Naming a Company
Published Mar 05, 2009
You have a great idea for a new business. You’ve researched it on and off line. You even have some great ideas for a site to market it. Maybe you even have a color scheme. But now you’re stuck. You need to come up with a name and you have nothing, nada, zilch.
This is an all too common occurrence when it comes to starting up a new business. Sometimes it’s easy, maybe you are selling some type of service…your last name plus the service name (i.e. Cole Web Design) and you’re good to go. Or maybe you had a stroke of inspiration and found the perfect name that embodies exactly what you’re company does. But for most of us that’s not the case.
I’m going to share some strategies that have helped me come up with names for businesses in the past. This isn’t the end all be all of business naming strategies…nor is it necessarily right for you. But it works for me and maybe it can help you get over the hump and on to the more important stuff like actually making money.
What’s everyone else doing
This is always the first thing I do when trying to come up with a name. Head to your favorite search engine and do a search for companies that are similar to the company that you are starting. Try to think of a few different searches and look at a bunch of sites, even ones that don’t seem to be related. This will do a couple of things. One it helps you weed out names that are already taken. Two it will help your mind open to different ideas. It is always interesting to see how different people have attacked the same problem. Write down any words or phrases that you see that pique your interest as you can use them in your next step.
Word Association
If you’ve ever taken any type of creative writing class you have probably done this before. Take a word or phrase that describes your company, you can even use one that you got from the last step, and write it on a blank piece of paper. I suggest using a sheet without lines and writing your phrase in the center, this helps free your creative mind a bit. I know that sounds a bit like voodoo but trust me it works, but you can do whatever you are comfortable with, that’s what’s important. Now clear your mind and focus on that word. Then start writing, anything at all that pops into your head, even if it seems stupid, just write it down, no one is grading this. Keep writing until you run out of steam, but at least do it for a good couple of minutes, this should fill the page. Now take the sheet and go through each word or phrase and circle or high light the ones that you really like. Keep this as we will use it in our next step.
More Words
Now take the list and sit down at your computer and head to thesaurus.com. Alternately you can sit down with a thesaurus but I find the computer to be much faster, I type much faster than I search. Now take each word on your word association sheet and search for the synonyms for it. Again write down any words that look interesting. As you are doing this try to keep your mind open as you will probably think of more words. If you do jot them down on the list and search for their synonyms also. Don’t worry if your list seems too long. It really can’t be, and we’re going to narrow it down from here.
Winnow
By now you should have a pretty good list of words and phrases that are related in some way to what your new company is going to do. Now we need to cut it down a bit so it is more manageable. Go through the list and look for any words that are too ordinary. For one they aren’t going to be memorable and two someone is probably already using them for their name. After that look for words that are too obscure or too hard to pronounce/spell. You want a name that will be easy to remember and to spell when someone is typing it in the address bar on their browser. Try to narrow the list down to maybe 10-15 words that you really like. Don’t cut it too much as you want some options when you go to look for a site or register your company name.
Finalize
Now you need to take the various name ideas you have and see if they are available. There are many resources you can use. You can search to see if a company is already using a name. You should also check with your local corporation commission to see if a name is already registered. Once you find a name you can head to a domain registration service to see if the domain name is available. This can be tricky as many domains have been registered by prospectors hoping to capitalize on them so you may have to look for a domain name that isn’t identical to your company name. This is why my site is cruciald.com as opposed to crucialdesign.com.
Conclusion
I hope this sheds a little light on the process of choosing a name for your new business. Just remember that the greatest ideas come with many failures along side them.
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