Why Moody Bank could leave you red in the face

We agonise over what we are going to name our children. We buy the books and pore over the meanings with the diligence of an accountant in the belief that naming a child after a warrior will make them brave, or giving them the name of a saint will make them good.

Names like Genghis or Adolf are not as popular as they once might have been, for a reason.

Turns out naming a business can be just as torturous and intensely personal. We want our company name to stand for something.

And we also need a domain name, which is becoming increasingly difficult - especially in financial services where quality names are in short supply.

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"Everything obvious is gone and the good ones in Greek and Latin are taken," one partner in an adventurously named boutique asset manager told me at a conference.

You could name it after yourself, as Allan Gray did, or an aspirational but inanimate object such as "Coronation".

Naming conventions are increasingly bizarre. UK insurer Prudential (good, strong name, that) started a bank. Known in the UK as "the Pru", there were myriad choices open to them. They chose Egg. Yup. That protein-rich staple. Egg.

A nice play, perhaps, on nest egg or hope, faith and opportunity, but the only problem is that Egg invariably got scrambled. It missold insurance policies, and its owners shut it down. Once you have egg on your face, it's hard to wash it off.

It's by no means the most bizarre.

In California, you could deposit your money in Tomato Bank, a Chinese-owned venture. If in India, who would not want to bank with Yes Bank? How could a bank so positively named say no to any request by a client?

Some names do nothing for the fine institution of banking. You might not be in a hurry to deal with Moody Bank, an institution named after its founder - and the double meaning of its name might put some off.

20Twenty is probably the most oddly named South African bank in recent memory. It went down after the banks crisis of 2002. The reason for the name has disappeared over time, but its founder went on to create 22seven.

block_quotes_start What you name your business says a lot about you and where you come from. There is an element of wistfulness about it 

But it's to asset management in South Africa that we look for deep creativity when it comes to naming conventions. Plenty of fund managers develop a solid reputation in corporate and then seek to go off and start up on their own.

The delightfully named Truffle is made up mostly of a group of ex-RMB Asset Management staffers who went off on their own five years ago and have set up a tidy boutique operation using the name of a sought-after edible treasure.

The implication is that they sniff out the beauties for their customers as no one else could.

Former stablemates at Obsidian named their company after a rare volcanic crystal, a smooth, hard rock - again, the name designed to show longevity, reliability and a solid legacy.

Then you run into the evocative Rudiarius: a firm named after a gladiator freed only after showing considerable courage and who had won a fixed number of fights.

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Consillium has a range of meanings: from advice to purpose and judgment. Vestact suggests a home for an active investor.

What you name your business says a lot about you and where you come from. There is an element of wistfulness about it. If nominative determinism - the belief that your name can influence your life - works, why would it not work in an investment company?

What career did nuclear scientist Kelvin Kemm's parents have in mind when they named him after the standard international unit of thermodynamic temperature?

Did the Zumas choose the name Gedleyihlekisa, meaning one who laughs while grinding his enemies, purely by chance?

If names did not matter, you would see "Losethelot" Bank and "Oops" Asset Management. You don't.

Names are as important as ever.

Whitfield means "from the white field", which is why he is in journalism, not farming