SlammingTogetherness

I've often wondered why some corporate names seem vaguely sinister -- names like Verizon (communications oligopoly), CareFirst, WellPoint, AmeriGroup, Highmark, LifeWise, Thrivant, Assurant (all health insurance), Blackwater (security contractors), Veolia (transportation, trash disposal, water supplies), Accenture (outsourcing management), etc.

Part of the sinister feeling comes from a lack of correlation between the company's name and what it actually does or produces. (Compare the above-mentioned names to "China Ocean Shipping Company" or "General Motors.")  The private military/security contracting firm "Blackwater" - now known as "Academi," after a brief stint as "Xe" - has nothing to do with water, the eponymous national wildlife wetlands refuge, or academics.  God only knows what "Xe" means.  The corporate names provide a sense of sleekness and modernity, creating and manipulating images and emotions without any semblance of a clue about what the company actually does or produces.  To further confuse the issue, such companies often also provide a virtually content-free mission statement, as in the case of Accenture: "Our 'high-performance business' strategy is to use our expertise in consulting, technology and outsourcing [they of course eschew the Oxford comma] to help clients achieve performance at higher levels so they can create sustainable value for their customers and stakeholders."  (One is left to suppose that Accenture helps its clients make more money.)

The names are constructed of particles, each individually meaningless yet vaguely reassuring.  Particles include "Point," 'First," "Care," "Na" (cf. "Aetna," "Cigna," etc.), "Net,""Ameri," "Tech," and "Group." AmeriTechNaGroup? Sold!  These are not random syllables; an entire industry has sprung up around "corporate branding" and there are many online purveyors ("consultancies") hawking such names, which can be "evocative," "functional," "experiential," or even purely "invented."  In them we see echoes of "newspeak," the agglutinative language of 1984's Ingsoc.  Abbreviated and compound forms are an essential feature of newspeak: "...in thus abbreviating a name, one narrowed and subtly altered its meaning, by cutting out most of the associations that would otherwise cling to it."  For example, Kentucky Fried Chicken becomes KFC.  Its chicken is no less fried than it was before the name change, but the association between fried/unhealthy food and the restaurant is masked.  This is a fairly obvious example of rebranding, and I can't decide if it's more sinister because of its total lack of subtlety or because of the fact that such strategies may actually work to improve public perceptions.