Healthy Skepticism Library item: 8287

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Woodhead M.
What's in a name?
6minutes.com 2007 Jan 22
http://web.archive.org/web/20110102223000/http://www.6minutes.com.au/michael_blog/blogposts.asp?postid=303

Full text:

I was rather surprised to hear that newsreader Jessica Rowe has named her baby after a popular antihistamine. Allegra may well be the Italian world for joy, as she claims (the Babelfish online translating site gives it the more mundane Italian meaning of ‘glad’), but it is also the US brand name for fexofenadine – better known in Australia as Telfast. I’ve only just got used to people naming their offspring after American states (“Behave yourself Montana or you can join Georgia in the naughty corner”), now we’re calling our kids after their drugs too. I’m now looking forward to the day when we hear kindy teachers calling after kids with names like Avandia (“what are you doing with that sugar?”) Concerta (“sit still!”) and Evista (“have you broken something?”). Actually it’s understandable why so many drug brand names sound attractive and pleasant to the ear. These days, like many other brand names, the naming of new drugs is a finely researched marketing process – and certainly not left to the lab scientists. The rules are quite arcane. First you must make sure the generic name is unpronounceable so that doctors always use the brand name instead. If Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin today he’d be told that the generic name was going to be penifuztrcix and the brand name would be Bactifree. Interestingly, check your MIMS and you’ll find that hardly any generic drug names begin with the letters J or W because those letters don’t exist in many languages. Next, for naming your drug you’ll need some plosive and positive sound to start you off. Words that begin with P, T, K or C are best apparently, and anything with ‘pro’ in it is on the right track. Try find a word that sounds similar to the desired effect. Powerful as Niagara … Viagra. Levitation – Levitra! After that, you should try get a ‘fricative’, which implies fast. The letters X and Z come in handy here, and just as in Scrabble, score high points when it comes to naming your new pharmaceutical. Oh, and you should also try not to sound or look too much like any other of the 33,000 brand name drugs on the global market.
Not surprisingly, all this is a very complicated process and pharmaceutical companies will spend millions on advertising agencies to come up with the right brand name for their next blockbuster drug. How long before parents start paying agencies for them to come up with names for their kids?