How Many Possible Trade Names are There?

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe number of possible distinct names of reasonable length is necessarily finite, and with the heavy demand for new names in some areas of current English-speaking commerce it seems possible that the supply might approach exhaustion. Numbers of possibilities cannot be calculated exactly, because most wordforms theoretically allowed by English phonology are too clumsy to be usable. However, Monte Carlo methods permit estimates of numbers of names which are plausible by present-day standards. These estimates suggest that the prospect of “running out of names” may not be merely fanciful.