Rx Drug Brand Names: Where Do They Come Up With This Stuff?

Anyone who watches even a little bit of TV on a regular basis is familiar with pharmaceutical advertising. Drug companies are among the most prolific advertisers in terms of the amount of money they spend. What amuses me most about the commercials I see are the brand names drug companies come up with.

One of my favorite branded drug names is Flonase. Marketed as an allergy relief spray, Flonase can also be had in caplet form. But that is less important from a marketing standpoint than the name itself. The company behind Flonase did not choose it lightly. In all likelihood, it took years to get from those first few naming suggestions to the one the company finally settled on.

If you are like me, you wonder where drug companies come up with this stuff. Who decided to name a sleep aid ‘Lunesta’ or a drug designed to help you regrow your hair ‘Rogaine’? coming up with drug names is actually more complicated than it sounds.

Generic and Brand Names

It turns out that every new prescription drug approved by the FDA has two names: a generic name and a brand name. Pharmaceutical companies follow a pretty strict process for coming up with the generic name. They start with a suffix that describes how the drug works. Then they add one or two syllables that provide additional clues about the drug’s purpose.

The process is actually quite fascinating. You can read about it in this two-part series published by Pfizer. At any rate, Pfizer employees will spend several years working on generic names before submitting their final choice for government approval.

As for brand names, they do not have to be tied to anything specific about the drug in question. Brand names are for marketing purposes. So more often than not, pharmaceutical companies strive for a name that is easy to remember, rolls off the tongue nicely, and gives just a hint of a new drug’s purpose. They do have to be careful about names that might suggest unreasonable expectations of efficacy.

Brand names need to be approved by federal regulators before they can be officially adopted in the U.S. Moreover, names that are approved for drugs sold overseas often don’t pass muster in this country. Take Rogaine. That is the name of the drug here. But it’s known internatio nally as Regaine.

It’s Not Just Pharmaceuticals

Pharmaceutical companies come up with some pretty interesting names for their drugs. But they are not the only ones. Medical cannabis producers are pretty much in the same boat, though it’s highly unlikely a cannabis grower spends years working on a brand name. Still, the names they do come up with are primarily for marketing purposes.

The Cookies brand is among the most well-known in cannabis. Beehive Farmacy locations in Brigham City and Salt Lake City, UT carry it. BeehiveFarmacy.Com officials say the brand name is brilliant for the simple fact that it evokes positive feelings in people who hear it. After all, who doesn’t love a good cookie?

The big difference between pharmaceuticals and medical cannabis is the generic name. Medical cannabis products do not need generic names because they primarily focus on a single medicine: THC. But they do need brand names in order to help consumers remember them.

There is a lot more to choosing prescription drug names than this post described. It takes a lot of time and effort to come up with the names we all see on TV. And like anything else in marketing, you sometimes strike out while other times hitting a home run.