Nice article on the origin of the word Brand by William Saffire, in his NYTimes Magazine column yesterday.

By way of background:

The noun blazed on the scene a thousand years ago as a burning stick, and the meaning soon transferred to the mark left on the skin of a horse or a criminal by such a stick, or branding iron. That mark became the sign of infamy: Richard Hooker wrote in 1597 of an age marked ‘’with the brand of error and superstition,’’ and later, a firebrand became the symbol of an inflammatory rabble-rouser.

The burned-in mark, in the 19th century, began to signify ownership not just of an animal but also of liquids in wooden casks, like wine or ale. The brand-mark became a ‘’trademark,’’ and in the 20th century the designated item so labeled became a brand. In 1929, Fleischmann’s Yeast absorbed the coffee maker Chase & Sanborn and other companies to form Standard Brands (now a part of Kraft), in hopes that brand names would produce brand loyalty. A generation later, David Ogilvy, the advertising executive, was dubbed by the author Martin Mayer in 1958 as an ‘’apostle of the ‘brand image’‘’ who sought to persuade the consumer ‘’that brand A, technically identical with brand B, is somehow a better product.’’ Within two years, the novelist Kingsley Amis extended brand image from a product to a genre: ‘’mad scientists attended by scantily clad daughters’’ constitute ‘’the main brand-image of science fiction.’‘

We love that the noun originated as a burning stick.

It’s worth reminding ourselves of the word’s origins when creating a new product or company name since the goal is essentially to “transfer the mark left…to the skin” (or into the psychic space) of a customer or client.