The brand name of the just-launched Microsoft Zune MP3 player apparently derives from a 3 month exercise earlier this year by sound symbolism specialist Lexicon Branding. Lexicon and their team of sixty PhD linguists pondered many thousands of potential candidates, rejecting names like “Tunz” and “Noiz”, before settling on the eventual winner of “Zune”.

Lexicon seems to like the fricative consonant “z”, calling it lively, daring & fast. And when followed by the letters “u” and “n”, the effect is a natural whistling/musical sound, at least according to LB.

Lexicon’s reasoning sounds solid…one hates to think that their neologism is merely a riff on the word “tune”.

What Hidden Messages Does a Brand Name Send? - Lexicon Branding

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