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And then make a left turn on Fdsg Street...

"Ar tonelico Qoga: Knell of Ar Ciel? There's only two real words in that verbal diarrhea!"
Bennett the Sage, Anime Abandon episode: De:vadasy

There's the Word Salad Title, and then there's this. This isn't so much of a salad as the diced carrots on top of the salad. This trope comes into play when the creators deconstruct words, rearrange letters, or create new terms to name their works. This usually takes one of three forms:

  1. A bunch of syllables tossed together
  2. Two or more words combined in an unusual way.
  3. A common term that's been altered or rearranged.

This is usually justified by the Rule of Cool, and related to As Long as It Sounds Foreign. Sometimes the title is random due to ease of trademarking a non-generic word. See also The Unpronounceable. The proper noun version of Perfectly Cromulent Word.


Examples:

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    Advertising 
  • Dozens of merged (and unmerged) companies and prescription drugs have meaningless, merged names. Partly because you can copyright and trademark, say, "Avaya," but not "telephone". Same goes with internet domains.
  • "Verizon" is a combination of "veritas" (Latin for truth) and "horizon".

    Anime and Manga 
  • The title of Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL might be a case of this; the "Xyz Summoning" mechanic ("ek-seez" according to the original Japanese; "ik-seez" according to the English version) it introduces definitely is. Eventually followed up by Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS (an acronym for "Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence Network System").
  • Gunnm. There's a reason the English version renamed it to Battle Angel Alita. Not to be confused with that Gundam spinoff with the upside-down letter A.
  • Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo is a Protagonist Title with extra Porky Pig Pronunciation.
  • Durarara!!: According to Word of God, it's a nonsense title, but it doesn't stop fans from seeing references to the story's own plot elements — Dullahan, Dollars, etc.
  • FLCL, pronounced 'fooly cooly', is a meaningless phrase that "sounded English" in the creators' opinion. Many people falsely interpret it as a slang term (or onomatopoeia) for groping a woman's breasts (probably from how Naota's father was going on an insane rant about the name while his grandpa was making the hand motions of kneading bread, and Naota responds by saying he's too young to know that). The in-series explanation is that it's short for "FLictonic CLipper-Weber Syndrome", which is apparently the name of the disease that causes things to teleport out of Naota's head (which Haruko just made up on the spot).
  • DARLING in the FRANXX. This is especially weird because neither the all-caps word nor the all-caps "word" is an acronym. The lead character's partner calls him "darling" and they pilot a Humongous Mecha called "Franxx", because "X" Makes Anything Cool.
  • Gosick, essentially a misspelling/stylization of "Gothic" caused by the lack of a "th" sound in Japanese (Gothic -> Goshikku -> Gosick).
  • Pop Team Epic:
    • The manga/anime as a whole is technically called "ポプテピピック"/"Poputepipikku," a meaningless jumble of phonemes that only achieves Word Salad Title levels of coherency through Gratuitous English.
    • The Stylistic Suck skits in the anime (animated by AC部) have the equally nonsensical title of "ボブネミミッミ"/"Bobunemimimmi", which is translated as "Bob Epic Team" in the English dub.
  • W'z, only one letter and one apostrophe away from One-Letter Title.
  • Endro~!, short for "End Roll," itself short for "It's too soon for the end roll." The show starts where a normal swords-and-sorcerers fantasy series would end, plays fake credits ("end roll"), then launches into a comedy reboot of itself. But good luck figuring all that out from "Endro."
  • Popotan, a reversal of the syllables of "tanpopo", the Japanese word for dandelion.
  • Dandadan: "Dan (談)" means "story", and is often used as a suffix for specific types (e.g. "kaidan" means "ghost story", "joudan" means "comedy story"). "Dandadan" is a portmantitle of "dan" and "Dada", with an extra "dan" thrown in front.

    Film 
  • Lucky Number Slevin combines the common phrase "lucky number seven" with the main character's name: Slevin. The "L" in Slevin is often replaced with an upside-down 7.
  • The Spanish film Crimen Ferpecto, which translates as The Ferpect Crime. The main character, who is characterized by his scrupulous attention to detail, is attempting to plan the perfect murder and rents a bunch of crime films for research. He is dismayed that one film is ironically mislabeled, "The Ferpect Crime," as he can't afford such mistakes. Some foreign markets renamed it The Perfect Crime, removing the joke.
  • Rock N Rolla is spelled like a stylized version of "rock and roller." It's a fictional underworld term used in the film, and is juxtaposed with one of the main characters, who is a literal rock and roll musician.
  • Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One.
  • Gothika is called Gothika for reasons known only to the person who named it.
  • Final Destination 5 at one point was going to be called 5nal Destination ("Five-nal Destination?"), but public backlash led to the film being renamed simply Final Destination 5.
  • TRON: Legacy was supposed to be called "TR2N", but nobody liked it.
  • R100's title is a play on Japanese film ratings. A rating of "R100" would be a film that is unsuitable for audiences under 100 years of age. Within the film, its own supposed director states that no one under 100 will like the film.
  • The Goonies: "Goonies" isn't a pre-existing word and doesn't offer any clues as to what it means. In the film, it's a term used by the main characters to refer to themselves, residents of the Goon Docks neighborhood of Astoria, Oregon.

    Literature 
  • Neal Stephenson likes this trope:
    • Cryptonomicon combines the title of H. P. Lovecraft's fictional Necronomicon book with "cryptography."
    • Anathem combines "anthem" and "anathema." In the book's world, it's a song sung to people who are leaving a monastic order, either by choice or exile.
    • REAMDE: The book's plot is started by a computer virus containing a readme file that is misspelled "reamde."
  • Bunnicula is a mashup of "bunny" and "Dracula". Yes, the title character is a vampiric rabbit.
  • Ro.Te.O. It was originally just a made up word that popped into the creator's mind, but then the main trio's names were built based on that made up word so it stuck.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Kamen Rider OOO (pronounced "ohs") is explained in-show as an infinity symbol with a third loop in it to represent "beyond-infinite power", and it also puns on "oh" being the Japanese word for "king". The series also does this to lampshade the ongoing Kamen Rider gimmick of multiple mix-and-match forms for the hero - each form has three modular parts, head, arms and legs, and interchanging them means adding together the names and sometimes parts of the names of all three parts to provide a way of referencing each form. Just to confuse things further, body part names can come in either Gratuitous English or regular Japanese. For starters:
    • The default TaToBa form refers to the Taka (hawk) head, Tora (tiger) arms and Bata (grasshopper) legs.
    • Tora arms can also be part of RaToraTah form, made up of Raion (lion) head, Tora arms and Cheetah legs.
    • Another form, SaGoZou, refers to Sai (rhinoceros), Gorilla and Zou (elephant). And so on.
    • Kuwagata (stag beetle), Kamakiri (mantis) and Batta = Gatakiriba, the green, insect themed form.
  • Since the early 2000s, Super Sentai has often shortened its team names from "[Theme]ranger" to just "[Theme]ger". Sometimes this is a legitimate pun: "Hurricaneger" and "Abaranger" are portmanteaus of "Hurricane Ranger" and "Abare Ranger", "Goseiger" is a punny respelling of "Goseija", "Ninninger" and "Ryusoulger" sound like "ninja" and "soldier", "Kiramager" combines "Kiramei Ranger" with "mage", etc.; but other times there's no real reason for it (and still other times, they stick with the longer "ranger" suffix anyway).
  • Usually the Ultra Series is straightforward, naming their series and the title characters Ultraman [noun]. Not so with Ultraman Geed, as "Geed" requires some explaining. It's originally derived from the character's motto, "ttoshite temo nimo naranē!" (roughly translated, "Sitting around doing nothing will get us nowhere!") Later in the series, Riku also claims that it stands for "Gene Destiny"; with the "De" reversed to symbolize how he is saying Screw Destiny in regards to his family history (though the context suggests that he might have made up "Gene Destiny" on the spot because he was too embarrassed to admit to the motto explanation at that moment).

    Music 
  • IDM artists seem to like this trope:
    • Aphex Twin has "Icct Hedral," "Druqks," "Flim,"(sic.) and "Heliosphan," among numerous others. Weirdly, he's been known to intermix his gibberish titles with titles from real languages, particularly Cornish.
      • drukQs dialed these up about eleven notches ("Kladfvgbung Micshk", "Petiatil Cx Htdui", "Bbydhyonchord," which are sometimes in the aforementioned Cornish) but Syro went beyond even that, the very worst offenders being "Syro u473t8+e (Piezoluminescence Mix)", "S950tx16wasr10 (Earth Portal Mix)" and "Fz pseudotimestretch+e+3".
    • Autechre, a band that fits this trope itself, has tens of songs like this. "Pir," "Altibizz," "PlyPhon," and "Ccec" are just a few of many.
    • The same goes for Plaid: "Tearisci," "Eyen," "Sincetta," and "Crumax Rins" are some of the more obvious ones.
    • Subverted within the IDM genre by Venetian Snares. The track titles from Rossz csillag alatt szuletett may all look like this trope in action, but no, that's actual honest-to-goodness Hungarian. And as if that weren't enough, he used some Hungarian titles on Detrimentalist as well.
    • Mouse on Mars has albums titled Agit Itter It It, Niun Niggung and Pickly Dred Rhizzoms. The track titles on these albums are further examples.
      • Von Südenfed, a side project where the members of Mouse on Mars were joined by Mark E. Smith, is named as sort of a bilingual/cross-cultural pun: Von Süden is German for "southern", while Sudafed is a American decongestant brand.
  • European folk band Qntal admit that their name means nothing, and it was simply a selection of letters they thought looked nice.
  • Hip-Hop artist Aceyalone.
  • Funk music from The '70s, for some reason.
    • "Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic " by Isaac Hayes, Parliament's "Aqua Boogie (A Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop)" - actually, a lot of George Clinton's songs.
      • "Promentalshitbackwashpsychosis Enema Squad (The Doo-Doo Chasers)" by Funkadelic, which uses...doo-doo as a metaphor.
    • "Prisencolinensinainciusol" by Italian artist Adriano Celentano in 1972. To be fair, it's just the most important "word" in an entire word pureé song, which is written to sound like English but actually contains pure gibberish (USA songs were very popular in Italy at the time and he wanted to take a small potshot at the fact the listeners had no idea what the songs actually said).
    • More recently but in the same vein: Outkast's "Spottieottiedopalicious" and "Southernplayalisticcadillacmuzik."
  • The "Jackson 5ive" did this with a distinctive logo that appeared on some of their albums, and on other promotional materials (and on the TV show). However, it was otherwise spelled normally as "The Jackson 5" or "Jackson 5".
  • Ruins has such song titles as "Djubatczegromm" and "Bliezzaning Moltz". Kōenji Hyakkei, another band with Tatsuya Yoshida, uses similar titles for most of their songs; examples include "Graddinoba Revoss", "Vallczeremdoss", and "Qivem Vrastorr". (Note that one of Yoshida's main musical influences is the band Magma, who used an actual conlang for their song/album titles and lyrics.)
  • The Police's "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da".
  • "Thela Hun Ginjeet" by King Crimson. (It's an anagram of "heat in the jungle".)
  • "Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin" by Amateur Transplants, sung to "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" from Mary Poppins and a portmanteau of the generic names of various common pharmaceutical drugs.
  • Deadmau5 (pronounced "dead mouse" or "Deadmau five". He pronounces it both ways.)
  • Many of Extrawelt's songs have German word puree titles.
  • Look up Sum 41 song "Hyper-insomnia-para-chondroid".
  • "Psychodiscomarcelinegumballwattersondavidfisherxylopyrsusrhodanaprilfogpunchpopmangasmashyamhugedolapidosgleamagethemagic" by Calvin Wilkerson.
  • The song titles on Skinny Puppy's The Greater Wrong of the Right and Mythmaker albums.
  • The album Nespithe by Finnish Technical Death Metal band Demilich, an anagram for The Spine generated by reversing the order of three-letter clumps of the phrase. It also contains a song entitled "Erecshyrinol", an anagram for "No Lyrics Here" generated using the same algorithm.
  • "Bawitdaba" by Kid Rock.
  • The British punk rock band Splodgenessabounds seems to fit this perfectly.
  • So do the British New Wave band Spizzenergi, or Spizz Energi, or Athletico Spizz 80, or Spizzoil, or Spizzles. (The band had one heck of a time sticking to just one name.)
  • "5ive Gears in Reverse", by Elvis Costello.
  • Californian guitarist Willie Oteri in 2000 released an album entitled "Concepts of Mate Ma Toot". Matema is, according to Oteri, a word for "supreme being" in some African language, while Matoot is - still according to the musician - an ancient Finnish deity. Also, he recorded it with Mike Malone, Brannen Temple, Chris Maresh and Chris Tondre. Taking the first two letters of the last names of each musician you get... MaTeMaToOt.
    • In 2009 Oteri released, this time with Dave Laczko, an album entitled "WD-41". The songs are called "G-9", "J-1", "U-5", "BB-2", "Q-1", "W1-A" "W-5" and "W1-B".
  • The band Geggy Tah, kind of: They intended it to mean nothing, but they came to find out that they had accidentally picked a name that means "mouth thanks" (or "shut up, thanks") in Scottish. "Geggy" and "Tah" were actually childhood nicknames of main members Greg Kurstin and Tommy Jordan, since both had younger sisters who had trouble pronouncing their names when they were young.
  • Chumbawamba: The band is known for making up different origins for their name to see if people will buy it, but the truth is they just picked some nonsensical syllables as an alternative to having a name that would end up sounding dated.
  • The Mars Volta seem somewhat fond of made-up portmanteaus: There's the albums Amputechture ("amputation" + "technology" + "architecture") and Noctourniquet ("Nocturnal" + "tourniquet"), as well as the song title "Dyslexicon" ("Dyslexic" + "Lexicon").
  • Styles of Beyond has several song titles which are a mix of Xtreme Kool Letterz, Word Salad Title, and this.
  • Coldplay's 2011 album Mylo Xyloto (MY-loh ZY-luh-toh) is pretty much this, and the band itself has admitted so.
  • Witch House/Electropop duo Purity Ring seem to like this trope, with titles like "Lofticries" (Lofty + Cries), "Belispeak" (Belly + Speak), "Grandloves", or "Fineshrine".
  • Savant's song from the album Invasion: Problemathematicalculatorture.
  • Sebadoh, who got their name from nonsense syllables Lou Barlow would often use when working on songs before the lyrics were finished.
    • Speaking of Lou Barlow, his other project, Sentridoh, has a bunch of these as well.'
    • The Sebadoh song "Notsur Dnuora Selcric" is just the phrase "circles around Ruston" backwards. The closest thing to even a forwards Title Drop is the lyric "she's got circles under her eyes".
  • Spoon's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga - the album title was originally the Working Title for "The Ghost Of You Lingers", and was supposed to sound like that song's staccato piano part.
  • Kishi Bashi sounds like some random syllables strung together, but is in fact a variation on the only member of the band's name - K. Ishibashi.
  • The band Jamiroquai got their name from combining the word "jam" with a more phonetic spelling of the Native American tribe Iroquois.
  • Ministry's album Animositisomina: They started with "animosity", dropped the "y", then turned it into a palindrome. Since several of their other album titles have been puns on famous rock albums from the 1970s (e.g. Dark Side of the Spoon), it's been interpreted as a Shout-Out to The Grateful Dead's Aoxomoxoa; both titles are meaningless palindromes that begin and end with "a".
  • Buke And Gase are a duo named after their instruments - baritone ukulele and a guitar-bass hybrid. They were originally Buke And Gass, and presumably changed the spelling to make pronunciation of the name less ambiguous.
  • Torche's Meanderthal ("meander" + "neanderthal")
  • Phil Collins' "Sussudio". He just like the way it sounded, but retconned it into a girl's name.
  • Sixties folk-rock band Fapardokly, whose name mashes together syllables from each band member's name: Merrell Fankhauser, Don Parish, Bill Dodd and Dick Lee. The strange part is that their ungainly, hard to pronounce name basically exists due to Executive Meddling: When the band recorded the material that would make up their only album, they were performing under the name Merrell & the Exiles, but once the group dissolved, it came to be released by a small label under an entirely different artist name - maybe it was thought that their original name wasn't unusual or "psychedelic" enough.
  • Tricky's album Maxinquaye was named in honor of his late mother, Maxine Quaye.
  • Independent record label Jagjaguwar - the name was chosen via a Dungeons & Dragons character name-generating program.
  • The title of Aerosmith's instrumental "Krawhitham" is a portmanteau of the last names of the members of the band who wrote the song - Joey Kramer, Brad Whitford and Tom Hamilton.
  • J-Punk band Tsushimamire got their name by pureeing their band members' names. Mamire also means "mixed up" in Japanese.
  • The Genesis album Abacab, along with the title song from said album. As for where the title came from, it came about when they were recording the title song; they had three different musical sections (sections A, B, and C) and would arrange them in different ways. At one point, the way the sections were arranged spelled out "Abacab", so they decided to use that for the title. (The finished song ended up having a very different arrangement of sections.)
  • Wooden Shjips (the J is silent)
  • Godspeed You! Black Emperor's debut album is F♯ A♯ ∞ ("F-sharp, A-sharp, Infinity). The rest of their albums are Word Salad Titles.
  • Filter's "Jurassitol", which is a portmanteau of "Jurassic" and "Geritol" - the lyrics repeatedly refer to an "old man", so the title is presumably saying the subject of is colloquially a "dinosaur" and needs to take a vitamin supplement.
  • Bring Me the Horizon's "Antivist" (probably a portmanteau of "anti" and "activist").
  • Progressive Rock group Squackett were named as a portmanteau of their two most well-known members: Chris Squire and Steve Hackett.
  • The 1983 album (and Title Track) "Zungguzungguguzungguzeng" by reggae artist Yellowman.
  • COGASM were a supergroup consisting of Robert Smith, Jason Cooper, and Reeves Gabrels. They got their name by mashing together the first two letters of each member's last name... But it's probably not coincidence that it also sounds like a portmanteau for "collective orgasm", especially since the only song they produced ("A Sign From God") was written for the soundtrack to Orgazmo.
  • Snapcase's album Lookinglasself - The semi-title track is rendered more conventionally as "Looking Glass Self" (lest you wonder what it is you're supposed to be looking for inside of a glass elf).
  • "Funkahdafi" by Front 242— "Funk" (German for "radio") + "al-Gaddafi"
  • The label Okeh Records gets its name from the initials of its founder, Otto K.E. Heinemann; It's meant to be pronounced "okay".
  • The Rolling Stones' "Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)". Presumably the Scatting was done to make the song stand out from all the others named "Heartbreaker".
  • The Nice's album The Thoughts Of Emerlist Davjack, as well as its title track: "Emerlist Davjack" is the last names of each individual band member combined into one pseudonym: Keith Emerson (who went onto greater fame with Emerson, Lake & Palmer), David O'List, Brian Davison and Lee Jackson. The original pressing of the album even credited all songwriting to Emerlist Davjack, though individual songwriting credits were used on later reissues.
  • Mercury Rev's Boces: The title was inspired by the acronym for a vocational school system in the band's home state of New York: Boards of Cooperative Educational Services.
  • SOPHIE has songs titled "BIPP", "VYZEE", "ELLE", and "MSMSMSM". While the former two have lyrics, the title appears in neither of them.
  • Beck uses several madeup words for album and song titles. Most are Portmantitles of actual random words ("Sissyneck", "Whiskeyclone Hotel City 1997", "Readymade"), but "Odelay" is effectively made up (variously claimed as a corruption of the Spanish interjection "Órale" or a pun on "oh, delay").
  • Les Savy Fav, whose name is supposed to sound French but means nothing. Their song "Adoptduction" is a portmanteau of "adoption" and "abduction": The narrator of the song has a dream where he's kidnapped, but his parents haggle too much over the ransom, so his abductors effectively end up adopting him.
  • Anamanaguchi seem to be another band in this category who seem to like giving different origins to the name: Early on they said it came from a friend of the band trying to imitate Jabba The Hutt. However, they've also claimed it came from the members having taken internships with the fashion design companies Armani, Prada, and Gucci - people supposedly called them "the Armani-Prada-Gucci boys", which eventually blurred together into "Anamanaguchi".
  • Norwegian DJ and producer Kygo. His real name is Kyrre Gørvell-Dahll, and "Kygo" initially stemmed from a username he was given for a digital learning management system in high school - students' usernames were generated by mashing together the first two letters of their first and last names, and "ø" was replaced by "o" as is conventional in computing. He's since noted that the name has worked out well for him, due to being easy to pronounce in both Norwegian and English.
  • Necromandus: Drummer Frank Hall says he came up with the name, and that it was a flubbed reference to Nostradamus that they stuck with because it sounded cool. They unintentionally ended up using Gratuitous Latin / Canis Latinicus: The name suggests "Necro", a Greek prefix relating to death, and "Amandus", Latin for "worthy of love".
  • Post-Grunge band Course Of Nature's debut Superkala: They claimed they wanted to call the album Supercalifragilisticexpialadocious, but couldn't fit both the band's name and the full intended title on the side of a compact disc case.
  • One of Scott Walker's songs was titled "SDSS14+13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter)". If you have any idea what this means, please add it here.
  • Nits' orchestral album Hjuvi. It was named by mashing a keyboard until they hit upon something that looked like a plausible word.
  • 100 gecs claim their name is short for "a hundred geckos", and is something of a Creator In-Joke - member Laura Les once tried to order a gecko as a pet online, and ended up being shipped a hundred of them.
  • Gary Cherone of Extreme and Hurtsmile uses this quite a bit, for example Pornograffitti [sic] (pornography + grafitti), Politicalamity (political + calamity), Retrogrenade (retrograde + grenade).
  • Pato Fu has a few, such as "Uh Uh Uh, La La La, Ié Ié!" and "Rotomusic de Liquidificapum".
  • Gnidrolog was obliquely named after two of its founding members, twin brothers Colin and Stewart Goldring; basically the group name is a modified Sdrawkcab version of their surname ("Gnidrolog" backwards would be "Golording", while "Goldring" backwards would be "Gnirdlog")
  • Good Kid has "Nomu". When the song was being written, Nick used to sing "Nomu nomu nomu good time" as placeholder lyrics in the chorus. These were misheard lyrics from "Mogu Mogu" by Dopeness, which says "Mogu Mogu Mogu good time". Thus, the title ends up being a Development Gag — it's also fitting for a song that's about miscommunication.
  • Esthero's stage name is meant to be a portmanteau of "Esther the hero" - it's a Shout-Out to The Bell Jar; the protagonist is named Esther and the last sentence of the novel mentions being "the hero".
  • Butthole Surfers' album piouhgd: A press release claimed it was meant to be pronounced "pee-owed", as in a euphemism for "pissed off", and supposedly meant "I told you" in Navajo - but bassist Jeff Pinkus would later claim this press release was written without the band's input, and the album title was intended to be meaningless and unpronounceable.
  • MNDR and Scissor Sisters' "SWERLK". The lyrics explain that it's a dance move derived from a portmanteau of "twerk", "twirl", "work", "swerve", and "swirl".

    Pinball 

    Toys 

    Video Games 
  • Ar tonelico Qoga: Knell of Ar Ciel has two actual words out of seven, and one of them is rather obscure. The other five words are specific to the franchise, so while It Makes Sense in Contextcontext, it's so nonsensical otherwise that NIS America had to put out a press release simply to explain what the blithering hell the "jumble of seemingly random letters" they named the game means. (Of note is that the original Japanese title was Ar tonelico III: The Trigger of the World's Demise Pulled by a Girl's Song, which at least has the decency to tell you that it's the third game in a franchise and gives you a brief synopsis of what it's about. NISA changed the III to "Qoga" hoping that it would prevent turning off people who thought the first and second games would be required reading, but ironically it seemed to have made the title more unapproachable. It should also be noted that a good part of the fandom agrees that "Qoga" is a poor choice of a word to signify "end" due to the heavy implications that the word belongs to a dialect spoken solely in the region where the second game takes place, and which has zero speakers or ways to be learnt in the region the third game is set in.)
  • Esh's AurunmillaEsh is the name of the villain, and the plot centers around defeating him in his base, a planet dubbed the "Aurunmilla".
  • Exzisus, a 1987 shooter from Taito.
  • While the game itself does not have a Word Purée Title, despite Thracia being incredibly game-specific, one early translator for Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 misinterpreted an error in Chapter 11x's original Japanese title, マーダーホレス (Mādāhoresu)note , as the name of a medieval siege warfare Taking You with Me tactic, resulting in the utterly absurd "Blind Idiot" Translation title "Murder Hollace".
  • Galaga
  • Galaxian
  • Gaplus
  • Gyruss
  • Hetzchase Nailway, a Portal mod.
  • Majotori is a trivia game starring a witch named Lariat. Though it sounds vaguely Japanese (and "majo" in Japanese does mean "witch"), it's a Spanish game made by a developer named Alva Majo.
  • Metroid is this, though there is some disagreement as to what exactly the constituent words actually are. Some say it is partly derived from "meteoroid" or "asteroid" to evoke the outer space settings, some say it is partly derived from "android" to evoke Samus Aran's Powered Armor, some say it is partly derived from "metro" to evoke the artificial and/or subterranean settings with "-oid" being used as a suffix meaning "similar to" (i.e. similar to a metro).
  • NieR: In an odd case, "NieR" only became the (made up) Canon Name of its nameable protagonist against the wishes of the game's creator. As far as he'll tell anyone, the title is just a made up word that means nothing at all.
  • Nexuiz, a slight alteration of the word "nexus".
  • Narbacular Drop, Portal's predecessor, contains a completely meaningless word in the title so as to facilitate web searches.
  • Pu·Li·Ru·La
  • Many Pokémon (including the title itself) fit this. While some are fairly obvious, others are actually almost a real word. Magnemite, for instance, is one letter away from magnetite.
  • Qix and its action-based Spiritual Successor Volfied
    • The majority of (more or less) abstract puzzle games, such as Tetris, Quarth, Zoop, Pnickies and so on.
  • VVVVVV has a repeated One-Letter Title, intended to be seen as a bunch of alternating up and down arrows to symbolize the game’s central Gravity Screw mechanic.
  • "Wii" was chosen because it is easy to say (despite the fact that the phoneme for [wi] ヰ is obsolete in Japanese, replaced by [ui] ウィ/ウイ), is a homophone for "we," and the two i's look like two players. The gaming community staged a short rebellion over the name, preferring the earlier code name "Revolution," but the name stuck.
    • Similarly with the "Wii U" name: because in many languages "w" and "u" are used for the same phoneme, because "u" is an upside-down "n" (for "Nintendo"), and because of a game-making philosophy reemphasizing the role of the individual gamer whether through more hardcore experiences or through Asymmetric Multiplayer (as Reggie Fils-Aime put it during the E3 2011 reveal, "It's a system we will all enjoy together, but also one that's tailor-made for you.").
  • Xevious (pronounced "ZEH-vee-us"). All the games in the series are named after Arc Words in a Constructed Language.
  • Xexyz
  • The text-based game ZZT was so named to appear at the bottom of Usenet listings.

    Web Animation 
  • In RWBY, all four-person Huntsman and Huntress teams are referred to by borderline-nonsensical acronyms formed from their initials which are always pronounced like real words but never even come close to the proper spelling. Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang form Team RWBY, which is pronounced "ruby," causing confusion between the team and the character. Even weirder examples include Team CFVY, which is pronounced "coffee," Team SSSN, which is somehow pronounced "sun" (and for good measure, the team leader is also named Sun), team CRDL, which is pronounced "cardinal," and Team STRQ, which is pronounced "stark."

    Webcomics 
  • 5ideways. During its run the author referred to the fans as "5idewinders".
  • Early on, many the strips of The Daily Derp had this sort of a title, based off changing random letters in the eponymous phrase. "Phe Duxly Derp", "Tma Daily Berp", "Th3 Drily Terp"...
  • Some of Homestuck's song titles are nonsensical, but "Crystamanthequins" takes the cake, combining "crystal meth", "chrysanthemum", "mannequin" and "harlequin".
  • xkcd mentions in its FAQ that it doesn't stand for or really mean anything, and was chosen due to being an unusual sequence of letters which is easy to search for. note 
  • XOGenaSYS (alternately, XOGeneSYS; the official site spells it both ways). It's a combat-tournament series; the title is basically just a hodgepodge of Xtreme Kool Letterz with no particular meaning other than being the name of the in-universe Blood Sport.

    Web Original 

    Western Animation 
  • In ChalkZone, they have only 2 winter holidays combining Ramadan (which isn't actually always in winter), Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and Christmas: Chrishanukkamas and Ramakwanzadan.
  • Exaggerated: Gravity Falls has an episode titled "Xpcveaoqfoxso". Subverted if you decode it with a key found in the previous episode; it becomes "Weirdmageddon".
  • Animated sketch show Brad Neely's Harg Nallin' Sclopio Peepio: the first two words are the name of the show's creator, while Neely himself has called the rest of the title "deliberately meaningless" and said it was the writing staff's "favorite collection of syllables".

    Other 
  • The cover art for Stage 5 of Everywhere at the End of Time is called "Eptitranxisticemestionscers Desending" [sic].
  • Dali's painting entitled "Galacidalacidesoxyribonucleicacid" (though Gala was the name of his wife, and the "deoxyribonucleic acid" part is commonly known as "DNA" and not at all gibberish.)
  • The ice cream brand Häagen-Dazs means nothing. It's a meaningless phrase that was just made to look Scandinavian to be exotic— it's an American company. It does not, for the record, look at all Scandinavian to actual Scandinavian people.
  • The photography company Kodak has a meaningless name, chosen because it was snappy, easy to remember, and founder George Eastman was a big fan of the letter K.
    • Muzak was directly inspired by Kodak. George Squier, the founder of the company originally known as Wired Radio, liked how punchy and memorable the name Kodak was, so he played around with the word "music" until he hit on something similar.
  • Sony just hashed together a name that would be easy for all their potential customers around the world to pronounce. The creators claim they derived it from "sonny", as the Japanese were using that Gratuitous English word a lot.
  • Remedy, a temporary personnel service, changed its name to one less cromulent: Aquent purports to mean 'not a follower' from Greek a– (which, strange but true, is related to English 'un–') and Latin sequent.
  • Henry Schoolcraft coined many place-names from syllables of Indian languages plus Latin and Arabic. Lake Itasca in Minnesota, which he considered the source of the Mississippi, is named from Latin veritas ('truth') and caput ('head').
  • The last place-name in the English alphabet (at least in the US) is Zzyzx, California.
  • The extinct primate Ekgmowechashala is a combination of the Lakota word "igmu" (cat, itself an idiom), "wicasa" (man), and the diminutive "la". The orthography makes this difficult to see.
  • After a Ben Franklin variety store in New Ulm, Minnesota lost the franchise rights, the owners swapped the N and B on the sign, then turned the N sideways, to spell out "Zen Franklib". The company still thought it was too close, so the store became "Zen Rfanklib" before it closed.
    • Similarly, the store in Grayling, Michigan briefly displayed "Rib Nflannke" on its sign after it closed.
  • For a very brief period around the turn of the millennium, the Royal Mail was renamed "Consignia". It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time to someone, but the name change was widely and publicly ridiculed by practically everyone and the government hit the Reset Button inside of three months.
  • The Ku Klux Klan's name contains no actual English words. "Ku Klux" is thought to be a corruption of the Greek word "kuklos," meaning "circle." (Or it may be an onomatopoeic representation of a Dramatic Gun Cock.) "Klan" is obviously just a "kool" misspelling of "clan."
  • Wi-Fi is just a pun on "hi-fi" coined by a brand consulting firm to choose a name that sounded "a little catchier than IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence". There's no such a thing as "wireless fidelity", as a fidelity being "wireless" would make no sense.
  • There was a children's clothing store in Japan named Starvations, a combination of "star" and "innovations". They changed their name to Babydoll after they were informed what their name meant in English.
  • The town of Ixonia, Wisconsin was named by writing the letters of the alphabet on slips of paper and drawing them at random.

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