Take Chevrolet Corvette. If we were developing a world-class sport car today, Corvette probably might not even show up on the radar screen. Nevertheless, because of the great cars that have carried this name for the last 50-plus years, Corvette has become an iconic name. Some might say even surpassing that of Chevrolet!

As far as how we pick a name, while final name approval at GM is centralized (formally approved by a senior management group), the actual name development is largely decentralized and the responsibility of the respective GM brands around the world.

When a vehicle program is approved, a predetermined process is set in motion so that we have a name selected in time for design, engineering and manufacturing to do their jobs and insure the vehicle comes out of the plant on schedule. The timing of the process can be different depending on whether we have a completely new vehicle, an update of an existing vehicle, an existing vehicle being sold in a new market or anything in between.

As we move to global programs and Chevrolets are sold in even more than the 130 countries they are sold in it is today, picking the right name becomes even more challenging. In almost every case, any name will have less-than-perfect meaning in some language, or somebody in the world is already using the name. At the end of the day, the actual name selection process falls into just a few buckets:

Developing/selecting a pool of names
Knowing how we want to position our product, trying to understand what our competitors are doing with names, and other factors, we select a pool of names. These names can come from our naming database (I maintain a file of about 750 names), brainstorming or other sources. We'll narrow the pool down to a list of 6-10.

Checks on language usage
Each of our regions check whether there are any negative meanings in the languages of the markets in which the vehicles will be sold.

Trademark checks
Our Legal Staff checks to make sure we are not prevented from using the names by the trademark laws in countries where we will be selling the vehicles.

Possible research
Depending on the size/importance of the vehicle program, the markets in which the vehicles will be sold, whether we've used the names before or the general comfort level we have with the names on our list, we may do what we call "disaster" research in some countries to make sure the names are not inappropriate.

The above steps are an iterative process. We often need to review the possible problems with language usage and make a judgment as to whether the concerns are serious enough to have a name taken off the list. Issues with trademark laws might not be clear or we might want to ask a trademark owner (often another vehicle manufacturer) to release their trademark ownership to us.

Name selection
Often, the iterations reduce the number of available names and/or based on the information we have coming in, a favorite name emerges during the process. In any case, usually one name is selected and informally reviewed with our senior management. Assuming the name passes muster, it will be registered in the respective markets and formally approved by a senior management board.

This is our naming process in a nutshell. Names are important, and we try to pick the best ones, but at the end of the day a good name won't rescue a bad product while a great product will make almost any name a good one.