Twitter sounded like a dumb name too, but they kept it and now nobody thinks twice about it. (Can you imagine: "Twit means idiot, nobody will use this service because of that!") Most creative names sound dumb until they stick around long enough.
Is it, though? I mean, yeah, it's no Google or Bing or Yahoo, but it also doesn't have Google or Microsoft or Yahoo money, either.
It's on the brink of breaking 1% in the US [1]; that might seem small, but that'd be a good 33% of ChromeOS users or 10% of macOS users. Not bad, considering.
And really, blaming DuckDuckGo's branding for its poor marketshare is pretty ridiculous given the competition. I mean come on, what kind of a name is "Google"? Or "Bing"? Or "Yahoo"? The ridiculousness of the branding doesn't seem to actually be a problem, since that's actually constant across all of the top four browsers in the US.
[1]: http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/uni...
[2]: http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/all/united-states-...
Search engines are a mature market. You're not going to displace Google unless you manage to disrupt the entire industry somehow; social tried and failed at this, so it's not clear what this would even mean at present.
As a challenger in a mature market, DDG has the right strategy, and they are playing their hand successfully. I seriously doubt that branding is holding them back.
Nothing's stopping someone from using it and at the same time thinking it has a poor name.
But anyway, what the current users think of it is hardly a sign in favour of the name, because that user base doesn't seem very big for a tool whose value largely comes from the size of its network of users.
The relevant question is how the name comes across to the average potential user.
Mastodon = extinct elephant-like mammal
This is why successful companies hire marketers.
And it’s not just the names — look at their logos.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ARC%27TERYX_logo.svg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mammut_logo.jpg
The first one is straight up the fossil skeleton of the animal they based their name on! If that doesn’t spell extinction I don’t know what does.
These two companies make jackets, climbing harnesses, trekking shoes, backpacks and more.
I doubt that either of these two that I mentioned have been negatively impacted by the fact the animals they have based their names and logos on are extinct.
(My personal opinion is that it makes them cooler even — the prehistoric times and the animals that used to roam the earth are very fascinating to me. And I think a lot of people agree. Look for example at how popular the Jurrasic Park movies were. People love this stuff, don’t they?)
Having been in the room when working on branding, there's always plausible objections unless the brand is completely anodyne, and by extension terminally forgettable. At the end of the day you just have to go with something that isn't terrible.