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August 31, 2026
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When I was in IB, we analysts would always try naming projects after Greek or Roman gods, planets, rarely-used words, etc., but senior bankers and clients would always override us and come up with what almost seemed like purposely terrible names.
We have a trophy that looks like the poop emoji on a column, and it rotates to the desk of whoever came up with the most recent terrible project name.
My favorite ones have been names that have a connection to the company, but it's a brainteaser. I had one where the main product sold by the company shared a name with a popular 90's movie, so the project name was the name of one of the lead characters in that movie.
I think those are more fun than the unnecessary macho posturing of "PROJECT COBRA" or "PROJECT VESUVIUS" or the like. I assume that the more bombastic the code name, the smaller the lead banker's penis.
" I assume that the more bombastic the code name, the smaller the lead banker's penis." haha that's a great logic
We were doing a deal for a company in Turkey and called the deal Project Thanksgiving
I was tasked with finding names at my last internship and I ended up using declassified government project names. So many of them were ridiculous, which went over well.
Project Arnold for a gym chain
Today my MD charged me to set-up the data room for a deal, and we still had no name for the project. He looked creepily at me, deep in the eyes for 30 seconds, before saying 'lets name it project Azur' (my eyes are blue). I still feel awkward about what must have been through his head when looking at me.
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