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How did The Gadwall Group get its name?This question came up from a long time and loyal reader. Since my name is not Gadwall, I frequently do get this question about the origin of the name of the company. So, as a refreshing break from the normal technology tirades that I spew forth, here's the story about the naming of The Gadwall Group. When we were trying to come up with a name for the business (this was a couple of years ago), we didn't want to name it "Jim Frazier and Associates" or some boring variation. Everybody does that. It would make us sound like an accounting or law firm, or worse yet...a consulting company. Since Kate and I are serious birdwatchers, we wanted to name the company after a bird. If we were racing fans, we might have named it "Speedway Consulting" or the "Daytona Dudes." If we were bowlers, we might have named ourselves "The Gutter-ball Group." You haven't seen us bowl. Since we're birders, we had to name it appropriately. However, we wanted to use an obscure bird name. We could have named it "Eagle Enterprises", "Falcon Associates" or "Cardinal Corporation," but we wanted the name of the company to be something of an inside joke with other birders. Civilians might think there really is a guy named Garth Gadwall. But people with binocular strap marks permanently creasing their necks would get the connection. We started by going through the list of birds seen in North America, and found a few we liked that you probably wouldn't recognize. The one that bubbled to the surface was "Merganser." However, when I checked to see if that domain name was available, I found that some consulting firm on the east coast had already grabbed it. Mergansers are ducks and since we were in the duck section of the book, we looked around and thought that "Gadwall" sounded pretty good. It could be someone's last name, it had a nice ring to it, and we could get some alliteration going with "Gadwall Group" and "Garth Gadwall." But most importantly, the domain name was available! As it happens, the Gadwall is a beautiful and subtlety plumaged duck. It's found in migration in the Chicago area, and few people know it's a bird except birders and hunters. As a matter of fact, I was at a trade show a couple of months ago and a guy came up and said, "How many people know that Gadwall is the name of a duck?" I said that very few had spotted the connection, even though I had the duck silhouette (which you can see as buttons on the first page of our Web site) on every sign. He then said that he was a hunter, and that the Gadwall is one of the best tasting ducks. So we've got that going for us too. No, I'm not going to serve up pan-fried Gadwall at the next Chamber of Commerce show. But maybe Gadwall nuggets? Hmmm. A new product?
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