How to name your company
“I have an idea for an app / business, but I can’t figure out a good name for it. It’s been weeks and we’re stuck.”
As a startup guy, this story is all too familiar to me. Every company has to go through the process of getting named before it can start operating, and it’s not easy to choose a name, after all, it’s your company, your baby.
Some entrepreneurs might end up thinking they’re spending too much time on the naming process and they should just settle for some name, any name, instead of wasting time.
But the name of your company is a big part of its identity. And there is such a thing as a good name and a bad name.
So what makes a name a good name?
Rules for good names
- Be easy to pronounce — you’re gonna be saying your name a lot, and hopefully your customers too, when they’re talking about you with their friends, so make it easy to pronounce. If it’s a mouthful to say your name, or if it doesn’t roll off the tongue easy, people are going to not talk about your company at all in case they end up embarrassing themselves stumbling while trying to pronounce your name.
- Be easy to spell — spelling is just as important as pronunciation, and often, the two will go hand in hand. If you have the word “quick” in your company name, I am going to assume you spell it like that — “quick”. If you decide to spell it as “kwik”, “qwik”, “kvik”, or some similar misspelling, you’re making it hard for people to look you up online. If I overhear the name in a conversation going on in a bar on Saturday night, it should be obvious for me how to spell the name. So no clever mis-spellings.
- Have a positive connotation — if you are a software company, and you add words like “crash”, “bug”, etc. in your name, people can attach a negative sentiment to your name. Try to either have a positive connotation with your name, or keep it neutral.
- Have a .com domain name available — this is one of the most painful parts of the process. Domain squatters run scripts and buy up thousands upon thousands of domain names, so they can profit off it later, either by running ads on it, or by “holding it for ransom” — making you pay thousands for a name they’re not using, just because. And you’ll be surprised how many names, even clever or unique ones, have the .com domain name taken, and the site leads to a parking page, has a $XXXX price listed for the domain on it, or just leads to nowhere. DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING A .COM AFTER YOUR DOMAIN NAME. If I hear a name of a company, I will either google it, or try opening <company name>.com. I’m not going to try .io, .company, .pro, .co, or the hundreds of other TLDs now available. I will try .com, and likely give up if I don’t find anything.
And yes, you will likely find exceptions to each of the rules listed above, but in most cases, you’re only doing to make it harder for yourself by not following the rules listed above.
Coming up with name ideas
Here are a few ideas that might help you come up with a good name:
- www.squadhelp.com — A naming competition site, they have names listed for sale as well. Going through those names might help you come up with some ideas of your own.
Other similar sites:
www.brandbucket.com - http://wordoid.com/ — A word generator. It can generate names that are easy to pronounce and spell. They also let you put in words to generate ideas from, like putting in “photo” generates a name “photopical”.
- Use a thesaurus — if you have a concept like “fast” speed that you want your name to convey, try using a thesaurus to find synonyms of the word. Maybe one of them sounds better and has a domain available.
- Use a translator — Try using a site like https://www.indifferentlanguages.com/ that shows you translations of any given word in dozens of languages.
- Use a glossary — If you’re making a photography app, try searching for a photography glossary that has a whole bunch of terms used in photography, like “shutter”, “tripod”, “glare”, etc.
