McGrath of Harlow
Appreciate your comment on the etiology of the Old Dun Cow. I guess I hadn't thought much about where it came from, but a guy I heard once had it mixed in with a bunch of sorta Irish stuff. Hope no one thought I was trying to offend.
Note that I wasn't trying to suggest it as a name for the pub. I was only looking for something that most everyone might know, to illustrate the "approach to how you name it."
Maybe I should have said "Out in cow country, you might name it 'Sue's' and teach everyone to sing "Boy Named Sue."
The suggestion is that the pub name should be something broadly acceptable, and the "hook" is established by associating an 'inside' joke. You can quit telling the joke if it wears out, much more easily than you can change the name of an established business - i.e. you can write a new commercial if you observe 'audience drift' and want to appeal to a new clientel, or modify the "association" for your existing customers.
It's a way to get the hook in - but keep your options open if you later find out you're not catching the "keepers."
A local place in my area (to be left anonymous) went to some lengths to attract a "special" clientel (anonymous, but think euro football teams). They were somewhat successful, but have observed recently that maybe they didn't really want that group as much as they thought. They accurately picked the "association" that would attract a specific customer base, then found that the thing they had associated meant a little more to the customers than they originally thought.
To greatly over-dramatize, one of the "rules" used by a famous (US) frontier leader was "never engage the enemy unless you have a clear line of retreat." Flexibility is good.
John