

Ask HN: Getting a name for a startup - vsakos

Hello!<p>I have an idea for a startup project (in fact it&#x27;s not only an idea, I even started realizing it, being a cs student) but I have a problem finding a name for it with an available com domain. For the last 3-4 months I thinked only about the &quot;perfect name&quot;, but nothing. The problem is I&#x27;m not very creative (including finding good names, designing etc).<p>I read many articles about this, but nothing helped. Also I found many naming contest websites, but these cost at least 50$ and I can&#x27;t afford it, I&#x27;m really low on budget (you know, I&#x27;m a student).<p>Do you have any advice how can I find a name for my project?
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jere
IMO, there are two fairly easy ways to name your company:

1) Combine english syllables to come up with a fictitious word that sounds
good. This is how Ninite was named and they even provide the source for the
program they used: [http://ninite.tumblr.com/post/620277259/how-ninite-was-
named...](http://ninite.tumblr.com/post/620277259/how-ninite-was-named-by-a-
computer-program) There are some other tools to help you with this:
[http://wordoid.com/](http://wordoid.com/)

2) Jam two words and/or numbers together. They can be somewhat or totally
unrelated. Examples: 37Signals, RocketDog.

Neither of these techniques gets you a name that is _related_ to your project
(you can loosely relate to your project with the second technique), but I
think that's the least important part. Mostly, you just need a good domain and
to sidestep any trademarks. Using a single cool sounding word seems like about
the worst angle you can try from a legal/financial perspective; no matter how
obscure you think it is (e.g. town names, latin words), it's probably been
used dozens of times by others.

One of my startup ideas was a company that did this for you. It's not
especially hard to do anything of this but it is tedious. It's not a very good
idea in retrospect.

~~~
vsakos
1) Thanks, I will definitely read this. I didn't mentioned but I also tried
Wordoid and some other similar services. My problem with these is that I need
a word as the starting point, but I can't find one for which wordoid can
generate words that sounds good and is easy to pronounce (the generated word
is either crap or the com domain is not available).

2) I tried jamming words, but nothing... I even tried finding keywords for
this on BetaLis and YCList.

~~~
jere
I know what you're saying with Wordroid. You'd find a good one eventually, but
it's incredibly time consuming.

As for as second technique, my point was you don't need to use related
keywords. Use extremely common words. Animals, plants, foods, colors. Maybe
jam a number onto one. Here's a tool to do this.
[http://watchout4snakes.com/wo4snakes/Random/RandomPhrase](http://watchout4snakes.com/wo4snakes/Random/RandomPhrase)

Generate an Adjective-Noun or Noun-Noun. Here are some examples I ran across:

Fourth Asylum

Coding Helium

Young Uproar

Tedious Headline

Hungry Virus

Not saying any of these are great, but this is the _kind_ of name I'm talking
about. These might sound ridiculous to you, but if you actually look at tech
names, they're often meaningless or incomprehensible. When someone searches
for one of these ridiculous names on google and finds only you, that's when
the name shines.

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dirktheman
There are a couple of sites that I regularly use for exactly this. The key is
to find words or synonyms for what your startup does, and enter them in one of
these websites: \- [http://www.nameboy.com/](http://www.nameboy.com/) \-
[http://www.bustaname.com/](http://www.bustaname.com/) \-
[http://www.dotomator.com/](http://www.dotomator.com/) \-
[http://www.leandomainsearch.com/](http://www.leandomainsearch.com/)

These sites give you tons of suggestions. It'll save you a lot of time!

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Netuned
I suggest these tools to help you:

[http://www.businessnamegenerator.com/](http://www.businessnamegenerator.com/)

[http://www.wordlab.com/name-generators/business-name-
generat...](http://www.wordlab.com/name-generators/business-name-generator/)

[http://www.rhymer.com/](http://www.rhymer.com/)

[http://www.naming.net/](http://www.naming.net/)

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kjs3
The couple of times I've done this, it involved the co-founders, an unabridged
dictionary and a couple of bottles of good scotch. I'm admittedly old
fashioned about such things.

