Preliminary name
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Oftentimes, a product goes through a name change before hitting stores. This can be for a variety of reasons - the preliminary name was deemed not good enough or better suited for something else, the preliminary name was not a name at all but a description that made it easier for the developers to talk about it, or the preliminary name was not necessary as product name and not marketing it as such saved trademark costs.
There are a few ways that preliminary names can reach the public:
- Rejected trademarks - When a trademark is filed, there's always a chance it will be rejected because it is either not specific enough a word, phrase, or symbol, or too similar to a trademark of another person or company. Since all filed trademarks are published just for the purpose of getting people to notice in case their intellectual property is infringed on, filed trademarks are there for all too see, even if they end up useless to the one that filed them. It does, however, not often occur that a trademark is rejected, because filing them takes time and money so usually there is some research done into a trademark's viability prior.
- Repurposed trademarks - It might happen that a company files a trademark only to find that, in hindsight, it's not what they want for the product. Thus a new trademark is filed. The old one may be abandoned or used for another product.
- Early advertisement - Before a product is made and shipped, the stores that are to carry the product are approached with design ideas and prototypes to see if they are interested. Preliminary material thus ends up in the hands of other companies. When it is time for them to prepare advertisement and set up pre-orders, it might happen that preliminary material ends up used for this rather than the definite material.
- Early media - Especially if the media that is to support the product is developed alongside the product, chances are that preliminary material ends up written into them and not corrected before publication.
- Interviews - The developers say that a product had a preliminary name and disclose what that name is.
Known preliminary names
Edit
| Definite name | Preliminary name | Discovery | Change |
| C.A. Cupid Chariclo Arganthone Cupid | Amore Cupid | A Walmart advertisement | "Amore Cupid" was probably abandoned because it has little pun to it and does not carry a particular link to Greek mythology. "C.A. Cupid" carries the pun for "see a cupid", while the initials allow the character to posses actual Ancient Greece names. |
| Clawdeen Wolf | Howleen Wolf | Trademark | The trademark for "Howleen Wolf" is one of the first Monster High trademarks filed. It fits with the other early trademarks in being a fairly direct pun, ie "howling wolf". Whether the character this trademark was meant for was proto-Clawdeen or proto-Howleen doesn't matter, because she was to be the prime werewolf character, a role that ended up going to Clawdeen. |
| Wydowna Spider | Daughter of Arachne | SDCC 2011 contest | Possibly because of the unconventional design of Wydwona, she was the only one of the contenders not to receive a name prior to the contest. She eventually received the name "Wydowna Spider" in 2012, though it wasn't confirmed to be hers until 2013. |
| Draculaura | Ula D. | Trademark | "Ula D." was, like Draculaura, a pun on "Dracula". Though it ended up replaced, "Ula D." has canonically become Draculaura's nickname. |
| Holt Hyde | DJ Hyde | Monster High & Decorate Your Monster High Locker | "DJ Hyde", a pun on "Dr Jekyll Hyde", is not certain to have been the preliminary name for Holt Hyde. However, given the time it takes to write a book and the fact that "Holt Hyde" was not filed as trademark only four months before the book's release, it is likely. |
| Spectra Vondergeist | Spectra Von Hauntington | Amazon listings | Spectra's original last name, "Von Hauntington", is an awkward blend of a German preposition and an English name. Likely, it's this discrepancy that prompted the change to "Vondergeist", which is all-German. |
| Ghoul's Alive! | It's Alive | Amazon listings | "It's Alive" is a reference to the famous exclamation from the Frankenstein story. Possibly because of that, it is not a strong trademark to claim, which seems why it did not end up as the definite name. |
| School's Out | Back to School | Interview | While none of the main sublines have a marketing name, for development purposes they do have a workfloor name. For the subline the fans dubbed 'School's Out', it was Back to School. |
GalleryEdit
"Amore Cupid"
"Spectra Von Hauntington"
"Spectra Von Hauntington"
"It's Alive"
