Hall of Shame

The 13 Worst Company Names Imaginable

Fuk Mi Sushi

In the ever-growing Marketing Hall of Shame, we have looked at the worst tweets, campaigns, product translations, and — everyone’s favorite — website names.

For some reason, we delight in mistakes and bloopers, laugh at the “WTF” moments and shake our heads at some of the marketing activities we see. In the current global situation, it’s fun and perhaps comforting to know that as marketers, we haven’t failed as hard as these companies. To be fair, it would be hard to fail this badly.

Today we look at some genuinely awful company names. Some are named after their owners, some have been devised with little thought, and a couple were trying to be too clever and failed. Choosing a business name is different from choosing a website name — the name lives not only online but in logos, signage, and outdoor advertising. The atrocity of these names can really stand out in such environments.

1. Poopsies Pizza

Poopsies is a pizza restaurant located in Massachusetts. Maybe they were going for a childish-type name to attract the young family market. Surely, though, when you are serving food, you don’t want the customer to think of number two.

2. Passmore Gas

Perhaps the team at this gas company in Arizona had just eaten at Poopsies.

Actually, the business was started by Randall Passmore, who found no irony in naming a gas and propane company after himself.

Randall’s business has become popular fodder on the internet, and you can even buy artwork of his Passmore Gas tank, as shown above — only $7, if you’re interested.

3. Analtech

This Delaware company stuck with their unfortunate name for some time before they finally decided to move to a more appropriate name. Miles Scientific sounds far more serious and authoritative — although they couldn’t fully part ways with their original name. It lives on in the header of their website.

4. oooooc.com

Sometimes you can just try way too hard. This internet startup thought they were smart with this name. In reality, this is one of the worst business names I have seen. It looks like the “o” on the keyboard was stuck.

Wanting to be known as Five OC, the social marketplace business was a Silicon Valley flop and no longer exists. Except on lists like this.

5. Fuk Mi Sushi

This restaurant is based in Malaysia, where although English isn’t the native language, enough people speak it to realize what this name means.

I would be a little embarrassed to answer the phone at this restaurant to take a customer's reservation.

6. Stubbs Prosthetics & Orthotics

Stubbs Prosthetics was started 40 years ago in Tennessee by William V. Stubbs, his wife Barbara A. Stubbs, and their son, W. Mark Stubbs. Like many family businesses, they decided to name the company after themselves.

It’s not a good fit, considering the product they are selling and what it is used for.

7. Sam & Ella’s Chicken Palace

At first glance, this name may sound OK. Perhaps it’s an old mom and pop diner run by the charming and friendly Sam and Ella in a small town in Ohio. It looks good on the sign and has family appeal. I’m sure their fried chicken is tasty.

Now read it quickly out aloud. What does it sound like? Perhaps a bacterial disease that is caught by eating contaminated food.

Salmonella.

Bet you still don’t feel like eating some of their chicken.

8. Amigone Funeral Home

Back in 1926, Daniel Amigone opened his business in Western New York. For a century, his family has offered “exemplary funeral service.”

It does seem an unintentionally amusing name for a serious business. I am not sure if their clients — dead or alive — appreciate the name.

9. Cock Polishing Services

This cleaning company is based in the U.K. I will give you one bit of advice here: I did a Google search to find this image. I wouldn’t recommend doing the same Google search at work.

10. Chew-N-Butts

In a decade, this tobacco store in Washington has only gathered six reviews on Yelp. Maybe the image of their business name is affecting sales?

11. Beavers Trim Shop

What comes to mind when you read the name of this store located in Lubbock, Texas? If you guessed they offered autobody repair services, you would be right. If you are after other services, you need to look elsewhere.

12. Profilatic

Profilatic was a short-lived business based out of Kentucky. It was a real-time feed aggregator that consolidated updates from social media and social networking websites — a copy of another popular site at the time — Friendfeed.

Aside from being misspelled, the website business bears no relevance to condoms or even to safety (which would be a far stretch but somewhat connected to internet feeds and searches).

Changing the spelling of a word and using it as your business name is a risky move. It can lead to difficulty with customers finding your website. Google will assume users have made a typo and display results for what the algorithms believe was the intended search.

In this case, Profilatic didn’t survive, having an earlier expiration date than most condoms. As a side note, Friendfeed was bought by Facebook in 2009 for $47.5 million in cash and Facebook shares. Could their choice of name have made the difference?

13. Goin’ Postal

Many on this list fail due to unintentional smut or silly humor. This one is truly baffling. Just read the definition of what going postal means: “Going postal is an American English slang phrase referring to becoming extremely and uncontrollably angry, often to the point of violence, and usually in a workplace environment.”

How does a company think that term would make an excellent name for a business? Unlike most on this list, which are small businesses, this is quite a large company with locations across the U.S., and it even has franchise opportunities available.

Each year, on average, twelve people are killed in their workplace by a person described as “going postal.” This is just poor taste, in my opinion.

The moral of this story is to check out your company name on all mediums, as a URL, on a logo, in different languages, and by reading it aloud. And do some market research. At least send the names to some friends to get feedback.

If you want long-term success, there needs to be some thought and care put into the business name. A joke may somewhat impact this. Pretentious names trying to be overly clever also are doomed to fail.

One statistic that should be remembered is that 72% of the 100 best brands are named with made-up words or acronyms. That’s useful information to use when coming up with a business name.

That way you can avoid the mistakes of our latest entrants to the Marketing Hall of Shame.