Importance Of Product Name

I was searching for an email this morning and came across this one about the importance of product name from an old friend of mine I meet on a plane once.

During my travels in the late 80's I was employed in New England as a boat hull cleaner. The recession caused me to ask pertinent questions to make financial ends meet. It was spring and I needed to earn enough money to continue traveling. I resorted to selling pictures I had accumulated during traveling they weren't selling. As the day progressed, I noticed that people were carrying gardening items. Several booths down a man was trying to sell literally hundreds of broomsticks no takers. I had an association. I risked the very last $200 dollars I had and bought 580 broomsticks, he was happy to pass them. I brought them back to my booth and labeled a sign 'tomato stakes" within 2 hours I earned $1740, and sold every stick I had. The product name changed the result, not the product.

It's not always true but many times there is great importance in simply product name.  For instance why is Starbucks called starbucks?

Starbucks began in 1971 when three academics—English teacher Jerry Baldwin, history teacher Zev Siegel, and writer Gordon Bowker—opened a store called Starbucks Coffee, Tea, and Spice in the touristy Pikes Place Market in Seattle. The three partners shared a love of fine coffees and exotic teas and believed they could build a clientele in Seattle much like that which had already emerged in the San Francisco Bay area. Each invested $1,350 and borrowed another $5,000 from a bank to open the Pikes Place store. Baldwin, Siegel, and Bowker chose the name Starbucks in honor of Starbuck, the coffee-loving first mate in Herman Melville's Moby Dick(so company legend has it), and because they thought the name evoked the romance of the high seas and the seafaring tradition of the early coffee traders. The new company's logo, designed by an artist friend, was a two-tailed mermaid encircled by the store's name.

Many times the company's name or logo shows heritage, tradition, and more or less what they are about and what they wish to achieve.  It may even influence the customer's decision to try products from the company.