Thought #457: Spedition Zufall, Autohaus Gegner and Nothnagel: Really Funny Family Names as Company Names – and Why I Named My Company Autotransfer.jetzt

When the founder gives the company his name

There's a group of companies in German – these are sort of medium-sized companies that are already a bit older, that have been on the market a bit longer – that simply have the name of the owner and founder, 99% or 99.9% of the time a man, as their name. We still have that in part with American companies, with British companies too. Back then that was the usual thing, that you simply took the name – Dell, for example, and there are loads of others. But lately, start-ups create a name that the target group can also identify with, so they use creativity.

Spedition Zufall and Autohaus Gegner

And in German there are just some really funny family names that then get used as company names – like Zufall, for example. Now that's funny! I think Zufall is a freight forwarder. I mean, how can I call my freight company “Zufall” – “Coincidence”? Well, I'd have to be very, very unimaginative, or else have a certain kind of humour. Or there's Autohaus Gegner – it's a local company in Saxony, I think, but then again pretty big, and the dealership is guaranteed to belong to Mr Gegner. And well, of course I find it funny if my company is called “Gegner” – “Opponent”.

I do think you can put these company names under the microscope and explain how they would be rendered in other languages and how that comes across to an English-speaking or Russian-speaking audience. So what do you think?

My favourite: Nothnagel – and why I named my company Autotransfer.jetzt

So my favourite so far among the funny company names is Nothnagel. A truck came towards me recently, and it said “Nothnagel” on it – spelled with a th, of course – and I thought: now that's interesting. A company that's obviously also in logistics in the broadest sense calls itself Nothnagel – “Notnagel” is German for a last resort, literally an emergency nail. And what is it actually about? Recycling. So something gets recycled, and in case it can't be recycled, there's still the last resort – or that's roughly how you have to picture this story.

Yes, that's why I named my company Autotransfer.jetzt back then. Now of course you could argue: what good did that do you? And the people who'd put it that way would of course be right. So a company name that describes something and is easy to remember is of course far from a guarantee of the company's success.

Nevertheless, I do think it's also in the interest of the customers and the target group when founders think up a name that the target group, the community, can then perhaps identify with. Why should the target group identify with the name “Nothnagel”? And of course many people will now argue and say: Nothnagel isn't about the so-called B2C, business-to-consumer market. That may be, but it's still a company in the public eye, and they advertise, and civilians too – private individuals, that is – read the name and then react to it accordingly.

What “Zufall”, “Gegner” and “Nothnagel” mean in other languages

Translated literally, the three names mean:

In German you hear the joke straight away: you expect a freight company to get your goods there reliably – and it's called “Coincidence”. A car dealer wants to win customers over – and it's called “Opponent”. Translated literally, you'd get “Coincidence Logistics” and “Opponent Motors” in English, «Экспедиция „Случайность“» and «Автосалон „Противник“» in Russian, «Експедиція „Випадковість“» and «Автосалон „Супротивник“» in Ukrainian. And Nothnagel has the “Notnagel” in it, the last resort when nothing else works – literally “Last Resort Recycling”, in Russian «Переработка „Крайнее средство“», in Ukrainian «Переробка „Крайній засіб“».

Company names, though, are usually not translated, just transliterated into other scripts: in Russian and Ukrainian, Zufall becomes “Цуфаль”, Gegner “Гегнер” and Nothnagel “Нотнагель”. For English-, Russian- or Ukrainian-speaking customers that's a completely neutral name – the joke stays in German. It works the other way round, too: hardly anyone in Germany knows that in English a “dell” is a small wooded valley.