Subtitled "The Art of Turning Little Words Into Big Business," this book, by Alex Frankel, is a 218-page-long puffed-up magazine article, about how five words - BlackBerry, Viagra, Accenture, Cayenne, and e-business - came to be brands.

In fact, the idea for the book came from the author's article in Wired magazine.

Chapter 7, on Viagra, is the only one worth reading carefully, and that only because the author explains the intricacies of the FDA's rules on drug naming.

For example, a drug cannot suggest the manufacturer's name. Thus, Pfizer can't start a drug's name with Pfi or Glaxo with gla.

A drug's name contain any overt promise, such as "cure" or "safe." For example, an antidepressant cannot be named Panacea.

Rogaine was initially called Regaine, but the FDA rejected it for the reason above.

The author tells us about the low-profile companies that create new names for things. They get paid enormous sums of money, and occasionally, like a blind squirrel finding an acorn, get one right.

Lexicon created PowerBook, for example. Of course, that same company also created Centrus, Quadra, and QuickTake for Apple, all of which tanked.

The author apparently believes his choices are all great successes.

I would argue that only BlackBerry is.

Viagra sounds dumb, Cayenne is ridiculous, Accenture is a dismal failure, and e-business lacks imagination.

A bunch of high school kids could do better in an afternoon, and it wouldn't cost millions of dollars.

Just think of the costly naming flops of recent years, each the result of enormous investments of money and time: Unisys, Agilent, Ted, Navistar, Factiva, Scient, Teligent, the list goes on forever.

Scan this book for 20 minutes at the bookstore, and then go out to eat. Much better use of your money and time.

Let me leave you with this, for what it's worth: the author started up his own naming company, just to have a way in to the inner sanctums of corporations: he named it Quiddity.

Enough said.