THE JOURNAL
When Jaeger-LeCoultre launched what would become one of its most enduring watches in 1965, it was known merely by the uninspiring code E859. Back then, the brand had a habit of naming its models based on the three digits of the calibre number. Arguably that conveyed little to potential customers, which is why a US sales agent for the brand took it upon himself to give the alarm diving watch a proper name.
What, he must have wondered, would sound potent and powerful? How about taking inspiration from a missile that had been introduced earlier that decade, and which would come to be totemic of the Cold War? Today, of course, we know this model as the Polaris.
Watch history is replete with watches given evocative and often fantastic names, among the many no longer extant brands of the 1960s. There was the likes of Favre’s Moon Raider, for example, or Wittnauer’s Futurama. They normalised a trend to use names as a means of imbuing a watch with a certain character: adventurousness perhaps, exoticism, masculinity or, in these instances, a taste of tomorrow’s world. In some cases, the watch name has come to supersede the brand itself.
They give a hint of the watch’s aesthetic, too. Cartier’s Tank, for example, was so named not just to evoke the cutting-edge military technology of the day, but echoed it in its case shape, too. Much as Oris’ Big Crown describes, well, the big crown that allowed pilots (in unpressurised, freezing aircraft) to wind their watch with gloves on. Others give a nod to history: Cartier’s Santos was named simply after the pioneering aviator who inspired it. Yet others to functionality: Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Reverso gives an intriguing hint the case’s flippability.
Some get a name through rather more prosaic means. IWC Schaffhausen’s Portugieser was so named in 1939 because it was originally commissioned by two Portuguese businessmen who wanted a wristwatch with pocket-watch precision and was originally only sold in the Portuguese market. A sexier reading of the name would be to say that now it hints more at Portugal’s historic tradition in pioneering global exploration – a watch named for the likes of Ferdinand Magellan and Vasco da Gama.
“Much as a good novel should have a good title, I think the same goes for a watch”
Certainly, while any name helps to organise a brand’s collection or family of watches, the more commonplace approach today has been to aim for a moniker that’s more evocative than descriptive, and so perhaps stickier in the mind. Polo is the so-called sport of kings, so Piaget’s choice of name in 1979 conjures luxury by association.
“Much as a good novel should have a good title, I think the same goes for a watch,” says Carlos Rosillo, the co-founder of Bell & Ross, whose latest watch, the BR 03 Astro, is so named for its dial’s representation of the satellites orbiting the Earth. “The right name can suggest a whole story behind a watch. It can give it an emotional quality. When we’re planning a new model, we give it a nickname and then various proposals are made for names that conjure up a mental image of the watch. We get a short list and then finally one is selected by a committee representing the company’s various departments. But we don’t always get what we want.”
Not least because naming any product isn’t easy these days, and all the more so given the legal and linguistic challenges of selling on a global market. Meaning both that so many names have already been trademarked – Rosillo, a big cigar fan, had once wanted to name a watch Havana, but found that that Cuban cigar industry had that one sewn up – and that so few work across all languages.
“To get a really great name for a watch – one that resonates – is not as easy as it might seem”
Perhaps that’s why there’s a counter tendency for some brands to stick with code numbers over names – and certainly more highfalutin watch collectors take a sometimes haughty pleasure in referring to their favourite pieces by their reference. As Benoît Mintiens, product designer turned founder of Ressence, notes, you see the same distinction in the car industry. As much as there is the Porsche Carrera, the Volkswagen Beetle or the Jensen Interceptor, there’s the Mercedes-Benz W113 or the Audi RS7. Ressence took inspiration from Bugatti in naming its models Type 1, 2, 3 and so on.
Such an approach, Mintiens argues, hints more at hardcore engineering and fit-for-purpose industrial design, rather than fancifulness. Even if watch history shows that fans – in what might be considered the ultimate accolade – often rebel and end up naming a nameless watch themselves.
“The problem is that I think a lot of watch names can come across as a bit hollow, as though they’ve been chosen by a branding agency,” Mintiens says. “Often, they don’t have much meaning to them at all. To get a really great name for a watch – one that resonates, that isn’t just marketing – is not as easy as it might seem.”