As we talked about last week, choosing the right name for your business is crucial. Whether you’re starting a new enterprise, or you’re taking the tough but sometimes necessary step to re-brand yourself, it can be hard to figure out the best name. Here are some tips for choosing a name which is memorable for all the right reasons
Don’t:
- Just follow the crowd.
How many products or services which have nothing to do with Apple have named themselves iSomething? It was innovative when Steve Jobs did it, it’s not innovative anymore. The same thing holds for styles – a style that’s becoming trendy is linking two related nouns with an ampersand. Occasionally these can be clever, but more often they come across as try-hard.
- Choose a cliché.
Words like “Peak”, “Apex”, and “Summit” are overused in business names. Yes, you want to insinuate that your business is the best, but choosing a forgettable cliché for a name is not the way to do that.
- Be too clever.
The trick to naming is to appeal to a broad audience. If your name is an in-joke, a complex acronym, or an allusion to something which the average person won’t readily pick up on, then you risk alienating potential customers. Equally, Roman numerals can imply a level of gravitas, but if you name your company something like ‘XVII’ – pronounced “Seventeen”- you’re going to confuse people both over the phone and by email.
- Use strange spellings.
Make it easy for people to find your company. Your business name might be unique if you swap out Cs or Qs for Ks – but how is someone who hears the name going to find your website? If your preferred name is already claimed, look for synonyms and related words, don’t decide to call yourself “Swipht” because “Swift” was taken.
Do:
- Invent new words – if they sound natural.
If you decide to go with creating an entirely new word for your business, look at the structure of English words. Most of them have Greek or Latin roots, so if you can find the root which indicates what you want your name to imply, use it and build from there. That way your new word is more likely to sound natural, rather than the result of randomly drawing letters out of a hat.
- Think about the wider implications of your name.
If you decide to use a word from another language or culture, think carefully about whether using it for your business could be offensive. Similarly, your name might be original, memorable, and accurate – but that could all be wasted if the initials spell something rude or negative.
- Play on words – but avoid dad-jokes.
Puns make us all groan, but a good play on words can make a great business name. Make sure you own the inferences of your name – if it could be taken to be a bit risqué, you should know it and intend for that to happen. A name like “Spoon to Fork” makes a memorable name for a restaurant, but be sure you’re comfortable with all the ways your name could be construed.
- Give yourself plenty of options.
Brainstorm lots of ideas which you think would be good. While you may set your heart on one particular name, it may already be trademarked. So turn to synonyms, related words, and commonly associated words to get a name which both means what you want and is unique and memorable. MBIE has the nifty OneCheck tool, which lets you check out if your name is available as a company name, a domain name and a trade mark.