Christopher Johnson
Naming Consultant, Linguist, Language Geek

The Name Inspector

• http://www.thenameinspector.com
• http://www.phrasetrain.com

I help people name their companies, products, and services, and I write about names on my blog The Name Inspector. I'm also the founder of Phrasetrain, which applies user-generated natural language technology to web search. Phrasetrain is tiny, so I wear lots of hats: linguist, developer, web/graphic designer, evangelist, etc.

I combine verbal creativity with a strategic, linguistically sophisticated approach to the naming process. I help my clients identify ideas and feelings that a name should evoke, formulate strategies for evoking them (metaphors, indirect associations, speaking styles, etc.), find the perfect words to realize those strategies, and use those words as raw materials to create vivid, relevant, and great-sounding names.

I'm interested in meeting potential clients, collaborators, critics, advisers, and business partners. I'd love some free/cheap short-term co-working space if anyone knows of such a thing.

PhD, Linguistics, UC Berkeley BA with Honors, Interdisciplinary (Linguistics, Philosophy, Psychology), University of Chicago

Assistant Professor, University of Chicago Senior Technical Staff Member, Human-Computer Interaction, AT&T Labs Research Computational Linguist and Knowledge Engineer, Soliloquy, Inc. Researcher, FrameNet project, International Computer Science Institute Linguist, Brand Language Group, Lexicon Branding