A “fanciful” trademark is a made-up name that only exists to function as a trademark; it has no meaning apart from that. They don’t mean anything in the English language (or in any language, for that matter), and are in essence “neologisms” (that’s a fancy word for a fabricated word)

Fanciful marks are the strongest types of trademarks, because they by their very nature are not “merely descriptive” because they don’t actually use recognized, standard-language words. They can, however, be suggestive (I’ll talk more about that in a minute) even though they are not real English-language words.

Some notable examples of fanciful marks include Clorox (for bleach and detergents), Google (internet search engine), and Blistex (for lip care products). Each of these fanciful marks is a made-up word that has no meaning in the English language; they only function in relation to certain goods or groups of goods. Each of them, however is also “suggestive” of certain qualities about the goods (read more about suggestive marks here).

“Clorox” is suggestive of bleach (the Clorox company also owns Burt’s Bees — wrap your head around that one) because of the relationship of the Clorox neologism to the word “chlorine,” an ingredient in bleach. Notice that the brand creators of the “clorox” word don’t come out and say that the product has chlorine in it, but rather “suggest” the term as part of the product name. So the term is both fanciful and suggestive — great stuff for a brand!

The Google trademark for search engines is another suggestive mark. A “googol” is a number representing 10 to the 10th power (1 followed by 100 zeros — also the approximate net worth of Jeff Bezos — just kidding!) which is really, really big. The Google search engine brand suggests that the search engine is really, really big. Which is true, in fact. But again, it’s a neologism that functions as nothing except in relation to the search engine product. It’s a wonderful brand, connoting a huge search engine that allows the user to find anything that they need.

Blistex is another fanciful brand, and to me it connotes a remedy for a blister — Blistex is known for its cold sore (fever blister) remedies. “Ex” connotes that the product will eliminate something — in this case, the fever blister. Again, this is a fanciful yet suggestive mark that suggests but doesn’t describe the use for or qualities of the product. These types of marks make the best brands, because they suggest certain qualities to the consumer.  

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