foto Studios in place of New Photo Studios

5. When Federal Express changed its name to FedEx, which of the following could be reduced?

(A) The cost of painting its trucks

(B) The number of trucks that it owned

(C) The number of drivers that it employed

(D) The size of the trucks that it used

6. What did Steve Jobs reportedly have to agree to when he named his company Apple?

(A) Not to perform in a musical group

(B) To pay a fee to the Beatles for the use of their name

(C) Not to go into the recording business

(D) To produce only computers

7. Which of these names for a new company would Toys-R-Us probably object to?

(A) Toys-R-Fun

(B) McToys, Inc.

(C) Games-R-Us

(D) Chocolates-4-U

8. What is learned in the reading about Boo.com?

(A) It now makes men's fashions as well as women's fashions.

(B) It was not in business for long.

(C) Today it has a more conventional name.

(D) Although naming experts thought it was a poor name, it turned out to be successful.

9. Which of these questions can NOT be answered by reading the sixth paragraph of the reading?

(A) What language does the name Akamai come from?

(B) What do the names Nike, Ajax, and Midas have in common?

(C) What does the word Oreo mean in Greek?

(D) What type of product does the Haagen-Dazs company make?

10. Which of these product names can be translated in an unintended way in TWO languages?

(A) Bran Buds cereal

(B)Dainty soap

(C)Country Mist makeup

(D) Toshiba computers

struggle dainty mix-ups mythology

gaffe brisk prefix playful

sued inspired coined fusing

universally consciously straightforward aloof

screen catchy leisure fee

1. The _______ un- means not, as in the words unimportant and unusual.

2. This movie is not based entirely on facts, but it was partially _______ by actual events.

3. That song has a _______ melody. It keeps running through my head over and over.

4. George made a terrible social _______. He asked the hostess at the party when her baby was due, and she said, in an icy voice, «I'm NOT pregnant!»

5. Marcos is a real workaholic. He spends almost all of his waking hours at the office. He has very little time left over for _______ activities.

6. Some of the names of the days of the week come from Scandinavian _______. For example, Thursday really means «Thor's day». Thor was the Scandinavian god of thunder.

7. In its television commercials, Passport Credit Cards says that you only need to carry your Passport when you travel, because a Passport credit card is almost _______ accepted by merchants around the world.

8. I had always thought that Dr. Pierpoint was _______. He seldom talked to anyone and he seemed cold and distant. But once I got to know him, I realized that he was just painfully shy.

9. Angela was in a very _______ mood last night. She was joking and singing funny songs, and acting like a little kid.

10. Mr. Wills was getting a lot of strange phone calls. He decided to get a caller-ID system that informed him who was calling. The caller ID allowed him to _______ his incoming calls.

III. These statements come from the reading «The Name Game». Read each statement and then answer the questions that follow.

Each year, business executives around the world struggle to find original and catchy names for their companies and their companies' products. According to business experts, these decisions are among the most important decisions that firms ever make.

1. If a name is catchy, it is…

(A) easy to remember.

(B) humorous.

(C) highly unusual.

2. Another word has the same meaning as firms. Find that word.

The rights to the names Indian Motorcycles and Pan Am Airlines were sold years after those companies went bankrupt.

3. A company that went bankrupt…

(A) became famous.

(B) changed its name.

(C) went out of business.

International Business Machines is almost universally called IBM, American Telephone and Telegraph has become AT&T, and Kentucky Fried Chicken has consciously chosen to be known as KFC.

4. Consciously means…

(A) apparently.

(B) intentionally.

(C) previously.

Some firms create names by a process called «morpheme construction», first shortening and then fusing parts of their company's full names.

5. A word with the same meaning as fusing is…

(A) eliminating.

(B) joining

(C) changing

A number of companies have chosen off-the-wall or playful names for their products. There are those naming experts who warn against this, saying that consumers will not take these seriously, and in the case of Boo.com, they may have been right: This women's fashion company went bankrupt in no time. However, Monster.com, Google, and Yahoo! have succeeded despite-or may be because of their unusual names.

6. What words or phrases in this statement are similar in meaning to of-the-wall? Write them down.

More often, though, a problem occurs. The classic example of an international naming gaffe is that of the General Motors car called the Nova.

7. A word in this statement has a meaning similar to gaffe. Write it down.

Some names are totally invented. One advantage for a corporation in making up a name is that this name is then unambiguous property of the company, and it is easy to trademark. Some of these coined names,while not real words, are suggestive of actual words.

8. Unambiguous is closest in meaning to...

(A) clear.

(B) permanent.

(C) entire.

9. Find the word in this statement with the same meaning as coined.

Named for an exploding star, the Nova was a reliable car, but its sales were never brisk in Spanish-speaking countries.

10. If sales for a product are brisk, they are...

(A) rapid.

(B) predictable.

(C) disappointing.

A food company literally made a big mistake when it named a burrito Burrada. (Burrada means «big mistake» in Spanish.)Bran Buds, a type of breakfast cereal, sounds like «burnt farmers» in Swedish, and the word Dainty, the name of a type of soap, sounds like the word the word for «aloof» in Finnish and like the word for "stupid" in Farsi.

11. The name Dainty is the name of a type of soap, but the word dainty really means...

(A) fragile, gentle.

(B) superior to all others.

(C) sweet smelling.

12. The word aloof is often used to describe a person. A person who is aloof is...

(A) silly, funny.

(B) not very smart.

(C) distant and unfriendly.

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