
How to Name your Company - judegomila
http://www.judegomila.com/2012/10/how-to-name-your-company.html
======
tptacek
Or, just name your company quickly and move on. We lost a couple weeks early
on to naming Matasano, and after some false starts, eventually gave up and
thumbed through a list of exotic plants. By the time the book of plants had
been opened, the naming premise had been accepted: we were done trying to find
a semantically "fitting" name for the company. We just picked a plant with a
cool name.

We ran into two "problems" down the road; first: it turns out that a
"Matasano" is a "quack doctor" in South America, which we discovered shortly
after hiring someone from Argentina. We quickly convinced ourselves that the
irony was a value-add, not a cost.

Second, we kept getting confused with Monsanto. This sounds (a little) sillier
than it actually is. A lot of our clients, particularly back in 2006-2007,
were large enterprises where the staff was particularly likely to have some
confusion. We had more serious conversations about renaming over the Monsanto
thing than over the "quack doctor" thing.

Ultimately, we just got over it and kept plowing forward. Equity goes _into_
your name; it usually doesn't get extracted _from_ your name. There's some
sense in picking a good name, but keep in mind that weeks of time --- which is
what we were facing --- is a very steep price to pay for something that might
only be marginally important down the road.

I submit that the term "Airbnb", while memorable, has very little intrinsic
meaning to most people who rent out their places on Airbnb. Ebay has none
whatsoever. "Heroku" was one of YC's biggest acquisitions; that name breaks
one of the rules of thumb of this post (3 syllables, yet means nothing to its
customers). "Stripe" and "Square" and "Paypal" are great names, but
"Braintree" seems to be doing pretty well too, and if "Braintree" is OK, I
humbly suggest that "Mindweasel" and "Thoughtpants" will work too.

This is a good post. All I'm saying is, be careful of the procrastinate-y
issues that come up early in your company. They all matter less than execution
on everything else.

~~~
judegomila
You should be able to pull off a great name in 1 day. Heroku is a great name:
abstracted, unique, interesting and developer related. Ebay is also a great
name.

~~~
tptacek
I am not clear on how "Heroku" is "developer related" in a way meaningful to
most of its customers.

"Abstracted", "unique", and "interesting" are _very_ easy bars to clear when
you take "relevant" out of the mix. So yes: I buy that you could come up with
a name as good as "Heroku" in a day. Just open up a book of Japanese plant
names.

~~~
mehulkar
Heroku could mean '6 farts'[1] You'd have to open up something other than a
book of Japanese plant names to come up with that :p

[1][http://www.quora.com/What-does-Heroku-mean/answer/Matt-
Van-H...](http://www.quora.com/What-does-Heroku-mean/answer/Matt-Van-Horn-1)

~~~
tptacek
It's funny; first Google search result:

<http://koi-z-are-us.20m.com/japanese_plant_names.htm>

... and _most_ of these are viable company names.

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aaronbasssett
Hey guys you know what is a cool name? HeyZap. There's a lot of names you
could call your company, like Zap Hey, or Hi Nap. But I really like HeyZap.
You know what looks awesome? Lighting bolts. You know what name has a Z which
looks like a lighting bolt? HeyZap. Did I mention HeyZap is a cool name? Do
you like the name HeyZap? If you're trying to name a company I think you
should pick a name which really has PUNCH, something disruptive, something
like HeyZap. Don't you think HeyZap is a great name? Obviously you're not
going to think of a name as cool as HeyZap, but if HeyZap wasn't already taken
you should really think about naming your company HeyZap. Has anyone heard of
HeyZap? It has an awesome name, it's HeyZap. We really put a lot of effort in;
we tried HelloBuzz, HiZing, GreetingsEbullience but we finally decided on
HeyZap. It's just so catchy, HeyZap, HeyZap, HeyZap.

------
aneth4
A good list of considerations. The most important ones I think are still the
classic two:

1) Emotive - The name should evoke some sort of emotional connection. This is
essential to being memorable and likable. This is why computers.com and
chairs.com are not so great for selling computers and chairs unless you are
going for mass-market, price-based, SEO-optimized, unbranded sales.

2) Meaning - The name should evoke some sort of actual meaning associated with
your product. This becomes less important as a company becomes established.
When a name is established is the right time to separate the meaning
component, not when the company is formed. Apple was formerly Apple Computer,
but Apple would have been a terrible name choice in 1979 because it would
require too much explanation.

Hipmunk is terrible name for a travel product, despite Jude calling that out
as a good one. It has decent, if confusing, emotive response, and zero meaning
or association with travel. Establishing that as a travel brand will be much
more work than, say Kayak, which has at least some association with travel. I,
for one, struggle to recall "Hipmunk" much more than Travelocity, Kayak, or
Orbitz.

AirBNB is a good name, but fails is the secondary concern of being easy to
communicate and spell. Despite that, it is strong in the two primary concerns
above, so it is ultimately a good name. I agree with Jude that at some point
they may follow the path of Apple and reduce the name to a more essential
emotive component, such as just Air.

~~~
justincormack
Agree, other than I will only call Orbitz for space travel. In 500 years time
they will be a great brand.

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calinet6
... All that and the best you could come up with was "Heyzap"?

~~~
awolf
I did not realize that the author was from the company named Heyzap. When they
used it as an example of a good name, I scoffed and then hit the back button.
That name is one of the worst out there. I don't know why in particular but it
annoys the hell out of me every time I see it.

------
InfinityX0
Something missing here: SEO considerations. It matters less as the days pass,
but there is still value to getting an important keyword or two in the domain
name (or to _be_ the important keyword, better still).

This is especially true if your business is planning to generate lots of
business through organic. Especially false if it doesn't.

~~~
shredfvz
The audience for your corporate name is most likely: investors, bankers,
family members, and people who know nothing about you.

In light of this, a perfect company name is easy to say over the phone,
memorable, and suggestive in roughly that order of importance. A perfect
example is "3D Robotics".

Your company name is the only chance you have to verbally communicate
everything there is to know about your business in a split second. Your
corporate name != your app name, and your app name != your URL.

------
smickie
Lots of people are pulling Airbnb up on their name, but I think it's great:

Air = air travel, BnB = Bed and breakfast

I'm not sure if some people don't know what it means because it might be a
British colloquialism or whether it's totally unintentional Airbnb's part.

~~~
minimax
Airbnb is an iteration on the company's original name, which was "AirBed and
Breakfast." The idea was (and I think still is) that there is a ton of unused
potential "capacity" in terms of empty couches and inflatable mattresses
(airbeds) that people could offer for rent if given the opportunity.

------
dreeves
Great points!

But just to list more counterexamples, from another Hacker News thread:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3181272>

I'm pretty pleased with my own similar essay on this topic, which I called
"Nominology": <http://messymatters.com/nominology>

~~~
bduerst
Speaking of defining names, "Nominology" comes across as _the study of
eating_.

~~~
dreeves
You're thinking of nomnomology. :)

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guylhem
Alternative suggestion : name it after anything you have the matching .com
domain as long it is not offensive.

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spiritplumber
Mine is named Robots Everywhere and has a 1950s logo. This came from my mom's
exclamation in entering the workshop while we were testing mesh-networked
antbots.

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zerostar07
Considering that you are naming a new company some of these points are not
valid/applicable. Being memorable is not easy unless people can repeatedly
bump on to you which requires that your keep it in the news/advertising or
that people can find you through mental or google searches. If you choose an
abstract name people are not likely to find you again through search. I
believe it's important for the name or part of the name to contain something
descriptive. Names like "apple" "stripe" "zynga" are completely random; it
would be a bad idea to name your bookmarking app after a tree or a liquor.
Now, 'paypal', that's a great name. In the end however, a name is just a name,
and doesn't really matter that much.

------
OldSchool
Keep in mind these things change like fashion and it depends if you're selling
to consumers or business.

You'll also want to be sure that the name appeals to your target audience or
you risk it being liked only by clones of yourself, which are likely to be
few.

------
ThomPete
Great names are built not found.

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bluetidepro
Although I have heard quite a few of these tips before, this is still a great
article refresher. I like the idea of tip "8. Light up a MRI scanner", but I'm
a bit skeptical on how easy that is to access/try.

~~~
pavel_lishin
It's also not really actionable. Cool, my company name lights up the parts of
the brain that deal with mathematics, shape recognition, and spatial
coordination. Is that good? Is it better or worse than lighting up the part of
the brain that deals with vocabulary, puns and humor? Or one that tracks
moving objects?

------
austenallred
Pinterest has a pin in its logo? At first I thought I had never noticed this,
but then as I look for it I'm not sure if it really was designed to be a pin.

------
bsimpson
I disagree about the vagueness of a name. If I see a great name, I'll
understand the point-of-view of the company (usually, a key element of their
product or audience). If the company pivots so much that the name becomes
detracting, they can always rebrand later: "NewProduct by
NoLongerRelevantName" eventually becomes just "NewProduct".

------
sneak
Counterpoint: "xkcd"

~~~
Samuel_Michon
I don't find 'xkcd' particularly easy to pronounce or remember.

Given its target audience, it works for xkcd. Geeks like geeky sounding, hard
to pronounce names (like gnustep, xmlhttprequest and PostgreSQL). If a name
like 'xkcd' were chosen for a consumer service, it probably wouldn't work very
well.

~~~
jtheory
The name was chosen explicitly to be difficult to pronounce and remember.

~~~
sneak
No, it wasn't.

I named my company in the same way Mr. Munroe named his webcomic: a four-
letter domain available in .com, .net, and .org.

~~~
jtheory
<http://www.redhat.com/magazine/025nov06/features/xkcd/>

"Actually the domain name came after the instant messaging screen name, which
I picked late one night. Five, six, maybe seven years ago, I was tired of
having names that meant something. Skywalker4, Animorph7... I wanted to pick a
name that I wouldn’t get tired of. That would just always mean me. So I just
went down combinations of letters that weren’t taken, until I could find one
that didn’t have any meaning, didn’t have any pronunciation, and didn’t seem
like an obvious acronym for anything."

------
ndepoel
Golden tip: go and play some Wordfeud. You'll come up with tons of nonsensical
abstract words and names that have an interesting sound to them while trying
to place your letters. I'll bet you some of those would make for great company
names.

------
IsaacL
The best resource for this I've found is:
[http://www.thenameinspector.com/10-tips-for-naming-your-
comp...](http://www.thenameinspector.com/10-tips-for-naming-your-company-
product-or-service/)

And the rest of that guy's blog.

------
mise
We struggle with our name: Bitesize Irish Gaelic.

It's a language learning tool.

The Irish language is called "Irish" in Ireland, but often "Gaelic" elsewhere
(depending on who you're speaking with).

The name we've ended up with is a mouthful of a compromise :)

I don't know if there's a fix for that...

~~~
dpark
Your name is fine for the product. If you went with just "Bitesize Irish" or
"Bitesize Gaelic", you'd likely be much more confusing to a big chunk of your
target market.

"Bitesize Irish Gaelic" isn't great as a company name because it's so narrow,
but "Bitesize" _is_ a good name if you want to expand to other languages at
some point. I don't know what you'd have to pay for the domain, but it's
probably available since it's just parked right now.

------
keeboard
This is invaluable advice. You should start a web service with which people
like me can submit all the crappy domain names we think about buying and you
give us feedback. I'll let you think of the name for it though...

------
kwr
This just inspired me to throw out my startup's name and buy a new domain.

~~~
mcherm
Really? If you don't mind my asking, what did you throw out and what did you
switch to?

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joonix
Meh. These days it's so hard to find an available .com name that any
bootstrapped startup is probably going to find its name by spending quality
time at a domain registrar.

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hellosmithy
What? Airbnb are re-branding to Air? That's a terrible idea.

~~~
tg3
I was also under the impression that BankSimple rebranded to Simple due to
regulatory issues (I think certain states have rules about the type of company
that can have the word "Bank" in the name).

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baddox
I believe the syllable division should be "Ap" "ple."

------
TallboyOne
When in doubt, name it after a fruit!

~~~
ndepoel
And then your next startup is called Banana. Great idea!

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grayc
slashdot?

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ahmetteke
ask on coWonder and let the crowd decide it <http://www.cowonder.com>

~~~
yen223
Talk about company names, I thought this is pronounced cow-onder, and is a
tool to communicate with cattle.

