The Name Game : Fluorocarbon’s contest to find a new moniker draws 8,000 offerings from around the world.

Take one big company in the middle of a public relations debacle, add a nation filled with sweepstakes-crazed entrants, throw in $1,400 worth of stock as grand prize and what do you get? The Great Fluorocarbon Name Change Contest.

It’s hard to believe that finding a new name for a not-very-sexy company would excite literally thousands of folks around the world, but that’s just what happened. Fluorocarbon has been so deluged with suggestions in the last three months that it’s had to hire temporary clerical help to cope with the onslaught.

The contest to give Fluorocarbon a snappy new moniker ended Thursday. The company has received some 8,000 potential names from more than 3,000 entrants. Which is no mean feat, considering the task set forth by Peter Churm, chairman of the Laguna Niguel firm.

What Churm wants is a name that not only broadcasts the firm’s mission--manufacturing industrial components out of Teflon, plastic and rubber--but one that is “snappy and short and eye catching” to boot.

Some Are Nasty

Impossible? Think again.

Responses have come from as near as San Clemente and as far as Stuttgart, West Germany. They’ve come in slick logo form, all dressed up by serious graphic artists. They’ve come on T-shirts and visors and cocktail napkins and Post-It Notes. They’ve come via fax machine. Two have come from jail.

They’ve been serious (Fluoronetics), silly (Flower Garden), sycophantic (Churmex and Churmco).

Some have even been nasty: “My suggestion is brilliant in its uniqueness,” writes Ernst W. Mueller of Chagrin Falls, Ohio. “Leave the damned name alone . . . and get back to work on the product!”

On June 6, Churm announced at the firm’s annual shareholders meeting that a name change was in the offing. Fluorocarbon, Churm thought, sounded too much like chlorofluorocarbon --those nasty gases blamed for burning a hole in the Earth’s ozone layer.

Adding injury to insult, stockbrokers began telling Churm that they would no longer pitch Fluorocarbon stock to prospective investors. It took too much time and effort, they said, to explain that fluorocarbons are not destructive gases but harmless solids that go into Teflon and that the company’s a good guy and not a corporate Attila the Hun.

Within a month of Churm’s announcement, the company had received 70 unsolicited suggestions, and the contest was born. Some 8,000 suggestions later, the hunt for a handle is over, and Churm has learned several lessons.

For one thing, contests are serious business. For another, the public pays attention--even to a kind of low-key company like Fluorocarbon. And Jung was right; there is a collective unconscious.

“There have been so many duplications,” Churm said. “There’ve been an awful lot of ‘Fluorotech’ and ‘Fluoroseals.’ Those are pretty good. We’ve had lots of ‘FCBN,’ which is our present stock exchange symbol.”

Then there are the others: The innovative ones, like the man who created a logo out of hand-dyed, multicolored aquarium gravel, topped with a seal (the animal) juggling a seal (the gasket).

Complex Offering

The grudging ones, like the woman whose list of nine names was preceded by the statement: “I didn’t wanna do it, but during my morning drive time, I kept thinking of names for your company. Here’s my best (from somewhere along the Ventura Freeway).”

The sincere ones, like the letter that came from the self-proclaimed “James Group,” a cadre of Santa Barbarans who “usually meet around four to eight every evening at the same restaurant . . . to support one another for what evers necessary.”

On July 11, the James Group, named after ringleader James Leeds Ashmore, decided to throw its support behind Peter Churm. The result was a long list of tentative tags--a catalogue that Ashmore called “a gift of caring.” Each name is followed by the creator’s identity and a critique by the group.

Like so: “S.T.E.W. (Supplying Teflon Every Where)--Dave--NO” and “PLASMORPHICS--Charly--Interesting.”

“I understand the frustrations you and your company are going through,” Ashmore wrote to Churm. “I am currently launching 125 business. Just to explain them will take hours if not days to anyone. Names for my projects are my forte.”

In fact, it was one of James’ names that got the group’s approval. “I choose number fifty-one, ‘T.W.I. (Teflon Works Inc.) for you!” Ashmore wrote.

Must Check Names

But James, Charly, Dave, John, Chrystal and Don will have to wait a few months to find out if T.W.I. is the winner and if the prize of 100 shares of Fluorocarbon stock gets mailed to their Santa Barbara coffee klatch.

First, a committee will choose the top 10 names. Then the company will do a legal search to make sure that the names are not owned by any other firm. The first name to come up clear will be the winner.

And, in case Churm starts getting nervous about that new name, he would do well to heed some advice from one contestant with a philosophical bent.

“Change is never easy, and giving up your name involves a big change,” writes Kathleen R. Tobin of Sierra Madre. “You can put it in perspective when you think about your wife. She gave up her name to become Mrs. Churm. Life went on, didn’t it? I know it will be the same for you.”

NAME GAME

From the sublime to the ridiculous, Peter Churm has received them all as suggestions for Fluorocarbon’s new name. A few follow: Not Chlorofluorocarbon Fluoraluralura Laguna Buna The Churminators Inc. Fluoroduro So-Far So-Good Co. Seals R Us Pro-Ozone Inc. Fiber-Fab Flobon Slick Parts Inc. Techyfluor Agape Fluororganic Inc. Componentials Inc. Compon-e-z Inc. Tefpro Inc. Advanced Components Inc. Tuff-Flon Notox