There is a global shortage of good brand names and available trademarks, and it is not always easy to stand out in the international market. Finnish companies should keep in mind the national trump card: the unique Finnish language. 

Looking for a good brand name that stands out from the crowd? Bloomberg Businessweek reported in its article in April that American companies are increasingly adopting Finnish brand names to differentiate themselves from their competitors and build their own brand story, even if the companies or products have no connection to Finland.

The Finnish language, spoken by only about 5 million people in the world, is considered by American branding professionals to be a treasure trove for unique words. Indeed, Finnish brand names have become a hot trend in the United States as American companies hunt for short, distinctive, and unique words for their new products and services.

“In Finland, companies easily interpret that if they operate in international markets, the brand name must also be international. But if Finnish names are favoured by the masters of branding and commercialization, ie Americans, they are certainly good brand names for Finnish companies as well. Do we value Finnish brand names enough?”, asks Jani Kaulo from Kaulo & Partners.

EERO Wi-Fi routers, RAAKA chocolate, VUORI sportswear, cannabis based LEVÄTÄ products…

Bloomberg’s article tells a story how the branding agency A Hundred Monkeys helped a San Francisco-based startup company choose EERO as the brand name for their Wi-Fi routers − out of more than 600 name proposals. The founders of the company at first played with the word “Portal”, but its disadvantages were obvious: it would be difficult for the company to differentiate itself from its competitors.

EERO, chosen as the brand name, is short, simple, and unique: in the United States, not many words start with two E’s. An exclusive right was also available for the EERO trademark through registration, in addition to which the domain name eero.com was free. When Amazon.com Inc. acquired the manufacturer of the routers four years later in 2019, it wanted to continue selling the product line under the brand name EERO. The Finnish name was valued by Amazon, the world's second most valuable brand after Apple.

More and more American companies have started using Finnish brand names to attract the attention of consumers in the market: VUORI sportswear, cannabis-based LEVÄTÄ products, RAAKA chocolate - and many more.

When consumers don’t have a preconceived idea of a word, brand owners can use it like a blank canvas. Stories belong strongly in the world of brands.

For example, the Brooklyn-based manufacturer of RAAKA chocolate writes on its website that the word comes from the Finnish language, but the products are not of Finnish origin. However, the cadence of the word and its meaning “raw” capture the essence of the chocolate they make, according to the company. "When we make chocolate, we look for something that feels what RAW sounds like: strong, wild, playful and, above all, different."

The most important feature of a trademark is its distinctive character

Maria Puronvarsi from Kaulo & Partners points out that the main function of a trademark is to distinguish a product or service from similar products or services offered by other companies. A successful brand name identifies the product, and it stays easily in your mind. The mark must therefore be sufficiently distinctive and must not be confused with other similar goods and previously registered marks.

“In order to be registrable, a trademark must not be directly descriptive of the product. The more imaginative a brand name is, the more distinctive and stronger it is”, says Maria Puronvarsi.

Therefore, common language words are generally not distinctive unless the word is used in a particularly original context. The Apple trademark is distinctive and registrable for computers, but not for apples.

“However, sufficient distinctiveness is always a matter of interpretation and discretion, which is always weighed on a case-by-case basis by the registration authorities or, in the event of a dispute, by the courts. For the international audience, Finnish words are not directly descriptive or contain certain meanings, so a Finnish brand can be an excellent choice when a company wants to stand out in the global market”, says Maria Puronvarsi.

Words that come from a less widely used language in the world, such as Finnish, also do not contain connotations that could limit the products for which a brand name is used. This is especially useful as a business develops, and, for example, when companies launch entire product lines that include many different products.

The advantage of Finnish words in the United States is also seen in the fact that they do not usually contain potentially offensive connotations in the Anglo-American context.

Finnish brand names are “positively weird” 

Finns who set up start-ups in the United States have also begun to register the words of their mother tongue as their brands. Examples are TAIKA coffee, ELO nutritional supplements and VIRTA diabetes treatment, all of which have Finnish brand names.

The brand name of the latest company of the Finnish coffee entrepreneur Kal Freese, TAIKA, translated as “Magic”, contains the idea of magic, which is well suited for a company that manufactures mushroom coffee that balances the fungal body and mind. The brand name TAIKA arouses the curiosity of consumers, is memorable and is "positively strange", describes another of the company's founders.

The company is now transforming its brand message “TAIKA means magic” into “TAIKA means creativity” as it prepares to expand its product range to include carbonated beverages and other new products.

According to Freese, Finnish brand names have long been “hidden secrets.” He expects the Finnish name trend to continue in the United States as more and more companies look for distinctive brand names in the market.

As Finnish brand names have become more common in the U.S., foreign companies have also become interested in Finnish domain names. The .fi domain extension has already started to become common in Web3 and crypto companies operating in metaverse. It is also cheaper for companies to register a Finnish domain name than many other domain names.