A product name has to be specific. You know that Tasty Soup is tasty - that Hot Chips will burn off the roof of your mouth.

If a kid disappears, now there's Amber Alerts: they know this-this-this. In the '50s, we kids wandered around. Nobody knew what you were doing.

A title means marketing. It means that company's coming soon, and you'd better get out the Christmas lights so they don't miss your house.

Is there nothing the prodigiously talented Ann Patchett can't do? She's channeled the world of opera, Boston politics, magic, unwed motherhood, and race relations, creating scenarios so indelible, you swear they are right outside your door.

Everyone thinks that a new place or a new identity will jumpstart a new life.

I tell myself that some names can be mistakes, like Mxyplyzyk, a store in New York that lost customers because few could spell its name to look up the address. I tell myself that lots of writers agonize over titles, and often get them wrong at first.