The Evolution of a Name

When I named my company I considered countless ideas before going for the obvious. I’d already used the name ‘malevolent’ online pre-web and was going to be doing a lot of design work, so it wasn’t a great inspirational leap to combine the two. The phrase clearly could be interpreted as ‘evil intent’ (fine by me), but seemingly had no special cultural resonance or existing usage, and although it’s a pain to spell/type I’ve been comfortable sticking with it.

Interestingly, in the last few years the phrase ‘malevolent design’ has appeared as part of the intelligent design vs. evolution conflict. Searches now feature countless references to religious articles and tongue-in-cheek theories, and I’m often not the top result (boo, hiss!).

So is there a danger that people are misunderstanding my company/site and thinking it’s evolution-related? Should I change the name? No, the usage isn’t prevalent or harmful, but if I’d called the company ‘intelligent design’ then the name would’ve been ditched years ago…

Wed 9th Aug 2006, 9:05pm GMT

Filed under: Marketing and Advertising, Search Engines

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