What Nokia’s New Naming Convention Should Be: The Periodic Table

@chansearrington who works at Nokia has been asking on Twitter what Nokia’s new naming convention should be for the U.S.A. Many names have been suggested, such as Phoenix, Fusion, and Genesis. The problem with these names is that they could not possibly follow a logical order; a famous flagship successor would have to entirely change its name and this is a problem. Manufacturers want to conserve the brand, like Samsung trying to preserve the famous Galaxy S name with its successor, the Galaxy S2. So what about numbers? They are logical and follow a pattern: Nokia 800, Nokia 900, Nokia 950 and so forth, but numbers aren’t as memorable as names.

I have been giving this issue a thought and I think I could have stumbled upon a practical answer. Why not using the periodic table of the elements to name Nokia phones? The advantage is that it follows a pattern, and elements have very memorable names. I know that the name would not be conserved like say iPhone/iPhone 3G, but it would be evident that they are all elements; plus, Nokia could reference it somehow in their advertisements. I would also skip ugly names such as “Beryllium” and “Sodium.” So future Nokia phones could have names as follows: Nokia Helium, Nokia Lithium, Nokia Boron, Nokia Carbon, Nokia Silicon, Nokia Neon, Nokia Scandium, Nokia Titanium, Nokia Cobalt,  Nokia Argon etc…. Another advantage of this system is that elements have two letter “nicknames,” so people could refer to Nokia phones as Nokia Carbon = Nokia C, or Nokia Argon = Nokia Ar.