The good news: Yahoo clearly has not spent a cent devising “Altaba”, the new name for the investment company that will be left after the operating business is sold to Verizon. The bankers’ working title of “RemainCo” is hardly less exciting.

在将主营业务出售给Verizon公司后，雅虎(Yahoo)剩下的投资公司将更名为“Altaba”。好消息是：雅虎在设计Altaba的公司名时显然没花一分钱。该公司之前的暂定名称“RemainCo”令人兴奋的程度一点也不逊色。

Further good news: the people who came up with what seems to be a combination of “alternative” and “Alibaba” (Yahoo’s stake in which is its most valuable asset) did not decide to call the new company “Alibernative”.

更大的好消息是：想出这个貌似是“alternative”（替代物）与“Alibaba”（雅虎持有的阿里巴巴股份是其最有价值的资产）结合体的名称的人，没有决定给新公司取名为“Alibernative”。

The bad news: one underwhelming naming ceremony does not signal an end to wilder rebrandings.

坏消息是：一场平淡无奇的命名仪式并不意味着更疯狂的重命名的结束。

Fuelled by the never-ending cycle of mergers¹ and demergers, inventing new names is an annuity² business for brand gurus and a dependable source of nonsensical justifications³ from the marketing⁴ department.

在企业合并、分拆的无休止循环的推动下，发明新名称成了品牌大师们的一项赚取年金的业务，而企业营销部门对于新名称如何高妙会给出层出不穷的荒谬解释。

I thought this sector⁵ had reached a low point in 2014, when PwC rebranded Booz & Company, the consultancy it had bought, as Strategy&. But the past year has seen the birth of Conduent, which sounds more like an intimate skin balm than the business process services group that was part of Xerox⁶. Arconic, which makes multi-material products for aerospace⁷ groups and carmakers and emerged from Alcoa, could be an old-fashioned cocktail⁸ mixer. In fact, according to the group, the A stands for Alcoa, the “arc” for the “arc of progress”, and the “conic” alludes⁹ to the iconic products the company produces.

我以为这一行业在2014年进入了低潮期，当时，普华永道(PwC)将其收购的咨询公司博斯(Booz & Company)更名为Strategy&。但过去一年还诞生了一家名为Conduent的公司，听起来更像一款私密的护肤膏，而非施乐(Xerox)旗下的业务流程服务集团。Arconic是一家分拆自美国铝业(Alcoa)并为航空航天集团和汽车制造商提供多材料产品的公司，其名称听起来更像一种老式鸡尾酒混合器。实际上，按该集团的说法，A代表美国铝业，“arc”代表“进步弧线”，而“conic”暗指该公司生产的标志性产品。

Whatever. History suggests that if a company is successful, people do get used to its new handle, however outlandish it seems at first (think of Accenture or Diageo, at first ribbed for their portmanteau brands).

随便怎么说。历史经验表明，只要企业取得成功，人们就会习惯于它的新名称，无论这个名字起初听起来多么古怪——想一想当初因使用合成词作为品牌名称而遭调侃的Accenture（埃森哲）或Diageo（帝亚吉欧）。

The people I usually pity in rebranding exercises are the front-line employees. They suffer the indignity¹⁰ of having to explain themselves — and their new name — long after the marketing department has packed away the jargon¹¹ and the branded freebies. For instance, I can only imagine the pain of staff at “Everything Everywhere” before that 2010 telecoms joint venture was renamed EE.

在公司品牌重塑的过程中，我通常比较同情的是一线员工。在营销部门将宣传行话和印着品牌名称的免费赠品收起来很久以后，他们还不得不费力向别人解释自己及公司的新名称。例如，我可以想象合资电信公司Everything Everywhere的员工在2010年公司更名为EE后的痛苦。

Yahoo looked an odd brand at first — though co-founders Jerry Yang and David Filo’s original name “Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web” was never going to last. Still, the brand was enough to energise its early hires. According to Karen Angel’s book Inside Yahoo!, published in 2002, the group’s first head of marketing even replanted her garden to bloom in Yahoo’s purple and yellow colours.

雅虎起初听起来也有些怪异——虽然公司创始人杨致远(Jerry Yang)和戴维?费罗(David Filo)最初选择的公司名“Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web”（杰瑞的万维网指南）注定不会长久。不过，这一品牌足以激励公司早期的员工。据凯伦?安吉尔(Karen Angel) 2002年出版的《雅虎内幕》(Inside Yahoo!)一书描述，该集团首任营销主管甚至在自家花园中改种了象征雅虎紫色和黄色的花。

Those flowers have long since wilted¹². Now, my sympathies are with the staff who will continue to work at the operating businesses, under the unchanged Yahoo banner, rather than the few who will run Altaba. As the once-mighty internet group’s reputation suffers slow death by a billion data breaches¹³, a rebrand, however dull or wacky, would probably come as a merciful relief to Yahoo’s job-seeking employees.

那些花早已凋零。现在，我开始同情那些顶着雅虎旧名继续从事主营业务的员工，而不是少数将运营Altaba的员工。随着这家曾盛极一时的互联网集团因10亿用户数据外泄而声誉渐毁，新名称——不管多么乏味或古怪——对于雅虎忙着找新工作的员工来说或许是仁慈的解脱。