How to come up with a business name: six kinds of names, seven ways to find one, three finalists

What a company name has to do before it sounds good

People who ask how to come up with a business name usually start by hunting for a beautiful word. It is more useful to start with the work the word will do. The USPTO, the United States trademark office, puts the test in one line: consider whether the public will remember, pronounce and spell your mark. Add one more job, being told apart from the names next to yours, and the brief is complete.

Take an everyday case. A customer recommends you to a friend over the phone, and that evening the friend types what they heard into a search box. If the name can be said without a pause and written without spelling it out, the recommendation arrives. If it shares its first half with three competitors in the same street, the friend may land on one of them.

Six kinds of names and the real companies behind them

The first kind simply describes: Volkswagen, Wikipedia notes, joins the German words Volk and Wagen and means people’s car. The second is the founder’s own name, and the same encyclopedia traces Adidas to Adi Dassler, who registered the company in 1949. The third is an abbreviation. IKEA says on its own site that its name is made of the initials of the founder, Ingvar Kamprad, of the farm Elmtaryd and of the village Agunnaryd.

The fourth kind is a metaphor: Nike, according to Wikipedia, takes its name from the Greek goddess of victory. The fifth fuses two words into one. The LEGO Group explains that its name abbreviates the Danish words leg godt, play well. Yandex tells a similar story on its history page: in 1993 the founders arrived at the word as a short form of yet another indexer, with the first letters written as the Russian Я.

The sixth kind is a word that did not exist. Kodak’s account of George Eastman says he made the name up from nothing and liked the letter K, which he found strong and incisive. The USPTO counts invented, arbitrary and suggestive marks as strong and descriptive or generic terms as weak: Apple for computers is arbitrary, creamy for yogurt is descriptive, and bicycle for bicycles cannot be registered at all. The clearer a name is at first sight, the harder it is to keep for yourself.

A working session: seven ways to produce name candidates

Set aside an hour, take a large sheet and agree on one rule: nothing is judged until the list is long. The first way is to write in plain words what you do and for whom. The second is to list what the customer gets or feels at the end: speed, calm, warmth, a clean result. Such words hint at the benefit without naming the trade.

The third way is the metaphor: objects, animals, places and characters from myths that carry the quality you want. The fourth starts from what is already yours: a surname, a street, a village, a family word. The fifth turns long honest descriptions into initials and checks whether the letters read as a word. An abbreviation that can be pronounced is easier on the phone than one that has to be spelled out.

The sixth way is to fuse and clip: take two words from the earlier lists, cut each to a syllable or two and join them, as the Danish toy maker did. The seventh is invention by sound: pick the letters you like, as Eastman did with his K, and build short words around them. It helps when two people work separately and then swap sheets. Stop when the sheet is full, and choose nothing the same day.

The filter: say it aloud, dictate it, check the meaning abroad

The next morning the list goes through a filter, and most of it will not pass. Say every candidate aloud in a sentence you would really use, then dictate it to someone who has not seen it and look at what they write. Sound matters to the law too. The USPTO’s page on likelihood of confusion cites T. Markey and Tee Marquee, two marks that could be pronounced the same way although they are spelled differently.

Then check the meaning. The same office advises anyone who plans to sell abroad to consider whether the mark means something different when translated into a foreign language. In practice, show the shortlist to a native speaker of every language your customers speak and ask what the word reminds them of, slang included. If you work in two alphabets, write the name in both and see whether it stays one word.

The domain and the handles when the .com is taken

Before you fall for a name, look at where it would live: the domain in the zones you need and the handle in every network and messenger your customers use. Each platform has its own alphabet. Telegram’s FAQ, for example, allows a username the letters a to z, the digits 0 to 9 and underscores. A name with a hyphen, a space or non-Latin letters will not carry over unchanged, so decide early how it is written in plain Latin.

When the .com is taken, first see who holds it. A working company in your field under the same word is a warning about the name itself, not about the domain. A parked page or an unrelated business in another country is a smaller matter: take the national zone, add a short word for the category or the city, or build the address differently. What matters is that the spoken name stays the same everywhere.

One shortcut is closed: an address that mirrors someone else’s brand. WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization, describes the UDRP policy as a framework for disputes between domain holders and trademark owners. A complainant has to show that the domain is identical or confusingly similar to their mark, that the holder has no rights or legitimate interests in it, and that it was registered and is used in bad faith. The policy covers generic zones such as .com and the country zones that adopted it.

The legal check in brief: trademark databases and limits on company names

A free domain says nothing about the trademark, so a first search comes before you print anything. WIPO’s Global Brand Database gathers international marks under the Madrid System and marks from participating national and regional offices; WIPO itself adds that it may be prudent to search national registers too. Which register depends on where you trade: the EU’s Your Europe portal names the EUIPO for all EU countries, in the United States it is the USPTO, and in Russia, as Wikipedia summarises, marks are registered by Rospatent, whose FIPS institute publishes open registers. For the USPTO, marks need not be identical to conflict: confusingly similar marks for related goods or services are enough.

The name of the legal entity has rules of its own, and they differ by country. In Russia, article 1473 of the Civil Code, as published by ConsultantPlus, requires a commercial organisation’s firm name to state its legal form and to contain a name proper that is more than words for the type of activity. It may not include the official names of foreign states, government bodies or public associations, nor anything contrary to public interest, humanity and morality, and the word Russia needs a permit. Article 1474 forbids a firm name identical or confusingly close to that of an earlier registered company in the same business. This is a summary of the current wording, not legal advice: the final check belongs to a patent or trademark attorney.

How to choose among three finalists without a vote

After the filters a handful of names is usually left. Cut them to three, because three can be compared honestly and ten cannot. Then put each one where it will live: on a sketch of the sign, in an email address, in the first line of an advertisement, in the greeting on the phone. A name that looked strong on the sheet sometimes turns out too long for the sign or awkward in the address.

Next, try the three on people who are not involved. Do not ask whether they like the name, since taste tells you little about memory. Mention the names to five customers or acquaintances in conversation, and the next day ask which they remember and how they would write them. Their mistakes show how the name will be distorted in life.

Finally, weigh what each kind of name asks of the business. A descriptive name explains itself from the first day but sits on the weak side of the USPTO’s scale. An invented one is the easiest to keep and the slowest to fill with meaning. A suggestive word or a metaphor stands between the two, and for a small firm without a large promotion budget that middle is often the practical choice.

When to hand naming to specialists and what to prepare

A local business with one language, one product and an owner who has a free week can do all of the above alone. Outside help earns its place when the name must work in several countries and alphabets, when a product line needs a system of names, or when the partners cannot agree. VITON13 Studio is one of the places that take on naming. What the work includes and costs is set out in the studio’s guide linked below.

Whoever does the work, prepare one sheet first. Write what you sell and to whom, in which countries and languages, and what the competitors are called. List the words and associations you want and the ones you rule out. Note where the name will live, from the sign to the domain, and who makes the final decision. With that sheet, naming stops being a search for inspiration and becomes a short project with a beginning and an end.