Ferrebeekeeper?

Honey Bundt Cake (Wayne Ferrebee, 2013, oil on panel)

OK, I need some help from you. It’s necessary to build Ferrebeekeeper into a more consolidated online platform which combines my twitter feed, my art gallery, my Etsy store, and, above all this blog. The question is whether I should build outward from this extant brand or do I need to start afresh with a new name? Come to think of it, are you all even out there or am I talking to some nefarious WordPress algorithm that generates a random number of “views” every day?

The cropped version of William Hogarth’s “Gin Lane” which I have used as a banner forever

OK, let’s not get distracted by meta-questions and stick with the fundamental naming issue: Ferrebeekeeper is a sort of play on words concerning my surname “Ferrebee” and a place to keep things like a “file keeper”. Best of all, the roots combine together to evoke beekeepers! Long ago, my webmaster was crafting a site for the now defunct line of toys I designed. She randomly typed my name into a website which was selling names and it corrected her: “did you mean FERREBEEKEEPER?” Obviously that was no good for selling toys, but later on I adopted it as a provisional name for my personal blogging project and it has stuck…until now.

Oh gosh! Oh gosh! [hyperventilating from generalized business anxiety]

According to marketing MBAs, when it comes to branding, shorter is always better. Maybe they are on to something: ”Zoomorphs” (the name of the aforementioned toys) was two syllables long and a real English word and yet people still got completely lost on how to pronounce it or say it. I had friends who called the toys “zoomers” for years. Erudite classicists would ask about Zoo-O-morphs as though inquiring about the state of the world’s phytoplankton. People would look at it and give up and just say “uh these zoo things…” Now think of how much worse it is with a 5 syllable name! Ferr-e-bee-kee-per…might as well be an obscure village in Wales or a metabolic pathway that nobody talks about. So MBAs would hate this name…but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. After all, the world they have made is catchy & easy to remember but ever so meretricious.

Ferrebeekeeper Mascot?

On the positive side of Ferrebeekeeper, everyone knows what beekeepers do and they are well liked. Beekeeping is an ancient useful art stretching back to prehistory. It says something about the blog itself too: handling ideas is a complex craft which can yield sweet sweet results, but which can also result in mass attack by a stinging swarm. “Ferre” is a prefix which means iron. Iron beekeeper sounds pretty amazing. I could even have my own iron beekeeper mascot! Also I don’t risk losing fans and followers by making a transition to…to what exactly? Some tech-sounding one syllable name? They must all be gone by now.

The tech names WERE all gone other than “eferrebeekeeper” Hmm…people DO like the letter “e”

Anyway, please let me know what you think! I know how smart everyone is from all of your clever comments: now would be a good time to help out with your opinion…

Advertisement