Especially so because IMHO the strongest brands are the language taught in schools. A car is a car because we learned what car means as we acquired language.

Last summer, I actually made an IP lawyer who is familiar with Yahoo LOL (almost ROFL) because I maintained that “yahoo” was first and foremost an English word (granted: it doesn’t have a very clear definition).

But trying to take a natural language term and change it into a brand seems (to me) to be a quite formidable task – indeed: one so difficult that I wouldn’t want to touch it with a 10-foot pole.

So anyone who does attempt such a task gets my recognition (simply for trying).

See http://tinyurl.com/cbartz01 as an example.