Dixon, Koller, Naredo, Bebeto, and Tafarel. What do these names remind you of? That’s right; footballers! Dümmen Orange is currently bestowing its new Gerbera varieties with the names of ex-players who have gone above and beyond in this popular sport. Account manager Eric Boerlage, his colleague Martien Vis, and marketing man Roy van Kester explain why.
Every year, no less than 30 new gerberas push their way up into the sun at Dümmen Orange’s nurseries. And every year, employees struggle to find the right names for these elite flowers. “Before, we could just brainstorm over coffee, and there didn’t really need to be a theme in the names; but now, it’s much more involved,” says Roy van Kester. “And it’s not just because so many names have to be thought up every year, but also because every name must be legally and linguistically unravelled. Some names are protected, others have strange meanings in different languages, and yet others just don’t trip off the tongue like they should.”
Emotionally charged
It used to be an unwritten rule that a Gerbera was given a girl’s name. “That immediately reflects the sweetness of the flower,” says account manager Eric Boerlage. “But at a certain point, we run out of nice girl’s names and we had to come up with something else. Our gerberas have also been named after places, like Acapulco or Oxford. There were also colour associations, like White Grizzly, Iceberg, and Husky. Or food and beverages, like Rioja, TicTac, and Sherbet. Varieties of our Gerrondo collection are often named after constellations and mythology, like Orion, Nova, and Comet. But what we really needed was a deep well of recognisable, emotionally charged names that we could use in any language.”
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