Names which sound good to foreign ears can often sound silly or annoying to us, as Andrew Hamilton discovers
What's one of the toughest jobs in the motor industry? You would probably say designing a car with more style and appearance, better space and packaging and superior fuel economy over its competitors.
Yes, all these things are very important but there's a job that doesn't involve bending any metal and indeed not doing anything physical at all. What is it? Simply finding a name for a new model that a manufacturer can match the best and the rest.
It isn't easy, this christening business. Marketing departments spend vast sums testing out names. The trouble is that the really attractive ones have all been snatched up.
Some manufacturers go for sunny places: remember the Ford Capri, reminiscent of that sunny Italian holiday island. Cortina, another famous Ford badge, was a less well-known place in Italian Switzerland.
Places that are sunny and suggestive of holiday fun, always do well. Seat, the Spanish maker, didn't have to look too far, with Ibiza and Malaga.
Italian names always seem to be terribly mellifluous. Maybe the best example is Fiat's baby car, the Seicento and of course, its predecessor, the Cinquecento. There's a lovely Italian ring also to Fiat's latest, the Stilo which is simply "style". The Punto supermini, meanwhile is just "point".
Of course, there's an easy but much blander way. Don't give the car a name, say it with figures or letters. Most of the prestige or upmarket makers take this road, like BMW with the 3, 5 and 7 series and Mercedes-Benz with A, C, E and S-Classes. Saab's badging with 9-3 and 9-5 could set people thinking of train commuting.
Not all car manufacturers get it right when it comes to finding attractive names. The Japanese are a prime example. The predecessor of Nissan was Datsun.
What were Datsun people thinking of many years ago, calling their bigger cars Cedric and Gloria? Probably old Hollywood movie stars. With the latter-day Japanese, there are names that simply mean nothing like Avensis and Yaris. The important thing, apparently, is that they are easily pronounced in all tongues.
The Korean manufacturer, Hyundai, has a pleasant-sounding line-up with Accent, Elantra, Sonata, Santa Fe and Trajet. Its very latest, however, sounds horrible. It's the Getz which will compete in the hotly-contested supermini segment. We will see it on Irish sale later this year.
Hyundai surely could have done better, finding it a name, especially so because they say, it will have a strong European flavour. The company expects around 80 per cent of production to be exported to Europe. Getz was previewed at the Geneva motor show in March and there was an enthusiastic response to its style and packaging, not so its name.
Getz comes in three and five-door versions and the engines that will have most Irish appeal are 1.1 and 1.3 litres. A wheel-at-each-corner layout means interior space is very generous. It boasts a high roofline, taking away the claustrophobic feel of some small cars and creating a big, airy cabin.
Get, we all know as a verb, getting, got and even gotten. The new Penguin English Dictionary tells us of "get" the noun that it's "one, the offspring of a male animal and two, informal or dialect, a git". Please try again, Hyundai. It's a nice car and deserves better!