How do pharmaceutical companies come up with drug names?

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Max Capozzi from Massachusetts asks:

How do they come up with the brand names for prescription drugs? The brand name drug Lyrica sounds nothing like the actual chemical compound pregabalin. How much do they try to craft the name so it includes sounds that subconsciously evoke a certain idea or emotion? Is there one guy that drug companies call that does this for a living? Do they just create a bunch of new names randomly and then use focus groups to pick a good one?

What’s in a drug brand name? Consultations with healthcare providers and attorneys, approval from regulatory agencies and potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars.

People think coming up with a pharmaceutical brand name is a creative exercise, like if you were going to name Oreo cookies, but it’s a “multidisciplinary process,” said Lea Katsanis, a marketing professor at Concordia University.

“There are naming agencies that actually specialize in doing this. They consult linguists because names can mean different things in different languages. Trademark attorneys to make sure that you've actually got the right trademark,” Katsanis said. “Your regulatory specialists to make sure that they don't violate any of the [Food and Drug Administration], Health Canada, [European Medicines Agency] rules. Patient safety experts to make sure that the names won't be confused with something else.”

All of that work adds up.

“While exact figures are rarely disclosed, pharmaceutical naming projects can cost from tens of thousands to several hundred thousand dollars when agency fees, trademark work, linguistic screening, market research and safety assessments are included,” Katsanis said.

There are three distinct naming stages: In the first stage, pharmaceutical companies internally assign codes to the drugs, like “MK3475” or “N9536,” said Shannon Carlson, president and founder of the marketing agency Curator24.

“As the drug progresses through development, the company will apply for a generic name through organizations such as United States Adopted Names Council or the World Health Organization, and the generic name typically follows really strict scientific rules,” Carlson said.

These names end with terms like mab, nib, statin, or tide that indicate the drug type, Carlson said.

Mabs, for example, are monoclonal antibodies that can help your body combat diseases, while statins can help lower cholesterol and drugs with the -tide suffix are GLP-1 agonists, which can help control blood sugar levels and help with weight loss.

Then we move into the stage where drugs get the names you actually see on the market. Semaglutide, for example, is marketed under Ozempic, Rybelsus and Wegovy; and atorvastatin is marketed as Lipitor.

An agency like Curator24 will generate hundreds to thousands of names in a process that can take between four to 12 months, Carlson said.

“We come up with hundreds of possibilities using different linguistic roots or invented words or Latin or Greek origin words that have certain meanings,” Carlson said.

Curator24 has to take into account many different factors, like patient safety, how unique the name is, how difficult the name is to pronounce, how easy it is to remember the name, what the name means in different languages, and what emotions it wants to evoke from patients, Carlson said.

Take a name like Keytruda, which can evoke unlocking or unleashing something new, Carlson said.

Katsanis said that names are supposed to suggest a feeling, rather than make specific product claims.

Depending on how big the drug is, more than a dozen people can be involved in the naming process.

“If you're gonna name a massive drug in market, you've got a good-sized team of anywhere from 10 to 15 people involved, because you think you have to think about the scientific piece, the legal piece, the trademarking piece, the regulatory piece and the creative piece,” Carlson said.

Healthcare professionals and patients might also weigh in. “Ideally, you would have companies test final names with physicians, nurses, pharmacists, patients and caregivers,” Carlson said.

Companies and agencies want to avoid names that seem harmful, scary or negative, Carlson said.

Pharmaceutical companies also need to be especially careful to not mislead consumers.

Rogaine, a medication that helps men and women regrow their hair, was supposed to be called Regaine in the U.S. market. but the FDA rejected it, said Natalie Mizik, a marketing professor at the University of Washington.

“Drug names are prohibited from making specific medical claims or guaranteeing results and ‘Regaine’ implied that consumers would regain their hair and was deemed misleading,” Mizik said.

If a drug is going global, you have to ensure that the name doesn’t mean something negative in another language, Carlson said.

The name also can’t be confused with other names on the market.

“It has to be sufficiently unique that no one will mistake it for anything else,” Katsanis said. “That is really one of the reasons that it is so challenging, because so many names have already been used.”

Katsanis pointed to the antidepressant drug Brintellix, which was changed to Trintellix so that it wouldn’t be confused with the blood thinner Brilinta. The FDA said there were at least a dozen cases where the wrong drug was prescribed or dispensed.

“I can't really emphasize enough afety is the primary concern, and it's really not marketing,” Katsanis said. “I say this as a marketer.”

As part of the naming process, agencies have also started to incorporate artificial intelligence — to an extent. AI can be used to help agencies come up with lists of names.

“It really generates the possibilities. It doesn't pick the one that fits the brand strategy. It doesn't pick the one that's legally protectable. It doesn't necessarily pick the right one to work globally. It doesn't pick the one that has to pass regulation,” Katsanis said.

After pharmaceutical companies select a name, the FDA has to approve it.

“But by that point, the proposed name has usually undergone extensive testing and review. The FDA’s role is particularly important because it evaluates whether a name could be misleading or confused with another medication,” Katsanis said.

The process is more complicated than people might think, with aspects that don’t come up when it comes to the naming process in other industries, Katsanis said.

“Pharma is a really different industry from just about any other industry,” Katsanis said. “It always has to balance what it does against patient safety.”