Ukulele Club Name Poll

I posted a while back to say that I was thinking of trying to start a local ukulele club of some sort. Last night, I talked to some young folks who were about to play acoustic guitar at an open jam held at a brewpub we were at for dinner. I mentioned that I was thinking of starting a uke club, and they all expressed some interest. I got contact info for all of them. I'm still planning to make flyers and a Facebook group soon.

I've been kicking around some names... I live in a town called Montrose. There's a town about 20 miles away called Delta. The Uncompahgre River flows through both towns (it's a Ute Indian name), so this area is called The Uncompahgre Valley.
I've come up with:
1) "Montrose Ukulele Group", or "M.U.G." (handy if we meet at a coffee shop!).
2) "Montrose And Delta Ukulele Club" (or Society), or "M.A.D. Ukulele-or Ukers-or-whatever"....
3) "Uncompahgre Valley Uku'Lele Association" , or "U.V.U.L.A."

I kind of like #3 the best. But then, I've always thought "uvula" was one of the funniest words ever.

So which, if any, of these is best? Any other ideas? Should I even be trying to name a group that doesn't actually exist yet?
By the way, I have what I think is a great logo in mind if we go with "U.V.U.L.A.".

Well, here we go.

I have seen plenty of funny names and I think that any name you come up with has to be someting that a sponsor/family group would like to be associated with.

That way if you want to promote the club on radio or tv or get into print you will have a better chance of getting exposure.

The problems I have with #3 are (1) it seems funny now, but it will put people off, especially those who don't know what an uvula really is (there was a skit about this eons ago on SNL), (2) as robbocx suggested, the name might put off sponsors, and (3) you spell ukulele with an okina that doesn't belong where you put it, which is disrepspectful (I'm sure not intentionally) to the Hawaiian language. Of the three, I like M.U.G. the best, because you can use Zazzle or CafePress to sell a M.U.G. mug. As for your implied question about how inclusive geographically the name should be, only you and the people who live around there can really decide whether excluding Delta, or excluding other towns in the area other than Montrose and Delta, will bother people who don't live in Montrose and/or Delta but will attend meetings. My ukulele meetup group is called San Francisco Ukulele Rebellion -- it doesn't lend itself to a pithy acronym (SFUR), and it only identifies one city (the one we meet in) in the Bay Area although we get people from outside of San Francisco.

mds725 said:

The problems I have with #3 are (1) it seems funny now, but it will put people off, especially those who don't know what an uvula really is (there was a skit about this eons ago on SNL), (2) as robbocx suggested, the name might put off sponsors, and (3) you spell ukulele with an okina that doesn't belong where you put it, which is disrepspectful (I'm sure not intentionally) to the Hawaiian language. Of the three, I like M.U.G. the best, because you can use Zazzle or CafePress to sell a M.U.G. mug. As for your implied question about how inclusive geographically the name should be, only you and the people who live around there can really decide whether excluding Delta, or excluding other towns in the area other than Montrose and Delta, will bother people who don't live in Montrose and/or Delta but will attend meetings. My ukulele meetup group is called San Francisco Ukulele Rebellion -- it doesn't lend itself to a pithy acronym (SFUR), and it only identifies one city (the one we meet in) in the Bay Area although we get people from outside of San Francisco.

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I already realized or suspected all of the problems with three. I still think it's funny, but realize that a lot of people won't, or won't know what it is. As far as sponsors, I doubt there would be any. I might be able to get someplace to let us meet, but that would be about it. There's no real local TV (a branch office of one of the stations from the larger city 60 miles away, but that's it). Geographically, people here are spread out, and are pretty used to having Montrose (or Montrose and Delta) as the towns with their names on stuff... our regional power company is DMEA (Delta Montrose Electric Association), which is based in Montrose and covers two different (and very LARGE) counties. There is one small town 26 miles south of me, a teensy town 12 miles south, a small one 10 miles north, then Delta, which is 20 miles north, and that's it until you get to Grand Junction, 60 miles away. Anyone from any of those towns would be welcome, but I doubt that anyone would mind if the club didn't include the names... "Ridgway Colona Montrose Olathe Delta Ukulele Club" would be a bit unwieldy!
As for the okina, I knew I'd seen the mark somewhere in the word, but when I had the idea, I was at work with no way of checking it, and then when I got home I forgot to make sure that was right.

Honestly, I would be surprised (and THRILLED) to get even 5 to 10 people. I seriously doubt that I'd get more than 3 or 4 who would stick with it. Grand Junction (a city of 50+ thousand) has a ukulele group listed on meetup.com. They have maybe 15 members. That's too far away for me to regularly attend (plus they meet on a day I work). If a city of 50,000 can scrape up a measly 15 members (some of whom are from Aspen, not G.J.), then I don't think my town of 15,000 is going to have more than a handful.

If you named it M.U.G. I'd want to meet at the Brew-Pub.

"I gotta uvula, you gotta uvula, all God's children gotta uvula!" - Barney Fife

I think "uvula" is Latin for "little grape." Still silly, though.

I prefer MUG for your club, think that coffee and ukes seem to have a natural affinity (or tea..if you can't stand the noble bean) and you can have Cafepress mugs made up for your club with some spiffy logo.

How about DElta, MONtrose ukulele club? DEMON ukers

Bill

I like Mug.

Photo opportunities "Show us your mug"
Drinking opportunities "Join M.U.G. for a mug"
The list goes on. Lots of good branding IMO

Aloha Chris,
I'd have uke nites at a bar or lounge and call it "CHUG" he he Colorado Headquarters Ukulele Group....

mm stan said:

Aloha Chris,
I'd have uke nites at a bar or lounge and call it "CHUG" he he Colorado Headquarters Ukulele Group....

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I think there's already a CHUG in Chicago, but there's probably no reason (unless the other CHUG is profit-making and wants to protect its proprietary acronym) that there can't be more than one of them.

MUG meetings mean Mac Users Group in lots of places.

I think that uke or uker should be in the title, even the short title, so anyone who sees it for the first time will know exactly what you are. (And maybe not use ukulele because many people will misspell it as ukelele.)

How about something like "Rocky Mountain Ukulele Group" or RMUG or "Rocky Mountain Ukulele Rockers" RMUR (say armor).

–Lori

MUA...Montrose Ukers Association.....

Make it short beacuse it's cheaper to have printed on shirts and signs. Might want to check the URLs first if you are going to have a web site.