They are particularly happy that they changed their name 15 months ago. It used to be Andersen Consulting, you know, and as the sordid Enron Inc. tale wends its tortuous way through congressional hearings and courts, the grand old Andersen name has been so mud-spattered that the partners Accenture left behind are scrambling to find new walls to hold their CAs and MBAs behind doors with new names.

Little matter that Accenture split from a company called Andersen Worldwide, not the same as Arthur Andersen LLP, which signed the audit opinions on Enron's financial statements and has been charged in an indictment filed by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Andersen is already a ghost, for which Henry Traill, the biographer of Sir John Franklin, might have composed his lines, "My name is used-to-was; I am also called played-out and done-to-death, and it-will-wash-no-more.”

On the Accenture Web site there is no mention of antecedents, the place they came from. This wasn't changed in the wake of the World Trade Center tragedy. It has been that way from Accenture's debut for the simple reason that when a company picks a new name it puts all its energy into making that name come alive. All its energy and a lot of money. Accenture estimates it has spent $170 million to establish identity and global acceptance for its new name. With that much on the line, it doesn't want to look back.

Accenture may be a poster for name change but there's no shortage of me-tooers.

"Never in the history of business has there been such a rush for new corporate identities as we have seen in the latest rounds of mergers and acquisitions, IPOs and dot-com startups,” says Naseem Javed, who runs ABC Namebank out of Toronto and New York.

Javed has helped Telus, Celestica, Intrigna, Intria CIBC, Pollara and Vincor find new identities. And it's no cinch as his all-in fee of between $20,000 and $200,000 attests. It's all-in because for the money he guarantees to deliver an original, trademarkable, domain registrable, globally acceptable and appropriate corporate name. It's no cinch because, as Accenture found out, "98 per cent of the words in a typical English dictionary have already been registered as dot-com domains” and in today's world a corporate name without domain rights is a non-starter. An average of more than 80,000 domain names are registered every day.

It is the fool corporation that ventures into this morass without good reason. Nevertheless 2,000 public companies changed their names in the first half of 2001, half of them in the U.S. Sometimes there's no alternative. When Sir Terry Matthews decided last year to reclaim the first of the trophies he had pawned when times were rough, he bought back only half of Mitel, leaving the other half to find a new name.

The brandstorming that ensued got somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 suggestions from consultants and employees. "It was a challenging exercise,” says Jacques Guerette, VP marketing. "It has become increasingly difficult because a lot of companies have banked names or are squatting on domain URLs. The trend is to construct a name rather than look for an existing word that would be suitable. The idea is to combine words or syllables that connote the essential qualities of the company. In our case we were left with the semiconductor business and our focus was on connectivity.”

To get from connectivity to link might seem like a walk in the park but in fact it took six months and in the end required a call to the consummate name dripper, Javed. He put "link” together with a syllable he vows is derived from Caesar, which in turn speaks of leadership, power. The company bought it. Zarlink hopes that people who matter will understand that it means "leader in connectivity.”

This is daunting ambition in a world of raging competition for name recognition. It was not until I visited Accenture's Web site in preparing this column that I learned its name means "putting an accent on the future, just as the firm focuses on helping its clients create their future.” Prior to this research, I could have guessed it speaks of "accelerated ventures” or "access to dentures.” That $170 million was wasted on me.

Tony Patterson is a regular columnist for the Ottawa Business Journal. Send comments to tpatterson@ottawabusinessjournal.com.