In the plant and animal kingdoms, hybrid names identify a unique species or genus. In the corporate world, they also communicate uniqueness ? but sometimes, they hurt more than help.

Look around, and you’ll see the hybrids everywhere – two words, both capitalized, smashed together into a single moniker, without so much as a pixel of space between the elements. WorldCom. NationsBank. ConAgra. And our personal favorite, PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

Hybrid names have been around for a while, but they proliferated during the dot-com era. Some came from mergers and acquisitions carried out with a ?no name left behind? attitude. Others were cooked up in an effort to get a good URL. The founders of such companies got their Web addresses alright. But quite often, their company names did nothing to communicate a brand, and some names just didn?t make sense.

A recent search for a printer cartridge illustrates a less obvious pitfall of a hybrid name.

When the powdered ink ran out one recent Saturday morning, we called around to office supply stores to see who had our cartridge in stock and how much it cost. Our search began with the phone book. First, we found Staples. Then Office Depot.

But when we looked for OfficeMax, we came up empty. Office Manager, Office Mate, Office Movers – where was Office Max?

Listed right after Office Warehouse Brokerage, that?s where.

Following the alphabetical listing of all companies beginning with “Office” come all companies beginning with OfficeMax (no space). Fortunately, we happened to glance over to another column and spotted the name.

As it turns out, all three stores had our printer cartridge, but OfficeMax had the best price and got our business. Yet its hybrid name almost kept us from finding the store at all. We have to wonder: How many sales has OfficeMax lost by eliminating one simple space in its name? And were those lost sales worth the benefits of sewing together two words into one hybrid?