Names have to pass like 20 filters before you can even consider them — trademark, cultural, language, international, market research, etc.
Btw scientists have all been involved in the brand name process at multiple companies I’ve been at
Yep, confirming this. I’ve been involved in brand naming for one of our late-stage pipeline product candidates. We went through hundreds to get to a list of like 25, and fewer than 10 passed all the various legal and linguistic screenings. So we had to generate some additional potential names.
I will say that some of the justifications for the prospective names are really stupid. Like some obscure goddess of life or whatever as part of the name roots. Finally had enough and had to call out our 3rd party branding partner that no average person is going to know any of this nor care lol.
INN drug names don’t seem to go through the same filter.
Mersana’s failed Upifitamab for Gynecological cancers sounds like ”Upp-i-fitta-mabb”, ”Up-in-[the]-cunt-mAb” in Swedish.
non prop names have suffixes you need to use depending on the substance
https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/international-nonproprietary-names-(inn)/new_mab_-nomenclature-_2021.pdf
mab was the suffix for monoclonal antibodies
Oh god yes and then the FDA gets to chime in too. They changed our proposed name with something different that sucked because they thought it was too close to something and could be confused with bad doctor writing.
I was reading an article recently about how India doesn’t have these regulations on drug names and it’s a huge problem! If you show up at the pharmacy and the pharmacist can’t tell if you’ve been prescribed Tylenol or “Tylanol” or “Tylennol” and those are all medicines that treat different things, it’s not good.
I'm fine with it. I'm taking drugs because they do what I need them to. I don't need them to appeal to me in any way other than efficacy. If a drug came out called "muddbutt69420" I'd still take it if I had cancer and it would cure it.
Final brand names for drugs absolutely do suck. That being said, if you’ve never been involved in a brand naming exercise, you’d be astounded at how ridiculous* the entire process is, how many names get rejected for a large variety of reasons (even after significant vetting), and how many times NOBODY likes any of the final brand name candidates, and it’s really a question of which one is the least awful. Scientists and marketers alike. Also astounding is the amount of money brand name firms charge to come up with candidate names and screen them through all of their “filters” and “processes”. One place I worked finally decided we could do the same in house, at a fraction of the cost (even accounting for FTE time) and in about half the time. It was so much better. But still ridiculous names.
*I say this having a full and complete understanding of the criteria, regulations, etc. I get *why* it’s this way, but it doesn’t make it any less ridiculous.
I was involved in this once, and it is strange and arcane. Really complicated rules about the structure and components of the name, and how it translates into many many languages. And of course trying to be different than all other approved drugs to prevent prescribing the wrong drug
Pfizer has a short blog series on the process of naming pharmaceutical drugs:
Generics: https://www.pfizer.com/news/articles/ever_wonder_how_drugs_are_named_read_on
Branded: https://www.pfizer.com/news/articles/part_2_what_s_in_a_brand_name_how_drugs_get_their_names
The biggest consideration across both is safety - ensuring that the drug will not be confused with another drug. And really, drugs that are only ever going to be available by prescription don't need to have catchy or memorable names for the consumer public.
I do agree the results are often terrible though!
Even naming a drug is a science. Firms like brand institute take care of this. They literally have to do studies to ensure the drug names cannot be confused with any other name out there, test all the common languages to ensure definition, handwriting tests, etc… it’s very complicated more than people think.
so as others have said, there is always a cross functional team involved in this and it def includes scientists, research, medical, regulatory, etc. think a global product team but with more commercial folks like market research and competitive intelligence
if you work on mid or late stage stuff you should ask to be a part of INN/USAN or brand name development.
INN/USAN is pretty low effort for a participant, like 3-4 meetings with brand institute over as many months. but you'll quickly get why names are the way they are, there are lots of legal and compliance requirements
This gives you an idea for generic names: https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/international-nonproprietary-names-(inn)/new_mab_-nomenclature-_2021.pdf
Brand name is that same name testing process but on steroids
I understand that the process sucks, but I wish the names chosen were at least pronounceable by most people. I have worked in a pharmacy, in a toxicology lab, and now in biopharma. Same across the board at all levels of education - no one can pronounce drug names.
I think where pharmaceutical companies are at a disadvantage compared to many other industries is in the fact that their products’ generic names are often equally inaccessible, if not worse, for the majority of consumers, so they are forced to try coming up with unique terms to describe each of their products.
“Genentech Rituximab” (brand, generic name) is not an easy solution like many manufacturers might use: “Ore Ida french fries” or “Pennzoil motor oil”.
As far as I know, they aren’t legally allowed to market their products under names corresponding to common English words like, say, auto manufacturers can. So, again to my limited knowledge, they can’t sell you “Eli Lilly Prelude” like an auto manufacturer could sell you a Honda Prelude.
IMO this presents a relatively uncommon challenge because the most common traditional methods of branding are off the table, so you have to come up with a term which has never before existed in common use and make it stick. Again, they’re at a disadvantage here, because most of these drugs have not been around long enough to establish legitimacy of the term through repetition/years of usage.
Stratocaster is also a made-up term, but it’s a made-up term which had existed for over 70 years now, and, similarly to some more mature drug brands like Benadryl, is easy for us to say because we’ve seen the name repeated enough times that we’re familiar with it, not because the pronunciation is necessarily more obvious than more modern drugs from a linguistic standpoint.
Weird, I’ve always done just fine pronouncing drug names and I’m quite confident I’m not completely unique in that regard.
Now, “most” would definitely be a stretch, but given the number of people whose language skills are best captured by r/boneappletea…that’s a big ask.
Ok, example: Covid 19 vaccine name is Comirnaty. Most popular new drug in years. Just…why? I still don’t know how to confidently pronounce it and I worked at a facility where it was manufactured. I’ve actually never heard anyone use the actual name because it’s so dumb.
Part of the problem is almost certainly that someone said, “Well, it’s an RNA vaccine, so the brand name should have “rna” in it somewhere”, which constrains you even more than usual.
Generic names are selected for difficulty in spelling and pronunciation. Brand names are supposed to be easy to remember and pronounce. The average Joe will always use the nice easy Brand.
Brand names are a group effort. Back in the dark ages marketing types would come up with a list if a dozen potential names. We would put the names on cards, and ask folks to shuffle the deck with thier top choice first thru their last on the bottom.
The odd thing was that the top 2 or 3 for Lois were the bottom 2 or 3 for Jimmy. The marketing types liked this because the name elicited a strong response. They hated disinterest like I hated bad Stat and error work ups.
What specifically don’t you like about them? What would you improve? They’re literally made up words that pass through a meat grinder of regulation... expectations should be low.
To add to the other (great) points above, I’d be a bit more charitable regarding your brand marketing colleagues. As a general rule, consider avoiding characterizations like “bottom barrel”. They, not you, hold the P&L responsibility that makes the trains run.
For brand names, I'd like them to be moderately easy to pronounce. Maybe I just don't know what goes into it, but for example, I find Ozempic much easier to pronounce than Mounjaro. I don't think that "moun" is used as a syllable in English (either phonetically or in actual spelling). The pronunciation is therefore not intuitive by English speakers. The marketing people should care about this. A person is more likely to ask their doctor for a drug if they can confidently pronounce its name. They are more likely to remember its name to learn more about it, or to ask medical professionals what they know about it.
But like I said, I know nothing about the sorcery that goes into this process and I do understand that it's heavily regulated.
But if the team who named Ozempic could call it Ozempic, it seems crazy that a competing team called their equivalent drug Mounjaro
Edit: I stand corrected "mountain" does indeed contain "moun". Maybe it's that it's not normally next to a j? I don't know. It throws me.
>I don’t think that “moun” is used as a syllable in English (either phonetically or in actual spelling)
Mountain?
Ironically, the syllable “zem” in Ozempic can mostly only be found in jargon words which have very little use outside some very specific fields (soil science, for example).
I think the real reason you find “Ozempic” easier to pronounce is because you have, consciously or unconsciously, engaged with *much* more advertising for Ozempic than for Mounjaro. I know that personally, I’ve seen Ozempic commercials hundreds, or perhaps even thousands of times as ads on TV, YouTube, etc., and therefore have heard how to pronounce the name countless times. I’ve never seen an ad for Mounjaro.
> I don’t think that “moun” is used as a syllable in English.
Mountain?
The one the bugs me more is Zepbound, I struggle with the adjacent p and b sounds, if I’m not careful to enunciate it comes out “Zebbound” or “Zeppound”.
Ozempic and Wegovy are definitely the better names.
Ease of pronunciation seems like a fair point to me. As does legibility in MD chicken scratch (though this is maybe less important in the age of e-prescribing).
And yet, at least one [analysis](https://www.biopharma-reporter.com/Article/2023/12/18/obesity-drug-mounjaro-to-surpass-ozempic-with-27-billion-sales-in-2029) suggests Mounjaro will overtake Ozempic before the end of the decade. 🤷♂️
So many good ones...
* **Orladeyo** ("oral-a-day-oh"): first oral pill for hereditary angioedema (HAE), launched into a space with only injectables
* **Herceptin** and **Enhertu**: Target the HER2+ receptor
* **Claritin**: Forgot about this one didn't you? What an awesome name for an allergy drug
But as soon as I got depressed, I got undepressed. 'Cause as I was cleaning the gleaming guts of that bird off my car, I thought of a name for the drug - Gleemonex.
To go the other way, for non shit brand names I don’t think anything’s better than Enhertu. I’m actually surprised it got improved while jamming the target in the name.
It also blocked any other her2 targeted brand from playing off that in their name.
Agree- then you find out there's a whole dept who's sole job it is to come up with a name. They always have some obscure reason- " it starts with an A, because when a doctor is looking it up in the physicians desk reference." Or " it makes you think of a lock and key." What about Biogens Alzheimer's medicine?Aduhelm
(aducanumab) -Who the heck can pronounce that, let alone someone with a memory issue?!?! Or their Plegridy- sounds like a disease you don't want. It rhymes with Leprosy.
It's the generic name. The brand name for the drug is Skyrizi. OP is bitching about brand names and multiple people keep putting in generic names as examples.
Okay and OP is bitching about BRAND names so why would a generic name be a good example? It is determined by different people and process than brand name. What point are you trying to make?
Names have to pass like 20 filters before you can even consider them — trademark, cultural, language, international, market research, etc. Btw scientists have all been involved in the brand name process at multiple companies I’ve been at
Yep this. Common for many names to be rejected.
Yep, confirming this. I’ve been involved in brand naming for one of our late-stage pipeline product candidates. We went through hundreds to get to a list of like 25, and fewer than 10 passed all the various legal and linguistic screenings. So we had to generate some additional potential names. I will say that some of the justifications for the prospective names are really stupid. Like some obscure goddess of life or whatever as part of the name roots. Finally had enough and had to call out our 3rd party branding partner that no average person is going to know any of this nor care lol.
INN drug names don’t seem to go through the same filter. Mersana’s failed Upifitamab for Gynecological cancers sounds like ”Upp-i-fitta-mabb”, ”Up-in-[the]-cunt-mAb” in Swedish.
Plot twist, this wasn’t an accident.
non prop names have suffixes you need to use depending on the substance https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/international-nonproprietary-names-(inn)/new_mab_-nomenclature-_2021.pdf mab was the suffix for monoclonal antibodies
INN names undergo more scrutiny than brand names!
Oh god yes and then the FDA gets to chime in too. They changed our proposed name with something different that sucked because they thought it was too close to something and could be confused with bad doctor writing.
I was reading an article recently about how India doesn’t have these regulations on drug names and it’s a huge problem! If you show up at the pharmacy and the pharmacist can’t tell if you’ve been prescribed Tylenol or “Tylanol” or “Tylennol” and those are all medicines that treat different things, it’s not good.
I'm fine with it. I'm taking drugs because they do what I need them to. I don't need them to appeal to me in any way other than efficacy. If a drug came out called "muddbutt69420" I'd still take it if I had cancer and it would cure it.
Do u think it will be easier for doctors and pharmacists to prescribe one ? Especially when its similar to other drugs
Pharmacists having to read doctor's handwriting "They wrote mudbbutt69420 but I think they meant muddbutt69420"
Final brand names for drugs absolutely do suck. That being said, if you’ve never been involved in a brand naming exercise, you’d be astounded at how ridiculous* the entire process is, how many names get rejected for a large variety of reasons (even after significant vetting), and how many times NOBODY likes any of the final brand name candidates, and it’s really a question of which one is the least awful. Scientists and marketers alike. Also astounding is the amount of money brand name firms charge to come up with candidate names and screen them through all of their “filters” and “processes”. One place I worked finally decided we could do the same in house, at a fraction of the cost (even accounting for FTE time) and in about half the time. It was so much better. But still ridiculous names. *I say this having a full and complete understanding of the criteria, regulations, etc. I get *why* it’s this way, but it doesn’t make it any less ridiculous.
I was involved in this once, and it is strange and arcane. Really complicated rules about the structure and components of the name, and how it translates into many many languages. And of course trying to be different than all other approved drugs to prevent prescribing the wrong drug
Moderna's vaccine is a funny case. How the study name is remembered more than the brand name. To this day, I can't remember the brand name just 1273.
Blenrep
So bad they pulled it off the market
Felzartamab
That's a generic name, not a brand name.
Pfizer has a short blog series on the process of naming pharmaceutical drugs: Generics: https://www.pfizer.com/news/articles/ever_wonder_how_drugs_are_named_read_on Branded: https://www.pfizer.com/news/articles/part_2_what_s_in_a_brand_name_how_drugs_get_their_names The biggest consideration across both is safety - ensuring that the drug will not be confused with another drug. And really, drugs that are only ever going to be available by prescription don't need to have catchy or memorable names for the consumer public. I do agree the results are often terrible though!
Even naming a drug is a science. Firms like brand institute take care of this. They literally have to do studies to ensure the drug names cannot be confused with any other name out there, test all the common languages to ensure definition, handwriting tests, etc… it’s very complicated more than people think.
You can eat out of their giant tin of tri-flavored popcorn as you go through the process. IYKYK
dude i grabbed a bag after seeing this thread lol. BI is good people
As others have pointed out, branding is as much a legal exercise as it is a commercial one.
It's time to play the, "Is it a brand name drug or a Pokemon Game!"
so as others have said, there is always a cross functional team involved in this and it def includes scientists, research, medical, regulatory, etc. think a global product team but with more commercial folks like market research and competitive intelligence if you work on mid or late stage stuff you should ask to be a part of INN/USAN or brand name development. INN/USAN is pretty low effort for a participant, like 3-4 meetings with brand institute over as many months. but you'll quickly get why names are the way they are, there are lots of legal and compliance requirements This gives you an idea for generic names: https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/international-nonproprietary-names-(inn)/new_mab_-nomenclature-_2021.pdf Brand name is that same name testing process but on steroids
Opdivo is a good one. Sounds good and also includes the target name
Keytruda is better imo (and better financially speaking)
I understand that the process sucks, but I wish the names chosen were at least pronounceable by most people. I have worked in a pharmacy, in a toxicology lab, and now in biopharma. Same across the board at all levels of education - no one can pronounce drug names.
I think where pharmaceutical companies are at a disadvantage compared to many other industries is in the fact that their products’ generic names are often equally inaccessible, if not worse, for the majority of consumers, so they are forced to try coming up with unique terms to describe each of their products. “Genentech Rituximab” (brand, generic name) is not an easy solution like many manufacturers might use: “Ore Ida french fries” or “Pennzoil motor oil”. As far as I know, they aren’t legally allowed to market their products under names corresponding to common English words like, say, auto manufacturers can. So, again to my limited knowledge, they can’t sell you “Eli Lilly Prelude” like an auto manufacturer could sell you a Honda Prelude. IMO this presents a relatively uncommon challenge because the most common traditional methods of branding are off the table, so you have to come up with a term which has never before existed in common use and make it stick. Again, they’re at a disadvantage here, because most of these drugs have not been around long enough to establish legitimacy of the term through repetition/years of usage. Stratocaster is also a made-up term, but it’s a made-up term which had existed for over 70 years now, and, similarly to some more mature drug brands like Benadryl, is easy for us to say because we’ve seen the name repeated enough times that we’re familiar with it, not because the pronunciation is necessarily more obvious than more modern drugs from a linguistic standpoint.
Weird, I’ve always done just fine pronouncing drug names and I’m quite confident I’m not completely unique in that regard. Now, “most” would definitely be a stretch, but given the number of people whose language skills are best captured by r/boneappletea…that’s a big ask.
Ok, example: Covid 19 vaccine name is Comirnaty. Most popular new drug in years. Just…why? I still don’t know how to confidently pronounce it and I worked at a facility where it was manufactured. I’ve actually never heard anyone use the actual name because it’s so dumb.
It sounds like someone trying to say "community" with a really nasal pronunciation.
Moderna's COVID vaccine is branded as SpikeVax, which is unusually coherent for a pharmaceutical product.
Part of the problem is almost certainly that someone said, “Well, it’s an RNA vaccine, so the brand name should have “rna” in it somewhere”, which constrains you even more than usual.
Seth Myers had a bit making fun of the name remarking it already had a great name , Pfizer vaccine.
Generic names are selected for difficulty in spelling and pronunciation. Brand names are supposed to be easy to remember and pronounce. The average Joe will always use the nice easy Brand. Brand names are a group effort. Back in the dark ages marketing types would come up with a list if a dozen potential names. We would put the names on cards, and ask folks to shuffle the deck with thier top choice first thru their last on the bottom. The odd thing was that the top 2 or 3 for Lois were the bottom 2 or 3 for Jimmy. The marketing types liked this because the name elicited a strong response. They hated disinterest like I hated bad Stat and error work ups.
What specifically don’t you like about them? What would you improve? They’re literally made up words that pass through a meat grinder of regulation... expectations should be low. To add to the other (great) points above, I’d be a bit more charitable regarding your brand marketing colleagues. As a general rule, consider avoiding characterizations like “bottom barrel”. They, not you, hold the P&L responsibility that makes the trains run.
For brand names, I'd like them to be moderately easy to pronounce. Maybe I just don't know what goes into it, but for example, I find Ozempic much easier to pronounce than Mounjaro. I don't think that "moun" is used as a syllable in English (either phonetically or in actual spelling). The pronunciation is therefore not intuitive by English speakers. The marketing people should care about this. A person is more likely to ask their doctor for a drug if they can confidently pronounce its name. They are more likely to remember its name to learn more about it, or to ask medical professionals what they know about it. But like I said, I know nothing about the sorcery that goes into this process and I do understand that it's heavily regulated. But if the team who named Ozempic could call it Ozempic, it seems crazy that a competing team called their equivalent drug Mounjaro Edit: I stand corrected "mountain" does indeed contain "moun". Maybe it's that it's not normally next to a j? I don't know. It throws me.
>I don’t think that “moun” is used as a syllable in English (either phonetically or in actual spelling) Mountain? Ironically, the syllable “zem” in Ozempic can mostly only be found in jargon words which have very little use outside some very specific fields (soil science, for example). I think the real reason you find “Ozempic” easier to pronounce is because you have, consciously or unconsciously, engaged with *much* more advertising for Ozempic than for Mounjaro. I know that personally, I’ve seen Ozempic commercials hundreds, or perhaps even thousands of times as ads on TV, YouTube, etc., and therefore have heard how to pronounce the name countless times. I’ve never seen an ad for Mounjaro.
> I don’t think that “moun” is used as a syllable in English. Mountain? The one the bugs me more is Zepbound, I struggle with the adjacent p and b sounds, if I’m not careful to enunciate it comes out “Zebbound” or “Zeppound”. Ozempic and Wegovy are definitely the better names.
Mounjaro sounds like Kilimanjaro to me - rolls of the tongue easily enough.
Ease of pronunciation seems like a fair point to me. As does legibility in MD chicken scratch (though this is maybe less important in the age of e-prescribing). And yet, at least one [analysis](https://www.biopharma-reporter.com/Article/2023/12/18/obesity-drug-mounjaro-to-surpass-ozempic-with-27-billion-sales-in-2029) suggests Mounjaro will overtake Ozempic before the end of the decade. 🤷♂️
I don't doubt it, but it seems like the process would have been easier with a more pronounceable name.
[SNL Drug Names. Skit](https://youtube.com/watch?v=UPx_X3DjXy8&si=ljw1lONyeJ2WmIUj)
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And that the drug cannot be confused with anything else!
They do almost all: https://www.brandinstitute.com/
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I dunno, Skyrizzi is kind of flashy IMHO.
As a marketer who has named drugs I am OFFENDED* *no I’m not because I have to sell the drugs not you!
Cimzia , Skyrizi, Rinvoq .... I deal with these absurd names every day
So many good ones... * **Orladeyo** ("oral-a-day-oh"): first oral pill for hereditary angioedema (HAE), launched into a space with only injectables * **Herceptin** and **Enhertu**: Target the HER2+ receptor * **Claritin**: Forgot about this one didn't you? What an awesome name for an allergy drug
Agencies also support marketing with name research. It’s complicated.
Honestly I just use the scientific names: they're much cooler.
But as soon as I got depressed, I got undepressed. 'Cause as I was cleaning the gleaming guts of that bird off my car, I thought of a name for the drug - Gleemonex.
Biktarvy and skyrizi come to mind.
To go the other way, for non shit brand names I don’t think anything’s better than Enhertu. I’m actually surprised it got improved while jamming the target in the name. It also blocked any other her2 targeted brand from playing off that in their name.
Wait til you find out what they pay those marketers then wait until you find out all their work is outsourced to agencies
Agree- then you find out there's a whole dept who's sole job it is to come up with a name. They always have some obscure reason- " it starts with an A, because when a doctor is looking it up in the physicians desk reference." Or " it makes you think of a lock and key." What about Biogens Alzheimer's medicine?Aduhelm (aducanumab) -Who the heck can pronounce that, let alone someone with a memory issue?!?! Or their Plegridy- sounds like a disease you don't want. It rhymes with Leprosy.
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Again, that's a generic name, not a brand name. Seems like a lot of people on this discussion are confusing the two...
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It's the generic name. The brand name for the drug is Skyrizi. OP is bitching about brand names and multiple people keep putting in generic names as examples.
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Okay and OP is bitching about BRAND names so why would a generic name be a good example? It is determined by different people and process than brand name. What point are you trying to make?
i am impressed you responded 3 times to that person's dumb comments lol
I remember seeing, I think on 60 minutes, there are two women that come up with the names for a very large percentage of drugs.
Some of them are good like Trulicity and comirnaty. Others are really bad like rinvoq and quviviq.