One of the exciting things about starting a new business or launching a new product is the phase of naming it. It is interesting to see your idea take an identity of its own and it is a great feeling when your target customers verbalize it.
But finding the right name can be frustrating. You will soon realize that it’s hard to find a perfect name that can be registered, attractive to your target audience, and has .com domain available.
Here are 7 creative ways that I often use to generate a list of unique names for any business or product.
1. From first letters of sentences/phrases
I am not talking about acronyms like IBM, GE or ITC (Indian Tobacco company). This type of brand naming through abbreviations is straight forward.
I want to draw your attention to the name origin story of Shoes brand “ASICS”. They have derived this name from the first letter of each word of the phrase ‘Anima Sana In Corpore Sano’. It’s a Latin phrase that translates into ‘a healthy mind in a healthy body’, something the company believes in.
Also look at MAC – Make-up art cosmetics or Skype – Sky peer to peer. Notice how the acronym forms an interesting word instead of just letters.
Write down your vision and values for your company/product. Make the sentence/phrase in such a way that the first letter of each word when combined forms an interesting name.
You can use this technique to come up with unique name that will also have its origin story to tell.
2. Spell it backwards
As a company if you want to introduce a new product or a line of service, you can think of spelling your parent company name backwards. This is what BBC did when they introduced a new kids TV channel called “CBeebies”. Of course, it’s not exactly the reverse spelling but the syllables are reversed with a twist at the end.
This is another excellent way of naming that you can use to name new products.
3. Opposite words
Is it ok to select negative words as brand names? Yes, you could. There are successful brand names with negative connotations like Slack, Fossil, Killer, Discord, Flickr among others.
But this naming technique is different. It takes the problem word the brand is trying to solve and turn it into a solution by prefixing or suffixing negative words. For example
Ray-ban – Sunglasses that ban harmful sun rays
Nomarks cream that helps to remove marks & scars
Notix – Anti tick & flea powder for pets
Unbounce – Create landing pages with less bounce rate
You can use this technique to create names that quickly communicate your brand’s benefit.
4. Emotional surprise phrases
How many words should a brand name have? There are no set rules but it is well accepted that the shorter the better. But here are some long brand name examples that actually work.
‘Then I met you’ – American skincare brand
‘Better than sex’ – Mascara by Too Faced
‘Dream big’ and It’s my pleasure – by ColourPop cosmetics
Drunk Elephant – Skincare brand
Even though these names are longer, they succeed in being surprisingly memorable. Get inspired from these examples to find emotional phrases that resonate with your target audience.
5. From Poems/Quotes/Book titles
These are a great source for generating names. They express any emotion within one or two powerful words. Here is exactly how to use poems/Quotes/Book Titles to generate great names. These need not be your favorite ones.
Let us say you want to find names for your travel booking website. Search for travel related poems/Quotes/Books in Google. Read them and try to grasp the ideas and metaphors. Select the word that best represents the emotion and meets your naming criteria. You will end up in a great name that will appeal to emotions of your target audience related to travel.
American rock band “The Doors” took their name from a book title “The doors of perception” written by Aldous Huxley.
Note that the key is to understand the underlying concepts, metaphors and connections.
6. Words that start with/end with
This is another interesting way of arriving at surprisingly good name for your company or product.
Here is what to do. Think of a seed word that is descriptive of your category and search for bigger words that start with or end with your seed word. Find a new positive word that contains your seed word. Play with the spelling to arrive at your desired name.
Key is to keep your seed word short within may be four letters.
For example, say you want to name Veterinary services and wish to have the word ‘vet’ in your name. When you search for words that end with ‘vet’, you will find a new word ‘Velvet’. Now if you play on the spelling, you can make it “Wellvet“. Pretty strong name for veterinary services. Sorry, it’s already taken.
7. Combine unrelated words
You can combine two unrelated words to get unique names. Example Red Bull. Here the Bull can’t be red. But the name builds an image of bull enraged by red color which is desired emotion for energy drinks. Other such examples include Blackstone, Soundcloud, Capgemini and many others.
Using these creative techniques, you can generate a list of unique names.
Criteria for finalizing the name
Avoid being too narrow: Always keep an eye out on the future. You might want to introduce new lines of products or change your business strategy down the line. At that time, your name should be able to accommodate for that.
Dunkin Donuts name was too narrowly focused on only donuts. When the company wanted to introduce new products under Dunkin Donuts, there was a mismatch in the perception of the brand. They finally rebranded to just “Dunkin” dropping Donuts from the brand name.
Easy to spell and pronounce: Name should be easy to spell & pronounce. Be cautious of the negative meaning in another language, culture, or context. Tata Motors had to rename their one of the hatchback models as Tiago, as the earlier name Zica had resemblance to the Zika Virus.
Sounds right: The Name should also sound right. The Kiki/Bouba effect shows us that we map certain speech sounds to visual or physical characteristics like shape.
In the above image which one is Kiki and which is Bouba?
While kiki is associated with sharp or weak character, Bouba is mapped to stout soft rounded character. You can take advantage of this effect to select names that could sound like Kiki- Sharp character or Bouba – Strong Character depending on your product/service offering.
Domain name availability: Check if .com domain is available. If it is not available or exorbitantly priced then you can think of adding a service descriptor, country name or hyphen to the name to get .com domain.
Name must be legally available: It is important to trademark register your name before starting the business. Do a thorough search with a trademark lawyer and never ever select the name that can’t be trademarked. I have worked with clients who had to change their name after 1-2 years of being in the business.
Research: Always try to test the names with your target audience in the presence of names of your competitors.
A great name has the power to narrate a story and create the right perceptions. A catchy & memorable name can be easy for customers to recall in buying situations and also can help them to spread the brand through word of mouth.
So, go-ahead and apply these creative ways to come up with a perfect brand name.
If you feel all these are overwhelming, you can always seek help from branding experts or naming professionals.
Written by Sanath Kumar JH. Reach me at sanath@socioactiv.com. Follow me on Twitter
If you enjoyed this article, you might also like my recent case study on B2B brand building.