You have probably wondered how a company working with communication chooses a misspelled name… Why is this company named “Brasilian” and not “Brazilian”?
Those of you who have long known the Brasilian founder, Lici Iankoski Tomkiw, know that this domain has been live since the early times of the Internet in Brazil. That must have been around 1996 when the BBS was introduced and right soon ICQ and IRC as well. As an early adopter – at least back then – Lici began to use all of these tools in her English classes. Students of all ages made friends online and soon enough one of them became a frequent participant in classes and even in individual chats with both Lici and her students. That friend was Mike Parsons, from Georgia.
Mike was in love with all possibilities the Internet would bring – very clever! – and purchased not one, but over 50 domain names. A few of them he activated – gatortown.com was one- and others he kept as investment. Out of those he had bought as an investment, he had 3 names related to Brazi: “GreNal.com*, “Beijo.com” and “Brasilian.com”. One day, he passed these 3 on to Lici thinking since she was Brazilian, she would make better use of them. Had we had a choice in picking domain names, none of those would have been chosen.. But, in the end we began to look at Brasilian with some interest…
There was much hesitation about using the misspelled word as a brand name. However, after much conversation, thought and consideration, we decided to go with Brasilian as we aimed at offering international companies the best Brazilian language in meaningful translations. Our first logo was very simple and did not bring any attention to the spelling.
—- 1998 to 2005 —-
As time went by and we began to have larger corporate clients such as Dell Computers, Deloitte Consulting and Telefonica, we understood it was time for a website and logo update. That was when, for the first and only time, we highlighted the “S’ in the spelling, making sure people realized we had a strong and creative personality and most of all, that the letter “S” was on purpose.
—- 2005 to 2012 —-
With the new website and logo we also brought in new services for companies. We no longer supplied companies only with translations, we were training their employees on how to communicate in English.
—- 2005 to 2011—-
It was around 2011 that we decided to make our webpage look more Brazilian and used the country’s flag colors on our logo and website. It started looking more modern and professional. Besides, highlighting the “S” in the spelling was no longer necessary..
—- 2011 to 2013 —-
However, as our founder is always looking for more knowledge and ways to offer clients quality and reliability, once again a small change happened. This time, however, it was a new service that came up on a totally different website. Licidiniz.com (no longer active) offered Image Consulting and training to Brazilian people who wanted to help others have a sharper look. As the Image Consulting business began to take shape it became clearer that the third pillar of Image Consulting was the one that “Brasilian” was going to devote to; Communication. Therefore, integrating Image Consulting techniques in the language communication services happened naturally.
Brasilian is a company that values communication and translates languages, words, styles in a much broader sense. At this point, only the tagline was altered to reflect the core business of our company.
*curiosity - GreNal is a very disputed soccer match in the Brazilian southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul. “Gre” stands for "Grêmio" and “Nal is the last syllable of "Internacional". These are the two biggest soccer teams in the state.