Why are the model names of TVs and other home tech so cryptic?
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A lot of people have explained what *model numbers* mean, but you asked about names. Product names are mostly a marketing thing, and one of the reasons marketers make up words to name products is that they’re trying to avoid any preconceptions you might have that associate with a word. For instance, if Sony comes out with a new TV and they call it the “Sony Tesla 4k”, then there’s a whole host of positive and negative associations you have with that word – maybe you think of electrical pioneer Nikolai Tesla, or maybe you think of Elon Musk instead and now Sony’s in the position of either selling you a TV (because you like Musk) or not selling you a TV (because you hate Musk) based on nothing that has anything to do with the TV itself, it just has to do with the last thing you heard on the news about Elon Musk. (Maybe you think this is ridiculous and that you’re too smart to act like that, but sales of Corona beer were down 40% in 2020 because of negative associations coming from the media salience of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus so it’s actually a real effect.)
They don’t want that, so they try to make up new words that have less specific connotations and just sound nice and aren’t likely to wind up associated with negative events beyond the company’s control. Words like “Bravia”, which maybe has connotations of bravery and courage (good things), or makes you think of people saying “bravo!” in praise at how good the TV is. Or they can do commercials where they just tell you what their made-up word means and how you should think and feel about it; Volkswagen did a whole bunch of these in the 90’s to make us think that “farfenhugen” was a real word.
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