November 2, 2011 03:21 pm EDT

What's in a name? Nokia's new Lumia and Asha line explained

What rhymes with Nokia? Why, Lumia, of course. And there, fellow gadget freaks, lies the poetic branding key to Espoo's first, great Windows Phone. Alright, it's not that simple, but the company's marketing team did make a concerted effort to find a moniker ending with a vowel sound. Of course, before this catchy, albeit odd, name could be settled upon, a list of potential winners had to be cross-checked with over 300,000 tech trademarks. After broaching that hurdle, "only a handful" survived and were then parsed by linguistic experts to avoid any embarrassing malapropisms and pronunciation difficulties across 84 dialects. Despite finding "lumi" to be an out-of-date Spanish slang term, resulting surveys found most Spaniards associated the term with "'light' and 'style'," and thus it was saved. We know how this genesis story ends, so we'll spare you the obvious marketplace conclusion. And as for that new Asha range? Well, the thinking there is quite simple. It's the word for hope in Hindi, and as the line is intended for emerging markets, that just seemed apropos. Click through to the source for a more detailed walk through this mobile origin story.

What's in a name? Nokia's new Lumia and Asha line explained originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Nov 2011 11:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Original Link: http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/02/whats-in-a-name-nokias-new-lumia-and-asha-line-explained/

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