
“Startup Names” by Paul Graham (2006) - climatewarrior2
http://aux.messymatters.com/pgnames.html
======
idlewords
"Nominology is my neologism for the study of naming things!"

It's called onomastics, son. Now get off my lawn.

~~~
dreeves
Delighted that this is one of the first comments! :)

Note the update on the "nominology" article: "As soon as this went to print,
Rob Felty (a linguist) informed me that the established term for what I've
called nominology is onomastics. Scooped by 295 years!"

And further discussion in the comments:
[http://messymatters.com/nominology/](http://messymatters.com/nominology/)

~~~
mattcwilson
Onomastics:

EVOC - R

BREV - Y

GREP - G

GOOG - G

PRON - Y

SPEL - Y

VERB - R

Nominology:

EVOC - Y

BREV - Y

GREP - G

GOOG - G

PRON - G

SPEL - Y

VERB - Y (nominologize?)

Seems like nominology wins on at least a couple nominological categories. :)

~~~
dreeves
Ha, nice! I mean, "onomastics" really should win simply for already being the
established term. But _if_ one were picking the name from scratch then I'd say
"nominology" has probably...

    
    
        * greater evocativity (at least for us philistines)
        * nearly equal brevity (same number of chars, one more syllable)
        * equal greppability and googlability
        * greater spellability, maybe (again, at least for us philistines)
        * equal pronouncability
        * equal verbability (nominologize/onomasticize, nominological/onomastic, nominologist/onomastician)
    

Of course "nominology" mixes Greek and Latin roots so that's presumably
fingernails on a blackboard for more educated folk than me. Cf
[http://messymatters.com/nominology/#comment-530036107](http://messymatters.com/nominology/#comment-530036107)

------
harvestmoon
This article raises some refreshing points on the startup naming process.

It can be quite tough - and I ran into the naming problem many times over the
years. Over 100,000,000 com domains are registered, iirc. It reached the point
where I would spend days trying to come up with something that was a) good and
b) available.

Frankly, I ended up feeling that finding a good name for a new project of mine
was quite unlikely to happen. Which lead me the idea that the only way I'd be
able to find usable (let alone high quality) names was by making a tool to
help make it easier.

So I built Namebird - [http://shobia.com/namebird](http://shobia.com/namebird)

For it, I came up with a variety of probability based algorithims to generate
names that are catchy and memorable. It works pretty nicely, imo. And, in
making it, it has been able to help me find a large amount of domain names
that would be good for startups.

Perhaps some here might find it of value.

------
Yetanfou
All you need to produce a 'good' name is a simple script, a list of adjectives
and a list of critters. A few sample runs from my proprietary name generator
produces these CamelCased (KamlKzed?) marvels of ingenuity:

    
    
        FragrantDuck
        CourteousOwl
        RecklessPig
        OtherMoose
        CaringFrog
        MindlessFish
        UpbeatLizard
        WhisperedHippo
        SlushyWhale
        OilyAccountant
        CompassionateHog
        InstructiveMonkey
        ForkedCow
        ...
    

Of course I did not work on this script for quite a while, and it shows. To be
_really_ trendy I'd have to remove some vowels here and there, change a 'c'
for a 'k' now and add the odd '-ly'.

~~~
anonfunction
My startup name generator[1] does something very similar. Instead of
adjectives and critters it uses tech and culinary terms. Here's the first 5 it
came up with:

    
    
      SteamWare
      MountFont
      CaviarBeta
      ChipBinary
      SystemCocoa
    

[1] [http://montanaflynn.me/lab/startup-name-
generator/](http://montanaflynn.me/lab/startup-name-generator/)

~~~
Scarblac
I got FragmentSalad, a great name. Haven't thought of a company to go with it
yet, but that shouldn't hold me back...

~~~
Alterlife
A tool to save, search, share and make best use of code snippets/fragments.

------
mindcrime
So, looking at the "nominology" article, and considering our name ( "Fogbeam
Labs", with domain name fogbeam.com), I'd rank our name like this

EVOC - neutral. Fogbeam is evocative of something to do with light and
illumination, so if we were a LED bulb manufacturer or something, it would be
good. But we're using it as a metaphor, since we're a software company
focusing on knowledge management, integration and collaboration. I think our
tagline/slogan plays ties it together though "Cut through the information
fog".

BREV - I think we're good here.

GREP - Yep.

GOOG - Very much. There are very few other references to the phrase "fogbeam"
and the few there are relate to something obviously different - bulbs for auto
fog lamps, etc.

PRON - Yep.

SPEL - Yep.

VERB - Fail. I don't think anybody will ever say "Go fogbeam that" to anybody
else. :-(

For the most part, we get a lot of positive comments on the name when we
introduce ourselves to people, so all in all, that's one decision that has
worked out well. I don't think our name is so special that it will cause us to
succeed all on it's own (could any name do that?) but I think it's more than
good enough to _not_ be an impediment.

What do you guys think?

~~~
dreeves
As the original author of that article, I declare this nominologist-approved!
:) Your analysis on each dimension seems spot on to me. Yay
[http://fogbeam.com](http://fogbeam.com) !

PS: I don't think verbability is a total fail either. Hard to predict that
one. Maybe some kind of "beam me up" phrasing could become the verbified
version...

------
melloclello
I looked up YouOS, what a blast from an (idealistic) past:

[http://www.youos.com/html/static/manifesto.html](http://www.youos.com/html/static/manifesto.html)

~~~
kenrikm
Sounds like a Chromebook.

~~~
knd775
Or, you know, the Internet in general ;)

------
andrewfong
Previously discussed here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3180593](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3180593)

------
lynnah
Reddit was "seemingly taken over by teenage boys"

... was there a time it wasn't. Love that. Love reddit.

Also, dotomator can be useful for generating ideas.
[http://www.dotomator.com/](http://www.dotomator.com/)

~~~
nemo
Around late 2005-2006 it wasn't so bad, it was more 20-something guys in tech.
A significant enough portion of the articles on the front page were related to
programming or tech-real topics (esp. startups), or long-read articles, and
while there was bickering, there were also interesting discussions in comments
that didn't get dragged down by trolls and teenage-boyness. By 2007 the kids
ranting about politics and atheism, the image links that were just a picture
of a slogan, the trolling, the lame joke accounts, and the rest were picking
up steam, and Startup News was created as a less awful alternative by pg (and
also as an Arc demo), which was eventually renamed Hacker News. There was an
early reddit exodus to HN to get away from reddit's worst excesses in 2007-8,
especially when the horrible Digg exodus to reddit was happening.

~~~
Scarblac
But you can't really generalize about Reddit nowadays, as it's a collection of
tens of thousands of subreddits. There are still plenty that are fine.

~~~
nemo
Probably true, I mostly stopped paying attention around 2010, so when I
occasionally hit it now my subreddits are not highly curated to stay ahead of
the horde.

------
saturdayplace
I'm not sure a name has _that_ much of an impact on a business's success. I
posted this comment in another thread recently: The word "Target" doesn't
really carry any signal about what that company actually does. Ask yourself,
in Target's infancy, did the name hurt or help them? I'd guess it had very
little to do with their eventual outcome.

~~~
tesseract
Target wasn't actually a startup though - it was an offshoot of Dayton's
department store (that name being a relic from the era when it was much more
common to name one's business after oneself). As I understand it, the main
criterion for choosing a name was it had to be sufficiently distinct from
"Dayton's" so as to avoid tarnishing that brand by association with the new
lower-cost subsidiary.

------
vonklaus
Man Kevin Hale is an amazing startup founder and the whole team from Wufoo was
great. However, that name is properly terrible, and I think that it succeeded
in spite of that name. Something about it is extremely off putting. Luckily
the product and team were phenomenal.

------
kamikazi
I recently spent some time (probably more than I should have) at naming my new
project.

I went through a couple of namegenerators and I found bustaname.com to be the
best of the lot - specially it's realtime domain availability check
(.com/.org/.net)

Pair it with namechk.com to check availability of social media handles.

If you are looking for random 4/5/6 letter domains that might be available
(mostly sedo) then domainnamesoup.com is at it - eg:
[http://www.domainnamesoup.com/5letterdomainnames.php](http://www.domainnamesoup.com/5letterdomainnames.php)

------
cpeterso
> _Nothing could be less cool than calling a startup “cool.com”_

cuil.com had its 15 minutes of fame, but I see that Google acquired their
patents and domain names:

[http://searchengineland.com/googler-killer-cuil-patent-
appli...](http://searchengineland.com/googler-killer-cuil-patent-applications-
acquired-by-google-112186)

[http://whois.domaintools.com/cuil.com](http://whois.domaintools.com/cuil.com)

[http://whois.domaintools.com/cuil.net](http://whois.domaintools.com/cuil.net)

~~~
yaeger
and meanwhile, something seemingly "uncuil" like DuckDuckGo is still around
and is being included as an optional search engine in most modern browsers.
One really can't predict what makes the cut in the end based on name alone...

------
jbrooksuk
I was talking to my parents about my latest side project, Anorak
([http://anorakci.com](http://anorakci.com)) and they both laughed at the
name.

I genuinely felt embarrassed when I explained to them that the majority of
startups etc have "silly" names. As I was talking about Anorak to them, every
time I said it's name, I felt silly.

And yet, it's never bothered me before.

I'm not changing the name, but it made me realise.

~~~
marincounty
That ci on the end hard to remember. I checked and anorak is taken--as usual,
but there's got to be something else? Maybe Theanorak?

~~~
jbrooksuk
It is, but it stands for "continuous integration" \- I'd have gone with
"anorak.com" but as you said, it's taken.

------
anonfunction
A while back I created a startup name generator by fusing tech and culinary
terms together. I also set it up to check if the .com is available. It gets a
decent amount of traffic and a few domains purchased every once in a while.

Check it out: [http://montanaflynn.me/lab/startup-name-
generator/](http://montanaflynn.me/lab/startup-name-generator/)

~~~
silverbax88
That is really slick.

~~~
anonfunction
Thanks, I've had a few people tell me it relieved a bunch of stress from
choosing the perfect name. I plan to extend it with different term groups
(space, sports, etc...) so you can fine tune the results to your specific
startup industry.

I'm also proud of the way I implemented[1] the Domainr API[2] to check for
domain availability. Previously I checked it in the backend but it made things
very slow so now the backend generates the domains and the client lazily
checks the availability.

[1] [http://montanaflynn.me/lab/startup-name-
generator/assets/mag...](http://montanaflynn.me/lab/startup-name-
generator/assets/magic.js)

[2]
[https://www.mashape.com/nbio/domainr](https://www.mashape.com/nbio/domainr)

------
ehurrell
Things like this seem like touchstone topics for startups, HBO's Silicon
Valley had a scene with the sanest member of their group at a whiteboard
filled with names desperately saying "choose one so we can get back to work",
and I've certainly been in the same spot. I wonder if startups just compress
the ridiculous corporate silliness into short bursts.

------
teachingaway
after you have potential names, here's my step-by-step walkthrough for the US
trademark application process - [http://adlervermillion.com/how-to-trademark-
part-2-registrat...](http://adlervermillion.com/how-to-trademark-
part-2-registration-guide/)

The trademark application process, at its core, is simple data collection.
Sadly, the TM Office website complicates this simple process with a set of
_baffling_ forms. Their design philosophy is “more but worse.” Only 40% of DIY
apps are approved, so a TM lawyer is recommended. But if you're going to go
DIY, just gird yourself for a miserable user experience.

------
alexqgb
"In a world where all the obvious names are taken, finding a good name is a
test of imagination. And the name you choose tells whether or not you passed
that test."

Then again, what you make of the name also matters.

------
davidcatalano
Completely agree. There will always be good names available. Curious if PG
would still rate textpayme high as I think its an awful name!

Selfishly curious, how would you rate my company's name, Modea?

~~~
ChristianBundy
I'm unsure how it's pronounced (mode-ee-ah vs mode-ay), and have absolutely no
idea what you do. It sounds trendy though.

------
_RPM
> It’s like running Microsoft software on your servers. [Like StackOverflow,
> launched in 2008, does!]

That is a fact I've condemned about Stack Exchange and their founders on Meta.

------
baddox
Interesting that he scores "Yahoo" poorly on Googlability. I'm not sure if
that's a joke, but "Yahoo" is certainly very Googlable.

~~~
Nicholas_C
The only other place I've ever heard it used is in Gulliver's Travels, and I
believe is the origin.

~~~
kibibu
[http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000635/](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000635/)

------
bdcravens
"Nothing could be less cool, at this point, than calling a startup
“cool.com.”"

Interestingly enough, that domain name is for sale.

~~~
gtremper
better than cuil.com

------
EGreg
What if someone registered show.hn? :-)

------
snarfy
The best names have two syllables.

~~~
anonfunction
I tend to agree with you, do you know of any software projects to
programmatically determine syllables?

~~~
spyspy
[http://www.nltk.org/](http://www.nltk.org/)

~~~
anonfunction
Couldn't find anything that says it officially supports counting of syllables
but stackoverflow provided this possible solution:

    
    
      from nltk.corpus import cmudict
      d = cmudict.dict()
      def nsyl(word):
        return [len(list(y for y in x if y[-1].isdigit())) for x in d[word.lower()]]

------
BigChiefSmokem
Capitalize the first letter of a noun and remove vowels at will.

Example, sewage => Sewg

~~~
mqsiuser
no clue why you got downvoted, thanks for the advice

~~~
eps
Crippled names imply crippled products. Dropping vowels should be your last
option.

~~~
adidash
Like flickr?

~~~
eps
Yes, names like Flickr.

Names with dropped vowels look like typos, typos relate to sloppy work, so
that's an association you get with a name like this. You then have to put in
extra work to undo it. Can it be undone? Sure, but why create this hurdle in
the first place?

