“What’s in a name? that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” — William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
In the play Juliet seems to argue that it does not matter that Romeo is from her family’s rival house of Montague, that is, that he is named “Montague”. The reference is often used to imply that the names of things do not affect what they really are. Juliet compares Romeo to a rose saying that if he were not named Romeo he would still be handsome and be Juliet’s love. Obviously when Shakespeare wrote this he was not thinking about startups I guess.
However, Juliet’s couplet on her private balcony in Verona is as applicable today and to our event tech startups as they were to Elizabethan audiences 400 years ago. Do you know why?
What Shakespeare is reminding us is that names don’t mean anything by themselves. In the example offered by Juliet, no matter what you call a rose — even if you call it a “steaming pile of horse manure” — it’ll still smell just as wonderful. That’s because the letters R, O, S, and E aren’t the things that make roses desirable. Roses are desirable because of their beauty, their sweet smell, and the cultural significance attributed to them. In other words, the reason we value the name “rose” is because we value the object it describes. The name itself — just like the name of one’s startup — doesn’t matter.
In order to see how Shakespeare’s philosophy applies to a lots of startup names, lets see and recall the names of the companies, that have nothing to do with their names , meaning that their names are completely different from what they are into and what they are doing — Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, AT&T, Ford, Verizon etc. are just few of the examples…
Okay, what i am trying to say is that though the name is important but it does not defines what you do, most of the times.
Your name will have a meaning the day you start providing value to your customers, it’s the customers love that brings identity and value to your startup name , not otherwise.
But still, let me tell you how we came up with the name Spalba and what does it signify.
When we were scouting for names, my co-founder Vishal Puri did a lot of research and came out with this name.
So Alba is the name of a female rabbit who was genetically modified. She was brought to life by mixing a rabbit’s DNA with a jelly fish DNA. Alba used to glow in the dark, just like a jelly fish. So when we added Alba to the Spaces(like event venues), we got Spalba and that meant at Spalba we would genetically modify spaces ( through technology ) and make them glow like Alba, actually making them visible to the customers or people looking for spaces, so Spalba became “alba of spaces”
So technically getting the name that we would love all through our life was the easy part, now we are geared for building the right value and solving a global problem.
But a Name is a Name and if you have a story to describe the same, it makes all the sense and you live by it.
