Turns out, I spent a good part of Thanksgiving weekend catching up on my subscription to The Online Reporter.

As I am going through weeks and weeks of back-issues of the popular Internet and CE digest, I catch myself repeatedly noticing the growing number of consumer software start-ups with particularly short and vowel-rich companies names.

Think Google, Hulu, Lala, Vudu, and Veoh. Oh, and then there’s Rollyo, Slooh, and Bebo, of course. And that’s only the beginning.

Far from being a professional etymologist, what strikes me is the apparent desire for baby language-sounding brands in and around Silicon Valley these days.

Repeat these names ten times, real fast and out loud and you think you entered a local pre-school event.

Maybe this is a deliberate attempt to outsmart former start-up generations, where past-gen entrepreneurs seemed much more serious, with focus on firm monikers descriptive of the actual product they aimed to sell.

From Advanced Micro Devices and Hewlett-Packard to Sun Microsystems and International Business Machines, these Silicon Valley power players of course are by now much better known in their abbreviated form. Yet, in their evolution from full-length to few-letters-only corporations AMD, HP, and IBM at some point in their history had to endure a cumbersome branding transition, a coming of age if you will typically a nightmare for corporate communications, yet a boon to their brand consultants.

So, here we are with a current start-up generation instead embracing names such as Gloto, Orgoo, Meebo or Bing. With any of these hyper-short labels, no need to even bother with settling on a marketable abbreviation, let alone to start expenditures for that re-branding consultant.

The trade-off, today’s start-ups seem conspicuously relegated to two syllables and plenty use of vowels. I guess that makes things them easier to remember. Just don’t try to figure what’s behind each as their names don’t even aim to reveal that secret until you’ve been to their sites.

Of course, Silicon Valley wouldn’t be what it is today if it hadn’t come up with a free and easy-to-use software automating the creation of, you guessed it, even more toddler-capable corporate names.

Try Dotomtor or Company Name Generator and take your pick.

Have a Lala Google day.