Why Is It Called Lululemon? The Name Built to Be Hard to Say

The origin: a windfall, an inference, and three Ls

The name lululemon was engineered, and its engineer explained exactly how. Here is the run of events, with each anecdote attributed to whoever told it.

1. 1998: a yoga-wear company in VancouverChip Wilson, who had spent two decades in surf, skate and snowboard apparel with his company Westbeach, takes a yoga class, sees a market, and founds a technical yoga-wear company in Vancouver. The first standalone store opens in the Kitsilano neighbourhood in November 2000.
2. The Homeless windfall, in Wilson’s tellingWilson has told the story often: Japanese buyers once paid what he calls a ridiculous price for Homeless, a discontinued skate brand of his. The purchase puzzled him until he settled on an explanation, and the explanation became a strategy.
3. The inference: it was the letter LHis conclusion, by his own account: the buyers wanted the brand because it read as authentically North American, and it read that way because of the L, a sound that does not exist in Japanese phonology. A Japanese-built brand could imitate many things about a North American name, but not that letter.
4. The plan, in his own wordsIn a 2005 interview with National Post Business Magazine, Wilson said: “So I thought, next time I have a company, I’ll make a name with three Ls and see if I can get three times the money.” The name that resulted has exactly three.
5. The word itself means nothingThe company has always said the name has no meaning: “lulu” plus “lemon” is alliterative babble, not a reference to yoga, Vancouver, or apparel. That put it in the same structural family as Kodak, a meaningless coinage built to specification, with a very different specification.
6. The quote that followed the name aroundThe same interview contained the sentence that resurfaced for years afterwards: “It’s funny to watch them try and say it.” When the remarks recirculated widely in 2013, they were broadly criticised as mocking the very customers the name courted, and fact-checkers later confirmed the interview was genuine.
7. The name stays; the founder goesWilson later stepped back and eventually left the company’s board, and the company distanced itself from a series of his public remarks. The name was by then far too established to change: whatever its origin, it now names one of the most recognisable apparel brands in the world.

Note what is documented and what is inference. The quotes are on the record. Whether the L-strategy actually moved a single garment is Wilson’s theory about his own windfall, and no sales figure anywhere can prove a letter did it.

The mechanism: engineered foreignness, pointed outward

Every naming story in this series turns on one decision, and lululemon’s is the inverse of the most admired one. In 1958, a Japanese company chose a name engineered so that every market on earth could say it, a story told in why is it called Sony. Forty years later, a Canadian founder chose a name engineered so that one market in particular could not. Same insight, that phonology shapes how a brand is received, aimed in opposite directions: Sony removed friction for the listener, lululemon manufactured it as a mark of authenticity.

The nearest relative in the series is Häagen-Dazs, another invented word wearing a foreign costume. But Häagen-Dazs pointed its fake Danishness at its own home market, borrowing associations of craft and tradition; nobody in Denmark was the target. Lululemon points the trick outward, at the market whose phonology it exploits, which is what made the founder’s stated reasoning land so badly when it recirculated. The fake-foreign play is worked through in why is it called Häagen-Dazs.

What should a founder take from it? That the mechanism was never necessary. The name’s equity came from being a distinctive, alliterative, reduplicated coinage, properties it would have had with any consonant. The gimmick added friction, and years later, a scandal. The checks below price the name as a name, which is the only honest way to score it.

1. Phonetics: what a ten-letter coinage costs the mouth

Say it: loo-loo-LEM-un. Four syllables, a stress most first-time readers place by trial, and a spelling that needs a second look: one word or two, and how many Ls, where. The alliteration is genuinely pleasant once learned, and learning it is the tax.

• The reduplication helps“Lulu” is the kind of doubled syllable ears enjoy and remember; the pattern shows up in nursery words for a reason. It is the name’s best phonetic asset, and it is doing heavy lifting.
• The spelling forksHeard once, the name can land as “lulu lemon”, “lululemmon” or “lulu lemin”. Every fork is a customer typing a string you do not own. Short coinages dodge this; ten-letter ones pay it in full.
• The Ls are load-bearingThree /l/ onsets in four syllables is a lot of one sound, and it is precisely the sound large language communities handle differently. A tongue-twister quality in English becomes real difficulty elsewhere, and that was the design.

The honest reading: Fair. The word is musical, distinctive, and long, and length plus a spelling fork is exactly what this check exists to price. How length alone moves a name’s scores is worked through in how long should a brand name be.

2. Memorability: a coinage with luggage in one pocket

As a pure string, lululemon is the easy case for distinctiveness: nobody else would invent it, nothing else sounds like it, and the doubled opening makes it stick. Coined names start life belonging entirely to their brand, which is the asset that carried this one through every controversy its founder handed it.

Two dings keep it out of the top band. First, half the coinage is a real word, and the real word is lemon: in English, the standing metaphor for a defective product. The brand outspent that echo long ago, but a new name gets no such subsidy, and the check has to price the string as if nobody had heard of it. Second, ten letters is a lot of name to hold before familiarity does the holding for you; the traits that make short names sticky are unpacked in what makes a brand name memorable.

The lowercase styling, “lululemon athletica” on every storefront, is a branding choice rather than a property of the word, so the check ignores it. Worth noting all the same: distinctive casing is one more thing customers reproduce inconsistently.

3. Cross-language: the one documented flag in this series

Every other name in this series clears its screen with the honest phrase no flags in the languages checked. This one does not, and cannot, because the friction is documented and was the stated intent. Japanese phonology has no /l/; the sound maps to /r/, and the name renders roughly as rururemon. By the founder’s own telling, that difficulty was a feature: proof of foreignness, priced into the brand.

The check’s job is to price it back. A name hard to say in Japanese is hard in every language that treats /l/ the same way, and the difficulty lands on real people: staff answering phones, customers recommending the product aloud, markets the founder never aimed the trick at. Friction cannot be fenced to one audience. It ships with the name, everywhere, forever.

• A flag is informationFinding a flag does not veto a name; it prices a cost the founder should accept knowingly. What a screen must never do is present a designed difficulty as an accident, or an accident as safety.
• Difficulty is not distinctivenessA name can be unmistakable and effortless at once; most of the strongest names in this series are both. If a candidate is memorable mainly because people struggle with it, the memory forming is of the struggle.
• Screen the markets you respectThe durable posture is to treat every market’s phonology as a constraint to honour, not a lever to pull. Check the languages you sell into, and read the result as a courtesy owed to the people who will say your name most.

The full method is in the cross-language safety checklist.

The Namoly Report simulation: “lululemon”

Here is how “lululemon” performs against the four weighted checks, scored on the name rather than the company it became. Illustrative worked example: the overall is the weighted mean of the sub-scores, using the weights every real report uses (domain 0.30, memorability 0.25, phonetics 0.25, cross-language safety 0.20).

• Global Namoly Score62 / 100Good
• ReadabilityMediumFour syllables, spelling needs a check
• Linguistic safetyLowA documented flag, by design

1. Domain availabilityweight 0.30A ten-letter coinage nobody else would invent is the easy case: in 1998 the string was a registration, not an acquisition, and every extension that matters resolves to the brand today. Held under Strong only by length and the misspellings that leak type-in traffic to variant strings.78Good
2. Memorability & distinctivenessweight 0.25The doubled “lulu” is a genuine mnemonic: reduplication sticks. As a coinage it belongs entirely to the brand. The dings are real too: “lemon” arrives carrying its English sense of a defective product, and ten letters is a lot of name to hold before it becomes familiar.68Good
3. Phonetics & readabilityweight 0.25Four syllables, a stress most readers have to guess once, and a spelling fork: one word or two, and how many Ls where. The alliteration helps the ear and does nothing for the keyboard. This is the price of a long coinage, and this name pays all of it.52Fair
4. Cross-language safetyweight 0.20The rare case with a documented flag. /l/ does not exist in Japanese phonology, so the name renders roughly as “rururemon”, and by the founder’s own telling that difficulty was deliberate. A name built to be hard for one market stays hard in every market that shares the constraint.44Fair
5. Overall Namoly Scoreweighted meanA genuinely distinctive coinage pulling against the costs its own designer built in: length, a spelling fork, and the series’ only documented cross-language flag. Good, on the strength of ownability, and the gap to Strong is exactly the size of the gimmick. Fame does not move a number here; the brand’s success is the company’s achievement, not the word’s.62Good

• Strong80–100Short, distinctive, sticks after one exposure.
• Good60–79Solid and workable; minor trade-offs.
• Fair40–59Usable but forgettable or hard to spell.
• Weak0–39Reconsider; friction outweighs the upside.

Illustrative analysis for education. Every number in a real report ships with a justification, a confidence signal, and a tip. Not checked here: trademark and social-handle availability.

What founders can take from a name built backwards

Most case studies in this series teach by example. This one teaches mostly by counterexample, which is just as useful and rather cheaper than learning it first-hand.

• The coinage did the work, not the gimmickStrip the strategy away and what remains is a distinctive, alliterative, reduplicated coinage, and that is what built the brand equity. A string this ownable would have been ownable with one L. The lesson is that distinctiveness comes from invention, not from difficulty.
• Difficulty charges every marketA name hard to say in Japanese is hard in every language that maps /l/ to something else, and the spelling fork taxes English speakers too. You cannot aim friction at one audience. It ships worldwide with the name, invoiced on every spoken mention.
• The story becomes part of the nameCampaigns end; interviews are forever. A naming rationale that reads as contempt for an audience resurfaced eight years later and attached itself permanently to the brand. Assume every reason you give for a name will one day be quoted back to you.
• Check the luggage each syllable carriesIn English, a lemon is a defective product. The brand absorbed that echo with scale, but a new company should at least know it is there. Every real word inside a coinage arrives with its dictionary entry attached.
• Run the check as a courtesy, not a trapA cross-language screen exists to catch what a name does to people who did not choose it. Using phonology as a lure inverts that courtesy. The durable version of this play is Sony’s: engineer the name so every market can say it, then let the product be the exotic part.

The wider process, from brief to locked-down name, is in how to name a startup, and the evidence on how sounds carry meaning, with its limits stated, is in why brand names sound the way they do.

The counterfactual: the same brand with a kinder name

Imagine the identical company, the identical product, and a coinage built with the same tools pointed the other way: invented, alliterative, doubled at the front, and effortless in every market it planned to enter. Nothing about the brand’s equity depended on the difficulty. The community, the product quality and the retail experience did the building; the name’s job was only to be ownable and repeatable, and it would have done that job better without the deliberate snag.

That is the quiet verdict of this whole series. The names that age best, across every mechanism catalogued so far, are the ones that respect the mouths they will live in: engineered sayability, compressed descriptions, plain words carried well. The ones that age worst carry a private joke or a private contempt, and both eventually go public. A name is the one asset every customer handles daily. Build it to be handled.

If a name you already carry is showing this kind of friction, the honest decision framework is in when to rename your startup. Renaming at lululemon’s scale is off the table; at yours, it may still cost an afternoon.

Frequently asked questions

What does lululemon mean?

Officially, nothing. The company has always said the name has no meaning: it is an invented string, “lulu” plus “lemon”, chosen as sound rather than sense. By founder Chip Wilson’s own telling, its defining feature is the three Ls, included because the sound is difficult in Japanese and would make the brand read as authentically North American there.

Who founded lululemon?

Chip Wilson, in Vancouver in 1998, after roughly two decades making surf, skate and snowboard apparel with his earlier company Westbeach. The first standalone lululemon store opened in Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighbourhood in November 2000. Wilson later stepped back from the company and eventually left its board.

Why does lululemon have three Ls?

By Wilson’s own account, deliberately. He concluded that Japanese buyers had paid richly for his earlier Homeless brand because the letter L, absent from Japanese phonology, made it sound authentically North American, and told a 2005 interviewer: “I’ll make a name with three Ls and see if I can get three times the money.” The claim is his telling of his own reasoning, and it drew wide criticism when it recirculated.

How do you pronounce lululemon?

Loo-loo-LEM-un, four syllables with the stress on “lem”. In Japanese, the language the name was aimed at, /l/ maps to /r/, so the word renders roughly as “rururemon”, which is exactly the difficulty the founder said he was designing for. The lowercase styling is a branding choice and does not change the sound.

Is the lululemon name controversial?

The name itself is an invented word; the controversy is the founder’s stated reason for it. His 2005 remarks, including “It’s funny to watch them try and say it” about Japanese speakers, were widely criticised as mocking the market the name targeted, and fact-checkers confirmed the interview was real. The company has long distanced itself from a series of Wilson’s public comments.

How was this score calculated?

The numbers here are illustrative, built from the same four checks Namoly runs on any name: domain availability, memorability, phonetics, and cross-language safety. The overall is the weighted mean of the sub-scores, using the canonical weights (0.30, 0.25, 0.25, 0.20).