Epic, epik, epyc, epyk: When it comes down to branding, the brand’s potential to confusion or dilution is important.
Take for example the word “epic” that comes from the Greek epos (Έπος) – a story that is spoken or sung. The matching word for “epic” is epikos (Επικός.) It comes in 3 genders and as an adjective it has 3 singular and 3 plural forms. There’s a lot to take in here!
So epic is the basic, dictionary word and it’s used in English to describe something of strength, fame, power, or notoriety. All good?
Brands aren’t always dictionary words, unlike Apple, for example. They tend to acquire a spelling set of their own, and substituting letters to make the brand more distinguishable is a common practice.
Sticking to the paradigm in hand, by changing the last letter “c” to its phonetic brother, “k” we get the brand Epik. Congratulations, you’ve now taken Epic.com – a software company with a domain registered in 1990 – to Epik.com. The latter is a domain-centric company that is known for its controversial allegiance to certain groups, and a recent security breach.
Instead of changing the trailing “c” what if we took another phonetic departure, changing the letter “i” into a “y” – a vowel in this case? It’s pronounced exactly the same, and it creates the brand Epyc. Lo and behold, a seemingly defunct domain at Epyc.com, that was registered in 1999.
EPYC, in all capitals, is also a business grade microprocessor (CPU) manufactured by AMD. The brand is AMD EPYC and it’s gaining traction as the CPU of choice for cloud and bare metal servers.
Lastly, there’s a double change, combining both changes presented above and resulting in Epyk. The matching domain, Epyk.com, was registered in 2002 and it’s up for sale at DAN for $150,000 dollars. Now that’s epic.
No, Epik won’t be rebranding to Epyk any time soon.
