But the battle for HP's soul may still be decided on a different plane by a different but no less significant decision: what to name the new company. That name will provide the strongest indication as to Fiorina's vision for the new firm.

Fundamentally, there are only two options: keep HP as the corporate name or create an entirely new one. On this, the shape of the future company truly hangs (the game really will be over before it starts if a Frankenstein’s monster called HP-Compaq is set loose on an unsuspecting public).

In the months that HP CEO Carly Fiorina and Compaq CEO Michael Capellas have been immersed in the merger, the world has dramatically changed around them. Post 9-11, the spectacular Enron flameout and the downfall of Andersen, there is a new corporate sobriety that signals a merciful end to a trend in corporate naming (derisively referred to as “generica” branding).

Notorious creations of coined, meaningless, pseudo-classical monikers from “Avista” and “Zenia” (both companies) to Evista (a drug), Sentra (a car), and Vectra (a computer) not to mention “Scient,” “Viant” and “Accenture,” have comprised the corporate lexicon of the 1990s – a vocabulary that has become as suddenly dated as stock options and Gap khakis.

Last November we saw what might have been the last big thrash of a dying trend when Philip Morris changed its name to “Altria,” (from the Greek altus, meaning “high,” it was helpfully explained). This was simply an attempt at camouflage-by-nomenclature, an unconvincing act of verbal subterfuge designed to distance the company from the tainted Philip Morris brand. So Altria joined the likes of Altera, Altrus, Altius, Altia, Altra, Altura, Altira and Altiva, among many others, in its quest for uncontroversial Greek anonymity. Until, of course, Altria itself becomes tobacco stained by association.

By an illuminating contrast, American Home Products has gone in the opposite direction of naming convention. Last week they chose heritage over hype and changed their corporate name to Wyeth – taken from John Wyeth, the founder of one of their original businesses. While the name, dramatically proclaimed in a full-page print ad, takes some getting used to, it has the virtue of being a real person’s name—one that you can tell a story around. Smart, consistent marketing and brand building can now provide the context and meaning to draw on the unique resources of company history.

In our view, this represents the beginning of a move away from the generica names characteristic of the dot-com frenzied culture and its "get a name, get a logo, build a brand" mentality. The business climate of 2002 – post-Enron – requires clarity, meaning and authenticity. We expect to see, therefore, an emerging trend toward two types of corporate names:

• The “real word approach” will be seen increasingly in the resort to hybrid names, such as “DeskJet” and “AirTouch.” The conjunction of real words into original combinations is a solution that takes clear, meaningful “materials” and puts them into a form that is both unique and proprietary, thereby circumventing the often-difficult challenge of trademark availability.

• “Eponymous” names – names of or related to persons, such as “founder names” (Dell Computer or Siebel rather than Unisys), and “real names” based on lexical terms – the plain, everyday words one finds in the dictionary (Progress Energy rather than Avista).

In addition to the value of these “eponymous” name-related equities, the founder name is personal, but not literally meaningful, i.e., in the sense that an abstract noun, for example, is meaningful. Because of that, founder names are “scalable” – they allow a company to grow beneath them, to diversify its offerings, move to new markets or expand its geographic reach, without having to resort to re-branding in corresponding increments. Think Disney, Goodrich and Merrill Lynch.

Now that the merger has been approved, the new company should go forward as Hewlett-Packard. And Walter Hewlett can at least take consolation in the sense of continuity the name represents and the enduring honorific to his pioneer-father. It will also convey stability at a time of transition and change for the merged company. An important heritage will have been preserved and the twin haloes of trust and familiarity will hover above the new enterprise.

But remember that Fiorina came to Hewlett-Packard from Lucent (a real Latin word, incidentally), a spin-off from AT&T. Hewlett-Packard itself spun-off the business that is now “Agilent,” a me-too contrivance if ever there was one. She may want to try the trick once again and find yet another brand new name, if for no other reason than to make the company, finally, her own.

At best, it will be an expensive conceit. A merger is not a spin-off. Far from it. The heady independence and singular focus a spin-off provides is a world away from the job of integrating two entrenched corporate cultures into a new, seamless fabric. It is a notoriously difficult task to pull off. Interestingly, the most successful seem to be those who went for continuity by retaining the stronger brand name even in those so-called “mergers of equals” – Wells Fargo (Norwest), Morgan Stanley (Dean Witter) and Bank of America (Nationsbank). Plain words and real names, all.

And there, under Carly Fiorina’s nose, is one of the greatest technology brand names in the world. Will she grasp it, or discard it? Whatever the outcome, her decision could reveal more about the company’s chances of future promise than any analyst insight.