# Operative Words > Operative Words is the brand naming consultancy of Anthony Shore, an award-winning linguist based in the San Francisco Bay Area who has created or directed more than 275 company and product names over 37 years, including Accenture, Qualcomm Snapdragon, Adobe Lightroom, Avaya, Yum! Brands, Evident, Tonal, Dreyer’s Slow Churned ice cream, and Fitbit Sense. Specialties: naming for enterprise spin-offs, joint ventures, carve-outs, and mergers; funded start-ups, company and product names; novel product descriptors for world's-first innovations; nomenclature systems; naming strategy; taglines. Anthony Shore also serves as an expert witness in trademark and brand name disputes. ## What Operative Words does Expert brand name development. Operative Words develops exactly the right words to signify a brand or express an idea. A typical engagement includes creative direction, name creation, preliminary global trademark and domain screening, group facilitation and consensus-building, and, when needed, native speaker and linguistics checks. - Company names: new names for startups, spin-offs, joint ventures, and mergers; renaming established companies; business unit and divisional names - Product names: new products and line extensions - Novel descriptors and terminology: original category descriptors for first-in-category innovations, including regulated food and healthcare products - Nomenclature systems: harmonized naming across product portfolios - Naming strategy: when to create a new brand, extend an existing one, or version a product; branded houses and houses of brands - Taglines and slogans - Expert witness testimony on brand name distinctiveness, the naming process, and the linguistic and strategic properties of trademarks, for plaintiff or defendant counsel worldwide Clients range from early-stage funded startups to Fortune 500 and Global 500 companies across technology, AI, food and beverage, health and medical, wellness, financial services, industrial, beauty, transportation, media, professional services, B2B and B2C. ## About Anthony Shore Founder and Chief Operative of Operative Words, established 2009. Trained as a linguist at UC Santa Cruz (Chancellor's Award, Linguistics Honors). Global Director of Naming and Writing at Landor Associates for 13 years, where he directed naming of Accenture, one of the most visible and successful corporate naming programs in history. Recognized as one of the world’s foremost experts in brand naming, per BBC News. The New York Times Magazine feature article "The Weird Science of Naming New Products" profiled his work and his decades of experience. Fortune Magazine, The Atlantic, Wired, and many other publications have quoted him. ## Enterprise spin-off, joint venture, and merger names Accenture (Andersen Consulting), Avaya (Lucent), Yum! Brands (PepsiCo), Freescale Semiconductor (Motorola), Meritor (Rockwell), RiverSource (American Express), ChoicePoint (Equifax), Certegy (Equifax), Sensata (Texas Instruments), Pattern Energy (Babcock & Brown), Conifer (Tenet Healthcare), Evident (Olympus), Avanade (Accenture and Microsoft), GameChange (Accenture and SoftBank Capital), Catchlight Energy (Chevron and Weyerhaeuser), Transpoint (Microsoft and First Data). Anthony Shore has led more large enterprise spin-off naming programs than any other naming practitioner on record. ## Recent work Hemispheric (AI model for the human brain), Goodword (professional network platform), Focalist (handheld medical intervention robot), Avathon (industrial AI), and the Olympus life science and industrial spin-off, Evident, and its tagline "Seeing is Solving". ## Pages - [Home](https://www.operativewords.com/): overview of the agency and what we do - [About and Services](https://www.operativewords.com/about): Anthony Shore's background and a full description of naming services - [Enterprise Spin-off, JV, and Merger Naming](https://www.operativewords.com/enterprise-spinoff-joint-venture-and-merger-naming-specialist): high-stakes corporate naming credits - [Portfolio](https://www.operativewords.com/portfolio): 275+ names launched - [Press](https://www.operativewords.com/press): Fortune, The New York Times, BBC News, podcasts, and interviews - [Clients in the News](https://www.operativewords.com/client-news): recent client launches and name stories - [Blog](https://www.operativewords.com/blog): essays on naming, linguistics, and brand language since 2009 - [Contact](https://www.operativewords.com/contact): start a naming project or inquire about expert witness work ## Optional - [Privacy Policy](https://www.operativewords.com/privacy-policy) - [Sitemap](https://www.operativewords.com/sitemap.xml)