Buoy

Buoy is a real English word, the floating marker anchored in water to show ships where it's safe to go, or where the hazard is. The word comes from Old French "boie," meaning chain or fetter, though by the time it settled into English it had shifted from restraint to guidance. Something that holds position so others can orient themselves.

To buoy someone is to keep them afloat, to support them when they'd otherwise sink. That double meaning, the object and the verb, is probably doing more work than the etymology alone.

The double vowel in the middle is the odd part. B-U-O-Y looks like it should trip someone up, but most people already know the word from life jackets and harbors, so the spelling rides in on a memory they already have rather than one the brand has to build. That borrowed familiarity is doing more work than the sound itself.

There's a small tax at checkout though, since typing "buoy" into a search bar next to "supplements" can pull up sailing gear before it pulls up the brand, and that mismatch is a real cost this name pays for staying so short and so borrowed.

Out goes the protein powder with an ingredient panel that read like a chemistry exam, once the buyer finally stopped ignoring it and didn't like what they found. They weren't looking for a supplement brand; they wanted a way out of supplements altogether. Buoy is for the person who already eats reasonably well and wants the gap-filler to match that standard rather than undercut it.

They'll spend more per serving without much resistance when the label is short and the sourcing makes sense. The thing they almost bought instead looked cleaner on a grocery shelf, but it still had three items on the back they had to look up.

The word does quiet filtering work before anyone reads the label. Buoy signals natural, clean, and purposeful without saying any of those things.