Naming is part of marketing. To hang a dog, you must first give it a name. You don’t have a brand – company or product until you have a name. My favorite way to think about naming is as hooks to hang stories and ideas on. But names are more than that. Rob Meyerson defined names as one of the first, longest lasting and most important decisions in defining the identity of a company, product or service.
Heck, names are so important that Monzo’s founder, Tom Blomfield (who famously had to change his startups name from Mondo to Monzo) has a whole business called Garple to help startups find sticky names for their businesses.
I’ve been in the startup ecosystem now for 8+ years and had many conversations with friends and colleagues looking to find the right name for their company or service. This inadvertently means that I know the challenges you’re likely to face in creating a brand name and now have a set of working principles to guide how you evaluate potential names for your brand or business.
I’ll break them into 5 easy to remember questions:
- Is it meaningful?: One of the top tests of a good name is meaningfulness. By meaningful, I mean does it convey the intended message and evoke the right feelings. Tesla for example immediately evokes feelings of technicality and suggests electricity. Calm, the relaxation app makes you feel immediately meditative.
- Is it adaptable?: In this era of rapid iteration, perhaps the most critical test of a good brand is how much it can stretch. Your product can be a rental software today and a full on bank tomorrow and you’d need a name that would be malleable enough to accommodate these evolutions. Bolt (formerly Taxify) would have had a hard time explaining that they offer more than Taxi/ride-hailing services. PizzaHut would have a hard time introducing more than Pizza into their offerings. Basically, the best names don’t box you in.
- Is it legally available?: There’s no point spending hundreds of hours scoring through names to find out that picking the name will result in legal battles. A preliminary trademark check (or even a quick Google domain name check) will help you avoid any obvious conflicts. Another side to this is more cultural than legal, avoiding names that could have inappropriate meanings or associations in other languages
- Is it distinctive?: One of my favorite examples of choosing distinctiveness is Apple’s launch in a market with Microsoft and IBM. The simplicity of the name stands out in a market where names like HP and Toshiba were commonplace. Distinctiveness is achieved by unexpectedness and zigging when everyone else is zagging will always be a good idea.
- Is it memorable?: Or more simply, does it sound good enough that it sticks in people’s minds? Memorability can be achieved by distinctiveness (e.g Apple, BlackBerry), emotional resonance (Huggies, Pampers), sonic pleasure (easy to pronounce, fun to say names, sometime deploying alliteration or assonance e.g Coca-Cola, DuoLingo, TikTok)
Ultimately, creating a good brand name is about striking the balance between being strategic, memorable and meaningful. These principles can also overlap with each other — distinctive names tend to be memorable, names that are memorable are sometimes easier to spell, and ambiguous names are likely more adaptable. I cannot guarantee that this is a bulletproof way to create a good brand name but if you carefully consider these guidelines, you’ll well be on your way to a strong brand name.