What's In A Name ? The Problems Of Naming A New Company


Coming up with a pithy name is easy, but finding one that is in some way unique and even meaningful is a real problem.

I always start with the .com URL, which is a hiding to nothing in itself. You can spend hours on the site of a name registrar such as GoDaddy. It's not surprising that suffixes such as .ai and .io are increasingly popular. Still, the .com is the holy grail..

In the case of Project Q we came up with a great name - one that is meaningful, relevant, short and where, hallelujah!, the .com URL was available.

But the fun doesn't stop there. You need other accounts - Twitter and Instagram handles, a Gmail address for YouTube and Adwords, etc.. Of course, none of those are available (although many of the names you covet haven't been used for a decade or more) and we had to come up with alternatives in each case. Things were a lot easier in 1996...

If you're looking for suggestions, Shopify has a name generator here: Business Name Generator - Free Company Name Generator (shopify.com), many other similar sites are available.

There is also another consideration - make sure that your name works internationally and isn't accidentally insulting or rude. This could be useful: WordSafety.com

Last, but by no means least, there is also making sure that the name is available as a company you can incorporate and/or a brand name you can protect. In the UK, where the rules are very different to the US, naming a company after your brand is one of the best ways of protecting the name. There's a useful tool here: Search for a trade mark - Intellectual Property Office (ipo.gov.uk). You can check out international trademarks here: WIPO Global Brand Database. 

Happy naming!

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