\n\tCompanies agonize over what to name a product, and we certainly recognize how difficult a process it is to come up with a good name.
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\n\tOver the years, we’ve seen lots of good ones; the Palm Pilot, the Motorola Razr, TiVo, the Flip cam, are just a few.
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\n\tBut today we’re not here to celebrate success. No, let us to rejoice in failure and admire some of the truly bad–and, in some cases, truly awful–names that have come along in the last 10 years or so.
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\n\tHere’s the newest addition to the list. Netflix’s sudden plan to split the company in two and change the name of its DVD delivery service to Qwikster didn’t go over so well, and the company quickly nixed the name and put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
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\n\tWhile it may be a little hard to separate the name from the ill-conceived launch, any way you slice it, Qwikster just feels off–and not in a good way.
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\n\tIn this gallery, we’ll list the top 20 worst names as chosen by CNET editors – and identify the top 5 chosen by CNET’s Brian Cooley.
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\n\tWe begin the countdown of the five worst names with a tie for number 5. Cool names? not! The Cool-er stood for cool e-reader. It wasn’t so cool, but it did come in a lot of colors.
\n\tAlso at number 5, Cuil was a search engine that forgot to find a good name.
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\n\tCaption by David Carnoy
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\n\tSamsung’s Smiley phone actually had the famous smiley-face emoticon in its name. Ouch. Bad idea all around. We’re number 4.
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\n\tPhoto by: Samsung
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\n\tNever a good idea to put a * in a name. Guess it stands for artist or whatever. It’s number 3.
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\n\tPhoto by: Pentax
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\n\tThe mRobe ranks as the second worst-named product of all time. Once again, we think something got lost in the Japanese translation. The word was, an Olympus executive liked the idea of a product that you could come home to and slip on like a robe. (There was some comfort factor involved, if memory serves correct.)
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\n\tPhoto by: Olympus
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\n\tThere have been lots of poorly named MP3 players over the years. (Samsung Yepp, anyone?) However, Germany-based TrekStor’s iBeat Blaxx may go down in history as one the most unfortunately named tech products of all time after people accused the product of being racist. It made number 1 on our list.
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\n\tShortly after it launched, TrekStor CTO Gil Szmigiel, apologized for the misunderstanding and renamed the product the TrekStor Blaxx.
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\n\tApple has a dud every once in a while, and Ping makes our list.
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\n\tScreenshot: Apple
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\n\tCaption by: David Carnoy
\n\tCasio’s line of ultrarugged G’zOne offer a lesson in the hazards of playing around with Caps key on the keyboard.
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\n\tPhoto by: Casio
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\n\tCisco’s business tablet is pronounced see-us. Some might pronounce it more like tschuss, which means goodbye in German.
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\n\tPhoto by: Cisco
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\n\tBy George, we actually liked the Chestnut Hill Sound George when we reviewed it a few years back. It has a detachable remote that mimicked the iPod’s interface and sounded good, too.
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\n\tWe’re not quite sure why it was called the “George,” but we seem to remember one of the company reps mentioning something about being the first of its kind and a George Washington connection.
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\n\tPhoto by: Chestnut Hill
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\n\tThe Gizmondo was a portable gaming device that never quite made it to market but spent a lot of time in trade show booths, which featured models wearing white Gizmondo T-shirts.
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\n\tCaption by: David Carnoy
\n\tThree Es all in a row do not make for a great name. Maybe if they capitalized one?
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\n\tPhoto by: Asus
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\n\tThe iMuffs are a Bluetooth headset.
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\n\tCaption by: David Carnoy
\n\tA few people queued up online to preorder the Plastic Logic Que e-reader. But they never got it because it never came to market.
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\n\tSony’s Slingbox competitor actually worked pretty well, but “Location-Free TV” didn’t quite make sense as a name.
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\n\tSorry, Sony, for putting so many of your products on the list, but you make a lot of tech products. We’re not sure what the Muteki name is supposed to evoke, but it kind of sounds like mutant tech. If that’s what you were going for, bravo.
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\n\tQriocity did not kill the cat. It is Sony’s streaming-movie and -music service.
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\n\tSony’s break-dancing Bluetooth speaker, the Rolly, is pretty amusing to watch the first 10 times you see it in action. As a name, the Rolly isn’t as bad as some on the list, but it has never been quite clear how to pronounce it. (Is it Roll-y or Rollie, like Rollie Fingers?)
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\n\tOy vey, it’s the Tivoli iYiYi.
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\n\tPhoto by: Tivoli
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