Have you been asked if you want to order a jumbo-sized meal at a fast food restaurant lately? Maybe you have gone to a stadium and watched replays on their jumbotron. You might have eaten jumbo shrimp or flown on a jumbo jet. We recognize the word "jumbo” to mean that something is very large. The way the word entered the English language has more to do with marketing, and specifically with branding, than you might know.

On May 24, 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge, linking Manhattan Island with Brooklyn, NY, opened for traffic. It took fourteen years to build the bridge; the largest suspension bridge in the world at that time. The entire structure was held in place by two massive cables that were held up by two towers. The problem was that suspension bridges had a bad reputation in the late 19^th century. They were known to be highly unstable in strong winds and were known to collapse under heavy loads. There was a concern that the newly constructed bridge would give way and fall into the East River under such conditions, and people were wary of using it. That is when P.T. Barnum, the circus promoter, came up with a grand idea. He said he would march a parade of elephants across the bridge to prove the integrity of its construction, and that he would ride on the back of the largest elephant: his prized African elephant named "Jumbo.” If the bridge could hold up under the weight of his 21 circus elephants, it certainly would hold up the New Yorkers making the crossing.

Of course Barnum was really up to something else with his announcement. He had purchased Jumbo from the London zoo for $10,000. The large African elephant was the centerpiece of his traveling circus. Jumbo had been named not for his size, but for the Swahili word for hello, "jambo,” since he was born in Africa. Barnum instead used the word to reflect the sheer size of the animal, which stood over 13 feet at the shoulder. When the circus came to town, Jumbo was paraded through the streets in a massive crate pulled by a team of horses. The sign on the side of the crate announced "Monster Elephant JUMBO.” All that could be seen of the animal was his trunk, which he waved and snorted out of the top of the crate. People were awed by the magnitude of what was inside that crate. Barnum used people’s curiosity to sell tickets to his circus and he created a marketing stir by making a word mean something was very large: Jumbo. When the world’s largest suspension bridge was ready to open, Barnum used the publicity the big bridge was getting to shine the spotlight on his own brand: Jumbo elephant, jumbo bridge.

In your marketing efforts, you may have branded your products, services or your processes used to conduct business. Here are a couple of ideas to remember when you are doing this. First, do not get too complicated with the naming of the brand. It should be very simple to pronounce and to remember. If you are creating a name with over three syllables, you might be getting too complicated. Think of the successful brands that are around you. More than likely, you will find that they follow this syllable count rule. For instance, you will recognize these brands that use the three syllable or less rule: Amazon, Xerox, Apple, Hershey’s, Google, Tupperware and Target. In fact, we tend to shorten the names of brands that are longer than three syllables. For instance, we refer to General Motors as GM, Coca-Cola as Coke, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing as 3M. You also need to limit the number of words used conveying your brand to two words. Names such as Minute Maid, Wells Fargo and Taco Bell all fit this scheme. They are memorable. Again, if you get too many words, the public will tend to shorten the name. Kentucky Fried Chicken was commonly called KFC, Sears and Roebuck was shortened to be merely Sears. These companies have changed their original brand to embrace the shortened name, arrived at by public usage and acceptance.

 Many brands are simply words that are made up. Jumbo was not listed in the dictionary before Barnum made it mean anything that was large in the English lexicon. The world of marketing is full of words that have become brands that are totally made up. Many combine two concepts into a portmanteau – or morphed word – out of two or more words, such as Pennzoil (South Penn Oil and Zapata Petroleum), Walmart (Walton’s mart), or Verizon (Veritas – the Latin word for "truth” and horizon). Some are shortened to their initials, such as AT&T (American Telephone and Telegraph), UPS (United Parcel Service), and IBM (International Business Machines).

The key to making your brand become a household name is in the purity of its meaning. The real success of branding a word comes when it is commonly exchanged for other words that describe its product or service. If I say to you "will you FedEx that to me?” what I mean is: will you courier that package overnight? If I say "could you hand me a Kleenex?” what I mean is: will you get a facial tissue for me? Much like if I ask you to get a box of jumbo paper clips, we understand that branded words can become part of the language of our market and those words can have great value.

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The elephants that tested the Brooklyn Bridge, December 22, 2011, Ephemeral New York, http://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/tag/p-t-barnum-elephants

Jumbo, The Great Elephant Displayed by Barnum, About.com