Naming is mostly elimination
People imagine naming as a room full of clever ideas. Some of that does happen.
But you will make two hundred names and keep one. Nearly all the work is ruling things out.
The ones that survive are rarely the cleverest. They are the ones still standing after the checks.
The four tests
- Say it. Read it out on a phone call. If people ask you to repeat it, that is a cost you pay forever.
- Spell it. Say it once to someone and ask them to type it. Watch what they actually type.
- Own it. Can you use it in your market? A lawyer answers that, not a search engine.
- Find it. Search it. If page one is already somebody else, you will be fighting for your own name.
A name that passes all four beats a cleverer name that fails one.
The domain trap
People fall in love with a name, discover the domain is taken, and buy something awkward instead.
A bad domain is a permanent tax. People mistype it. Emails bounce. You spell it out on every single call.
Check domains early, while you are not yet attached. Not at the end.
Made up, or a real word?
Both work. They fail in different ways.
Made-up names are easier to own and harder to explain. You will spend money teaching people what it means.
Real words are understood instantly and much harder to own. You will fight for search results, and possibly with lawyers.
Pick based on how much you can spend on being understood, not on which one sounds better in the room.
Say it in a real sentence
Test the name inside the sentence people will actually use.
“Hi, this is Ana from [name].”
“We use [name] for that.”
Some names fall apart here. They look good written down and sound strange out loud. Better to find that out before you print anything.
When not to rename
If your name is fine and the problem is that nobody knows what you do, renaming will not fix it.
We have talked several companies out of a rename. Usually the name was working and the message was not. Changing it would have thrown away recognition they had already paid to build.
Worth remembering
In four lines
- Naming is mostly ruling things out, not thinking things up.
- Say it, spell it, own it, find it. Pass all four.
- Check the domain early, before you get attached.
- If the name works and the message does not, fix the message.
Questions we get asked
How long does naming take?
Two to four weeks for the naming itself. Legal checks run alongside and can take longer depending on your market and how many candidates you screen.
Do we need a trademark lawyer?
Yes, before you commit. We screen for obvious problems, but we are designers rather than lawyers and a proper clearance search is a different job.
What if the exact domain is gone?
Adding a word can work well. Adding a hyphen or a strange spelling usually does not, because people will keep typing the version they expected.
Read next
Working on this yourself?
We help teams sort this out for a living. Tell us what you’re building, or see how it went for other people.