Publishers: Why'd you name your company what you did?

[Pramas]

I started my first game company ten years ago and that was called Ronin Publishing. We used to publish a game called the Whispering Vault, which Ronin Arts is doing a new edition of sometime soonish. We also published a licensed Feng Shui book that I wrote (Blood of the Valiant), that Atlas later bought the rights to and re-published. Anyway, that company was certainly a learning experience but it had pretty much come to an end by 1999.

In 2000 I was planning a new company to take advantage of this crazy d20 idea that was floating around WotC. I wanted a name that would tell people in the trade that this was my new company, without just calling it Chris Pramas Games (which is not my style). Back at Ronin, all the owners were supposed to take color coded names as our e-mail addresses. I took Green Ronin and that was my e-mail address on industry mailing lists and the like for many years. I figured if I used that as the name for my new company, industry folks (and particularly distributors, who'd I'd need to convince to carry GR's new product) would make the connection and realize it was me continuing on.

Naturally, I overthought the whole thing and probably should have just picked something else. For example, a company name that everyone pronounced the same way.

 

[TheLe]

I wanted a company name that would confuse people and force them to mispell it.

~The Le Games

 

[Justin D. Jacobson]

I wanted a company name that would confuse people and force them to mispell it.

~The Le Games

Oh the irony of all ironies.

Seriously, though, I've always wondered what the hell "The Le" meant. Dish, girlfriend!

 

[DonTadow]

I went to Duke U. School of Law. (Their team name is the blue devils for those of you who don't happen to know.)

I Live in Michigan, unfortunately we know them all to well.

 

[Morrus]

Naturally, I overthought the whole thing and probably should have just picked something else. For example, a company name that everyone pronounced the same way.

How do you pronounce it, Chris? Every American I've heard pronounces it (and the movie "Ronin") as "Roe-nin", whereas I've always pronounced the word "Ronn-in". For what it's worth, my Japanese friends all pronounce it my way, which explains my pronounciation!

 

[inthisstyle]

Galileo Games was named by my wife. We were trying to think of a name that said creativity, and Galileo was also a visionary, someone who saw what was real when everyone else was saying something different.

 

[philreed]

Naturally, I overthought the whole thing and probably should have just picked something else. For example, a company name that everyone pronounced the same way.

You mean it's not Green Roneen?

 

[Steve Conan Trustrum]

E.N. Publishing is named after... well... two words, one starting with E and the other with N. And surprisingly, it's not Mr Noah's name. In fact, if anyone (who isn't directly associated with ENP) can guess what the letters -do- stand for, I'll throw them a pile of free stuff to keep their mouths shut.*

Enormous Nipples?

As for my company name: Misfit should be obvious to anyone who knows me and Studios because I wanted something that communicated a more flexible concept than something like Publishing.

 

[lmpjr007]

It was easy to remember and spell.

 

[TheLe]

The Le Games

Oh the irony of all ironies.

Seriously, though, I've always wondered what the hell "The Le" meant. Dish, girlfriend!

The' Le is actually my name, pronounced Tay Lee (vietnamese).

I just assumed that when people saw "The Le Games" they would pronounce it "the Lay Games" or "the Lee Games", and assume I put the "the" in there to be difficult.

Never in my wildest dreams did I expect people to simply refer it as "Le Games", which actually has a nice french connotation to it ("Le" is "the" in french -- the irony does not elude me).

Of course, I considered going with "The The Games", but would people have then just referred to it as "The Games?"

*shrug*

~The Le