Opinion: Investors consider names before risk

Having heard that reaction before, I knew what it meant – my idea was out the window.

Here’s the back story. Kristi’s going to have our first grandchild, and by the time you read this will have returned from the doctor’s office with knowledge of the baby’s gender.

But last night, when I gave her my ideal name for the child, she not only laughed but told me, without having anything to go on except a few old wives’ tales, that it was going to be a girl, pretty much eliminating my first suggestion that would have included her dad’s name, her father-in-law’s name, her cousin’s name and my name. (Technically I am her stepfather, but I don’t think of the relationship that way and I hate the word).

So I changed my approach and suggested that she could use for her anticipated daughter the feminine version of my middle name.

“How about Georgia?” (I’m thinking this one should work perfectly, as she got her master’s from the University of Georgia, it’s my middle name, and she even had a rabbit several years ago that she named George.)

Kristi laughed again.

I’m getting frustrated that she is kicking out my suggestion again, so I asked her, “Do you realize that with one ‘Nope’ you are dissing your alma mater, your evil stepfather and a dead rabbit?”

That didn’t work.

What she and Adrian will choose to name the baby will no doubt defy the persuasive efforts of all the grandparents in waiting. To paraphrase Robert Burns, “The best laid (naming) schemes of mice and men (and grandparents-to-be) often go astray.”

Which takes me, in a somewhat circuitous fashion I’ll admit, to my point. Call it “It’s All in the Name.”

In the 1950s there was a humorous article in (I think) Playboy that was called, as best I can recollect, “The Roger Price Theory of Nomenclature.” It postulated that a baby will grow up to fit his name.

He disparaged names like Clyde and Fred as being bland and lacking any dynamic characteristics. I thought that presumptuous and judgmental until I considered the personalities of my great uncles who were so named.

The fact is, names can be dynamic, whether of individuals or corporations. For corporations it is part of the image – the branding process – that sometimes guides us in making decisions as to whether we will use their products or services, or invest in their stock.

There a lot of good corporate names – good images – out there, but there are some that are so blah that they fail to convey anything meaningful about the company.

While there is a lengthy list of such company names, one company in particular comes to mind. When I first came across the name, I assumed it had something to do with the steel industry.

The company, whose common stock we own for some of our clients with a moderately aggressive risk tolerance, is most often described as being in the computer peripherals industry and is involved in, among several areas, “the design, development, manufacture, marketing and sale of data networking solutions for Layer 2-7 switching and routing, and wired and wireless local area networks; metropolitan area networks, wide area networks and the Web.”

I may not be the brightest bulb in the pack, but I sure as heck wouldn’t have figured that out from the name. Funny thing is, they had previous names that were, in my opinion, at least a bit closer to telling an investor something about the company.

Formerly known as Perennium Networks Inc. the company changed its name to StarRidge Networks Inc. in 1996, before becoming (ugh!) Foundry Networks.

We like the company for, as mentioned above, portfolios for investors with a moderately aggressive risk tolerance. Additionally, in this industry category, we own Cisco. Related technology issues that are portfolio holdings or candidates include Applied Materials, Komag and Intel, the latter being the largest chip maker in the world and a company that Wall Street has shunned to the point of making it an attractive core holding in the technology sector.

You can also throw Microsoft into that unloved stack. The company is a cash-rich powerhouse with a market capitalization greater than the GDP of a lot of third-world countries. If you’re a speculator these may sound boring, but if you are a long-term investor you have probably either acquired these issues or are getting ready to.

It’s a good move.

Clark Davis is a 37-year investment veteran and CEO of Saint Louis Investment Advisors, a specialized money-management company. He can be reached at cdavis@slia.com or via his Web sit at www.slia.com.[[In-content Ad]]