Everyone has heard a story about a company introducing a new product into a foreign country, only to discover its name means something negative, offensive, or comical.

To protect our clients against this risk, the Russell Mark Group includes linguistic screening of three languages with every naming project. Spanish and French are always included, and our clients choose the third language based on their market strategy.

For some clients, we conduct linguistic screening on names they have developed themselves. For Visa Inc., we regularly screen 32 languages for their internally generated names. We maintain a panel of native speakers around the world who are particularly qualified for this unusual type of language work.

We can also develop names in more than one language. Our recent projects in this area include:

~ Development of the Chinese corporate name for computer storage
   company SanDisk;

~ Creation of an English-French name for a Canadian division of
   McKesson, the health care services giant.