
Ask HN: How do you come up with a Brand or Project Name? - dvcoolster
I believe large number of domains are taken, so even if you think of a creative name like &#x27;shgdf.com&#x27;
I randomly typed it, but even that&#x27;s unavailable. My point is, in today&#x27;s time thinking of a brand name, comes along with the task of finding available domain. So, inevitably I end up at instandomainsearch.com playing around with different combinations.<p>Is there a better place where we can buy domains easily for $200 odd bucks if someone&#x27;s been holding good brandable domain names. Brandbucket etc. seem too pricy and are good for maybe companies, but let&#x27;s say for my small project, web game, or a blog, what&#x27;s the ideal place? Aren&#x27;t a lot of good use case domains just parked with bullshit ads? Is this even a problem, has anyone else struggled with this ever?<p>Thank you
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panorama
I have the same wish: A service that provides a large list of available,
short, human-esque .com domain names. I wouldn't mind paying and spending
hours combing over it to find ones I liked. Someone did this a few years ago
and I snagged a couple neat ones including a 5 letter .com.

Anyway as for actual advice, I've built more than a handful of projects and
startups at this point. The recurring theme in every project was that I'd
start with something completely nonsensical to use as the name. If your
cofounder likes grilled cheese sandwiches, call your project GCS or grilled
cheese or whatever, including your github repo. Getting the domain has never
been step 1 in anything I've ever built including my current business.

There's weeks worth of work to do before the .com is needed. In the meantime
what I do is keep an Evernote of words and phrases that pertain to the
industry or what my service will likely do. While we had several product
hypotheses, our business model was 95% likely to end up doing some form of
data sifting on behalf of customers. So I would think about words that have to
do with searching or finding things and kept a log of them:

\- Hound (as in the dog)

\- Seek/Seeker

\- Scout

\- Scope

\- Vision

Along with general words I liked from a linguistic standpoint: "Labs", "IQ",
"Mighty", etc.

When I looked for an available .com, I mixed combinations in my word list:
"ScoutIQ", "MightyScope", "HoundLabs", etc. until I found one that I liked
_and_ was available: MightyScout - and I reserved it immediately.

But to this day our Slack channel, Github repo, etc. still use the original,
nonsense name :)

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jjoe
Here's how I came up with mine. I was building a Varnish-as-a-Service platform
then. But I didn't want to use the word Varnish in my fqdn because it's a
trademark. But also because the sum of its parts is more than Varnish (you've
got scaling, security, etc).

So I focused on the essence of the thing I was building, which is caching. I
couldn't find any concise domain with the word "caching" in it. So I played
around with syllables and settled on Cachoid.com. I'm happy with the outcome
so far [https://www.cachoid.com/](https://www.cachoid.com/)

~~~
dvcoolster
That's a great name for the service. That's precisely what I have been
thinking, the more I think about it, I feel it can be a community driven
solution. Say, in my spare time I challenge myself for a garage sale community
and come up with domains which are available, buy and submit one on the
platform. People can come vote, comment, and if anyone likes to use it can buy
it for a flat fee, say $200. Doesn't hurt anyone, a good creative exercise for
neurons to come up with a name, even budding designers can submit their design
for a small share of the sale. But, it has to be much more altruistic from
community perspective. Not sure, if it would work on scale to be a sustainable
solution against the biggies out there ;)

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telebone_man
FWIW, you can take parties to a sort of court (I use that word lightly) that
can assist you in obtaining a domain taken by a squatter.

It's been a few years, but google ICANN and I'm sure you'll find something.

If I remember correctly, you submit a petition suggesting things like.. you
either have a trademark or that you're a recognised business and then a
committee make a decision based on that.

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shaftway
I use acronyms, portmanteaus, and other plays on words to name things.
Sometimes backronyms. I can't point to some of my recent ones, as they're
still in progress.

While I was at NYMEX I built a system called NEON (Nymex Electronic Order
Network). Followup projects followed the noble elements theme, sometimes with
a forced backronym.

One project involved multi-lingual communication, so I tooke "chat", which is
"cat" in french, then translated that to Japanese (Neko).

Basically just have fun with it, and don't stress.

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chaz
I found a good name for <$200 on Namejet. Also check out Flippa.com for good
names from people willing to sell.

A piece of advice that worked for me: don't get stuck on the name. It's hard
and it takes time (and sometimes money). Pick any temporary name for $10 and
keep building instead. You can always change it later. Many companies and
projects have changed their name as they became successful. It feels like it's
important in the beginning but it usually isn't.

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jcahill84
My first stop is almost always the thesaurus, from there I usually move on to
combinations of two words or two synonyms of what I'm trying to build. My
current project is a scheduled API monitoring tool, and I came up with the
word "Schezzle" to represent what it is. A 90s rap influenced spin on the word
"schedule." I think the trick is to find something that's easy to say and that
can be communicated to other by word-of-mouth without having to spell it.

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ThomPete
Great names are built not found. Don't worry too much about getting the right
name.

Don't be afraid to call your company one thing but have a slightly different
URL.

A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that domain names needs to be
easy to type but the reality is that most of us click on links to get to a
company url we don't actually type it in (and even if you do Google is
perfectly fine helping you find the right url)

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codegeek
Don't sweat it. Domain squatting is a business and a big one. There are plenty
of people who are squatting on domains thinking it will make them a
millionaire. They won't budge for"cheap" $200.

However, if you find a domain you like, it doesn't hurt to try and ask the
owner. But don't hold your breath.

~~~
dvcoolster
Don't you think this is massively inefficient. Nobody can buy all the
brandable domains, and there would always be more coming up. A $100-200 profit
on your $10 domain for someone who will build stuff over it, seems good for
the formation of a sustainable community driven solution. Its just stupid to
think that your domain will fetch you millions unless its a dictionary word
with searches present. Any thoughts?

~~~
abc8901234
What you think and the reality of it are two different things. Any intelligent
person could see that cybersquatting is not a viable business model. These are
not intelligent people you are dealing with. These are the people who think
they could go back to 1997 and register google.com and hold them hostage years
later for millions. Spend some time browsing on Sedo or Flippa and you'll see
how stupid these people are.

My suggestion: don't give in to these people. Keep digging for a good name, or
look into one of the new generic tlds.

~~~
dvcoolster
That pretty much summarises how I felt about the stupidity of several people.
These websites, Sedo/Flippa even they look damn old and confusing. Their UX
seems shitty, and the whole offer wait for 7 days auction system is pretty
tiresome as well.

Having less available domains for people and local businesses, forces people
to use subdomains and social media to express their creativity, which is kind
of not ideal. The whole barrier to get online is increased manifold by simply
no domain availability. I am really surprised there's nothing easier, cleaner
and simply better.

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bsvalley
If I build hand made products from my garage and sell them online for example:

1- make up a new word based on a word that best describes your business (e.g.
Maker = makr)

2- if taken, look for synonyms of that word and repeat step one (e.g.
Craftsman = krafsman)

3- if taken, repeat 1 and 2 with a combination of 2 words (e.g. HomeMade =
Homade, etc.)

~~~
dvcoolster
I usually do the same as well. It's just that it can take anywhere between 1
hour to a couple of days of fooling around. After a while, its gets all
confusing, which one was better, you ask around, but everyone has different
views. If you are in a group deciding to come up to the name, it becomes even
more tiresome. I was just wondering for an easy to browse service of domain
names, submitted by community where one can buy and share goes to the person
who submitted and small part to the platform. Not sure, if people would like
it though, it really needs a big community to support who believe domains need
to be used for making websites and not hoarding for a future sale!

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meagher
Adding words before/after your ideal domain tends to work: gotinder.com,
hioscar.com, invisionapp.com, etc.

For domain name example.com: tryexample.com, getexample.com, goexample.com,
hiexample.com, exampleapp.com

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SBCRec
I name my side projects internally after famous battles the ancient romans
were involved in.

