The Name Game
Compiled by Walter Hunt
Special to Spielboy
Special to Spielboy Walter Hunt ticks off a few dozen descriptions of where company names come from.
 |  | | About the name: 2F is named for the founder, Friedemann Friese. Most of the games also use the one, two, or three Fs as an alliterative device: Fresh Fish, Funkenschlag, Fische Fluppen Frikadellen, FrischFleisch, Finstere Flure, Flickwerk, and, of course, Power Grid. Seems like somebody has lots of effing on the brain. | See games by 2F Spiele  |
|  | | About the name: Jim Doherty lives down the street from some llamas and he has always like them anyway, probably because of the Monty Python episode. He added the "Eight Foot" part because he really like the way the words all sound together. Incidentally, that's how the company names their games as well — just lookin for words that sound good together. | See games by 8 Foot Llama |
|  | | About the name: Adlung is named for Karsten Adlung, the publisher. Jurgen Martens is the game designer. | See games by Adlung-Spiel |
|  | | About the name: A pair of dice goes with the logo, which is a sort of pun - though not a German one, for a change. When Julius Caesar crossed the River Rubicon on his way to conquer Rome, he is said to have uttered, "alea jacta est" - "the die is cast". This can have a sort of blacksmithy-type meaning, or can refer to the tossing of a cube with numbers on it. The logo puns on this, and the name of the game line is derived from it. | See games by Alea |
|  | | About the name: Spanish for "friend", but the company always writes its name in caps, suggesting an acronym of some sort. Of course, this is the country that brought you Bafög — an acronym for a 26-letter word meaning "student aid", so one can only imagine what the letters stand for. Still, the company makes games about beans, which seem to be a German obsession. | See games by Amigo |
|  | | About the name: ASS stands for "Altenburg-Stralsunder Spielkarten", and they apparently don’t get the joke. | See games by ASS |
|  | | About the name: Hasbro was founded in 1923 by two brothers, Henry and Helal Hassenfeld, in a small office in Providence, Rhode Island. It was originally named Hassenfeld Brothers but later shortened to Hasbro, perhaps to avoid confusion with the Hasenfeffer Bottling Company mentioned in the Laverne & Shirley theme song. | See games by Avalon Hill |
|  | | About the name: Bambus is the German word for bamboo, a natural material which can be
used in many ways. It's not as eye-catching as a flower but is quite
beautiful. So the meaning, according to Guenter Cornett, is that content is more important than design.
The recent re-design of Flaschenteufel proves that the notion of design is gaining ground, though (left side: old bottle imp cards; right side: the new story cards).
At Bambus' website, you'll find the early
history of the company (1995-2000). | See games by Bambus |
|  | | About the name: In an interview with Patrick Korner of Terminal City Gamers, Corné van Moorsel was asked where the company name came from. He answered, "the C comes from my first name, the rest refers to quality." To me, Dutch is basically German spoken underwater, so I guess you could get from one to the other. | See games by Cwali |
|  | | About the name: Anye found that overcoming the pejorative connotations of a name like Diet Evil in the family game market was an uphill battle and decided to rename the company. According to the DEG website, "I wanted to keep the initials D.E.G. in order to preserve as much brand continuity as I could. I also wanted a name that conjured the same, off-the-wall, feeling that Diet Evil Games did. After much soul-searching and thousands of word combinations, I came up with Dancing Eggplant Games."
| See games by Dancing Eggplant |
|  | | About the name: Named for Doris Matthäus and Frank Nestel. Doris is the artist, and an excellent one; Frank is the Frank from "Frank's Zoo". Doris drew the little hedgehog at some point and it became the company's mascot. I read an interview in German about it and can't find it now. | See games by Doris & Frank |
|  | | About the name: Rodger MacGowan explains the story on GMT’s web site:
Gene Billingsley (the "G"), a fellow named Mike (the "M") and a fellow named Terry (the "T"), who all lived in the Fresno/Hanford area of California, wanted to start a game company (c.1989 or so). As plans were being made for the company, and game designs and artwork were in various stages, Mike decided to bail out of the enterprise. GMT became "GT" for a while.
In 1990, Gene called me and asked to meet with me down in the Los Angeles area, where my Studio is. We got together and he showed me what he had. In short he had three game designs, but little else. The artwork he had (from an outside free-lancer) was either incomplete, or not professional (or not functional/printable) for his needs. Gene asked if I could take the artwork he had, create three games for the upcoming Origins (about 6 weeks away) with it, and help him to launch the new company. I said "no". I recommended he forget the next Origins Con, take the time to produce the games with new or revised artwork and then launch the company — in short, Gene agreed with me, asked me to do the artwork as Art Director of GMT, and from there I joined the team (I became the new/replacement "M" in GMT in a way). | See games by GMT |
|  | | About the name: The name means "gold sieve(r)", i.e., prospector; someone who pans for gold in the stream and comes up with some nice nuggets like Medieval Merchant or New England. The logo on the front of each box is an impossibly round gold nugget. | See games by Goldsieber |
|  | | About the name: There's a Japanese company called "Haba" which
makes skin care products. Haba, which is an acronym for "Health Aid
Beauty Aid", has been for 20 years in a
"timeless quest for real beauty" and is dedicated to "squalane beauty" —
squalane being an "extract from deep sea shark." Okay. Sure.
Haba games are part of a product line of children's toys
and furniture made by the Habermaass family, in business since 1938.
Haba is an environmentally-friendly company, and emphasizes on their web site
(www.haba.de) that they have passed various ecological audits. They use
wood in preference to plastic in their products, and no deep sea sharks
are ever harmed. | See games by Haba |
|  | | About the name: This name comes from the famous story of the same name. Lucky Hans trades a lump of silver (that he’s worked 7 years to earn) for a fine horse, the horse for a cow, the cow for a pig, the pig for a grinding stone — and not a very good one — and then winds up throwing the stone away since it’s so heavy.
So he winds up with nothing but a light heart (the same result as Kucinich's run for president). As for the pig, it’s a traditional luck-symbol to Germans; at Easter they exchange these little marzipan pigs, and there’s even the slang phrase "Schwein haben" (‘I have pig’) which means, "I’ve been lucky." Another obvious political reference, if you ask me. | See games by Hans im Glück Verlag |
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|  | | About the name: Johann Friedrich Franckh and Friedrich Gottlob founded a publishing firm in Wurttemburg in 1822, seeking to publish new and innovative authors. In 1912 the firm formed the "Kosmos Society of Friends of Nature", for which it published a newsletter called "Kosmos". From there they branched out into games and children's toys. Unknown to most Eurogamers, Kosmos is almost as well known in Germany for chemistry sets and telescopes as for board games, though that gets eclipsed every time some new Siedler add-on is published. | See games by Kosmos Verlag |
|  | | About the name: Piatnik is a well-known Austrian playing card company. The company was founded in 1824 by Ferdinand Piatnik, and they’ve been making cards and games ever since. | See games by Piatnik |
|  | | About the name: When Angela first decided to start a company, her mind turned to idols
Jay & Silent Bob and their quest to prevent the destruction of the world via
the Gate of Plenary Indulgence in the cult classic film Dogma.
Her first thought was that Plenary
Indulgence Press would be a terrific name for a company. And indeed it was, until she looked Plenary Indulgence up in the dictionary...complete absolution of sins.
It was just a tad too pretentious so she shortened it to Plenary, which
means "complete."
| See games by Plenary Games |
|  | | About the name: According to Mr. Schacht, "I was thinking from where games come, and perhaps they come from a magical place somewhere... Perhaps from Timbuktu."
Timbuktu is in the heart of dark Africa, according to legend - it’s actually a city in Mali on the Niger Bend, a crossroads and trading post prior to European colonization of the continent. Now a nice spot for catching the HIV. | See games by Spiel aus Timbuktu |
|  | | About the name: Splotter, based in the Netherlands, derives its name from the combination of "Spel" (Game) and "Otter" — that’s why the otter is part of its logo. According to Jeroen, the otter doesn't have a special meaning. "It is mostly that two of our four people are biologists, and Tamara drew this as our logo. We all liked it, so we kept it." | See games by Splotter Spellen |
|  | | About the name: Originally founded as a wargame company, the French game manufacturer Tilsit takes its name from a great event in French history — naturally, something that happened long in the past. Tilsit is a small fortified town in East Prussia (now part of Poland), where Napoleon forced Prussia to sign a humiliating peace treaty after the battle of Jena. As an indication of how little anyone cares about this anymore, Tilsit Edition games are actually sold in German-speaking countries. | See games by Tilsit |
|  | | About the name: According to Geoff Brown in a non-sequitor-filled interview in Counter Magazine #21, "All the games companies at the time were being shortened to three letter acronyms (SPI, TSR, etc)... so it was decided to call it a cute creature and put War in front." When they formed Warfrog, the principals thought that their target market was going to be the wargames market, so having a tricked-out toad seemed appropriate. | See games by Warfrog |
About the Author: Walter Hunt has been a gamer since he was a kid, but has been actively playing Eurogames since the mid-90s, starting with Settlers and McMulti and progressing to the latest releases each year from Essen. He is one of the founding members of Unity Games (www.unitygames.org); his regular game group, the MVGA, has been meeting continuously since 1965. He earns his keep writing science fiction novels; his third book, The Dark Ascent, will be published in August 2004. His web site is www.walterhunt.com.
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