Company Naming Trend: Double Vowels Are Hot

Remember back in the ‘90s when everyone insisted on capitalizing a consonant in the middle of their names.

That’s out. The Polynesian double-vowel sound is in, at least for the greentech market.

In recent years, we’ve seen the formation of Soraa (LEDs), Kaai (LEDs), Deeya (flow batteries), Oorja (fuel cells), Bloo Solar (solar panels), Jadoo Power (fuel cells) and Eestor (ultracapacitors). You can add Bloom Energy to the list too if you want to be cheeky.

As far as I can tell, only Oorja and Deeya are real words. Oorja means energy in Sanskrit and Deeya means small light. Thus, the rest of these are made up to some degree. You can argue Bloo is a word, but usually it’s spelled differently on most walls. Kaai and Soraa – which were founded in part by LED pioneer Shuji Nakamura – are corruptions of the words for ocean and sky in Japanese, but often aren’t spelled with double vowels in translation.

It looks like a whole new trend in artificial names. Expect “I” and “U” to join soon.