It used to be that company names incorporated the founder's name or the region the company served along with the type of product it provided. Names like US Steel, Campbell Soup, National Broadcasting Company, or even Federal Express.

In the 80's and 90's, the trend was new words created from adjective and noun parts, like AutoCad, PeopleSoft or NaviStar. Now, as with domain names, two word composite names are too difficult to find. So companies now create global brand names from words that weren't even words until the name was created. What is an accenture?

Steve Krug, the web usability guru who recently published Don't Make Me Think, which should be your next book purchase, was a major contributor to this category's namepart database.