: Re: Why are one-word titles so dominant in books, film, and games? Something I talk about with friends when planning and sharing our projects & media we like is titles - and specifically my

@Sims2267584

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I think it's about aspiration, about claim-staking, and about self-importance — and, in some cases, ultimately about denying the competition.

The number of one-word titles is far smaller than the number of multiple-word titles; and for a given subject, there are only a few relevant single-word titles.  So there's a certain cachet about using one of them.  (If nothing else, it denies them to anyone else.)

Also, using an opaque name is tacitly assuming that people will learn what it means, that the work is worthy and important enough for people to become aware of it without the benefit of a descriptive title.  (It may not be, of course; but the confidence and even chutzpah of choosing such a title may help its popularity nonetheless.)

You can see this in, for example, titles of Microsoft software.  While competitors were coming up with original, distinctive, and memorable names such as ‘WordStar’, ‘WordPerfect’, ‘WordWise’, ‘1st Word Plus’, ‘EasyWriter’, ‘LocoScript’, and ‘MultiMate’, Microsoft went with the blandest, commonest, most abstract name they could: ‘Word’ — implicitly claiming that because it was from Microsoft, that alone would be enough to ensure its popularity without needing a memorable name too.  (An arrogance which seems to have been justified…)

It not only denied that exact name to competitors, but probably many related ones too.  It meant that anyone merely mentioning the subject of word processors was also inadvertently using their product name — perhaps a form of subliminal advertising.  And another effect was to force people to use the company name to disambiguate — ‘Microsoft Word’, thus publicising that too.

So there would seem to be many benefits to using a short, generic name, some of which are more about denying the competition than about helping the intended audience.

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