A catchy business name can make a great difference in how your brand is perceived. There are many brands whose names we know by heart and that is not just because they advertise that much but also because it is easy to remember.
We can see that Nike is an easy name to remember and it makes sense with their brand, since it’s a Greek word meaning ‘Victory’, and they appeal to a sports audience in general. From this example, we can also see that it does not mean that you should name your business strictly with what the business is about, like naming a clothing brand, ‘Jumper Clothing’, and this might be taken already since it’s a common name. Therefore, to avoid this you need to play around with words.
Now let’s talk about what makes a good business name.
1. Brainstorm
First of all you need to be very clear regarding with what you are selling. Note down all the words that are associated with your business, lets say that we want to open up a clothing brand, we’ll use this as an example. So for a clothing brand we’ll pick out words that are associated with clothing. Like:
Apparel, Cotton, Wearable, Dry, Warm, Outfit, Season, Colorful etc.
As you can see I wrote down some words that I think are associated with clothing and you can add more words in your list to have more options.
2. Name Generators
There’s a common practice of using online name generators nowadays and you’ll be surprised with some services that really stand out in this market.
Although I don’t recommend using this but if you are not able to come up with better words in the first method, then you should try this.
One online service that I use is called Namelix. I really like this one and in my opinion it’s the best online name generator out there. All you have to do is choose some words to start with, then identify the type of words you want for example common words, real words, compound words etc. After you enter this, you will see an endless list of recommendations based on your input. It uses artificial intelligence to perform this operation. It might not give you the exact name you want but you’ll now have more words to play around with. Also note that if you do like a name, make sure to check it on google that another company does not exist with the same name, in addition also use a domain checker to see if the domain name is available.
3. Narrow Down
Now that we have some words on our list, it’s time to narrow down our findings. This is where defining a niche for your brand can also help you choose the right words. For example, let’s look at our clothing brand that we wrote down some words for, now let’s say that we make some winter clothes or to be more specific, we make sweater that will be worn during winter. Therefore, now I can narrow down the words from my list, here is our list again:
Apparel, Cotton, Wearable, Dry, Warm, Outfit, Season, Colorful etc.
Now I want to take Cotton, Warm, and Season, as they associate with winter season. You might note that for this to word you do need more words in your list. However, since we have some suitable words here we can use them.
Now I can combine these words to make a new unique word, for example taking Cotton and Warm, I can make ‘Cotarm’ or ‘Cotstar’. This was combing two words together but we can also use the complete words like ‘Cotton Warm Clothing’ or just ‘Cotton Warm’ that sounds nicer.
So this is how you can play around with words to find a suitable name for your company and keep in mind that it does take time to find the right name, just keep working out this process and in the end you’ll find the right name.
Plus, here is an amazing tool that you can use to see whether the name that you came up with, is not already registered by someone else. Click here to access it.