
The Agonies of Picking a Product Name (2011) - erickhill
http://blog.fogcreek.com/the-agonies-of-picking-a-product-name/
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levlandau
Agree that the bias is to overestimate the power of a name but disagree with
the notions that a) the name doesn't matter that much and b) the wasteful
process of going through a ton of names to arrive at something close to what
they started with was not actually necessary for coming up with and feeling
satisfied with that name in the first place. I'm pretty sure Hippolist
wouldn't have worked as well as Trello in a quantifiably material way.

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amirmc
> _" In the end we should have just had Michael do the whole name picking in
> thirty minutes and been done with it."_

I think this overlooks the value of having everyone feel that they were
involved/heard. Maybe going through this process at least once is a kind of
rite of passage. Next time around, no-one would be as wedded to their ideas
and the process would be quicker.

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drchiu
Agree on the spirit of the post. The name really doesn't matter as much. But
there are considerations to think about nonetheless.

For example, is the name's domain name available? Can the domain name be
misrepresented? eg. expertsexchange.com (Experts Exchange vs Expert Sex
Change) How about social media names (eg. twitter.com/<name you want>)?

I think nowadays, considerations on names really should centre on availability
of the desired name across domain names, social media pages, and avoiding
existing trademarks.

Incidentally I blogged about this recently:
[http://simononstartups.com/blog/2015/05/31/9-lessons-for-
fin...](http://simononstartups.com/blog/2015/05/31/9-lessons-for-finding-a-
good-startup-domain-name/)

PS. People criticizing Twitter pointed out at the beginning how "twit" or
"tw*t" were bad names to associate with the product too.

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iamlolz
I'm in two minds whether or not to consider if the domain is available when
choosing a name.

On the one hand I don't think it should be a factor, on the other hand I know
I'll be checking anyway.

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jamesrom
Why don't you think it should be a factor?

I think it's pretty much the only factor. Domain name. Not too weird. Less
than 10 characters. Done.

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iamlolz
Because a business shouldn't constrained to fit an available domain. Dropbox
originally registered getdropbox.com because dropbox.com wasn't available. If
they'd worried about an available domain name they wouldn't have ended up with
something nearly as fitting.

~~~
k__
Also there are a bunch of top-level domains available and ever growing. So
availability shouldn't be a big issue.

People should be more concerned about not choosing common words. Mozilla and
Google can pull off Rust and Go, but you probably can't.

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Chevalier
>We ended up with a name very similar to the one we started with, one that all
of us like just fine, and one which is just going to be what people call our
new, supremely free, project management app. I think everyone would have
gotten used to Hippolist too, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s called
Trello now.

>In the end we should have just had Michael do the whole name picking in
thirty minutes and been done with it.

I mean... successful names DO imply what the product is. "Google" is similar
to the English language term for staring in wonder. "Facebook" is taken from
the existing name for books of college students. "MyFitnessPal," clunky as the
name and product are, is a pretty informative name. If you rattled off a list
of these names to a grandmother, chances are that she could divine the purpose
of each website.

I'm a huge fan of Trello, and I think the name works well the same way that
"Xerox" worked well -- because most people really don't have another word for
kanban systems or photocopies, and the product name suddenly defines the
category. But unless you're churning out revolutionary new products rather
than refining existing ideas, I think it makes sense for your name to in some
way characterize your product.

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tjradcliffe
Trello is a meaningless name. It evokes nothing. It sounds like a portmanteau
of "trellis" and "mellow". Even though I've read about the product, or
service, or whatever it is, I have no idea what it does because the name has
all the sticking power of wet teflon (another meaningless name that was
successfully marketed, demonstrating how little names matter).

~~~
mercer
It's not entirely meaningless, though. It brings to mind 'friendly' and
'fuzzy', and 'dynamic' in a way that 'Xerox' does not. The way a word sounds
definitely carries some level of 'meaning'.

Whether this was intentional, or whether it plays a big role in Trello's
success is a different story.

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nathan_f77
Names are really hard. We spent a while trying to come up with a name for our
skateboarding app, and settled on Hardware (abbreviated as HDWR). "Hardware"
is what skaters call the nuts and bolts that attach the trucks to the deck.

I'm still not totally sold on it, but we haven't been able to come up with
anything better.

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wtracy
There's a very similar tale behind the name Toy Story.

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sdrothrock
I wonder if this submission was influenced by the post about CockroachDB,
which was on the front page and seems to have vanished.

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amirmc
It's still there (currently at number 7).

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9660339](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9660339)

~~~
sdrothrock
Whoops, my bad. What a terrible title; I completely missed it.

~~~
amirmc
Title comes from their blog post, which does make sense in that context (it's
their first post). Doesn't work out of context though.

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M8
It's even worse for non-native speakers.

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DonHopkins
And then there was Java. Remember that first gold rush of derivative Java
related product names?

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brador
A bad name can kill a good product and hinder a great product. Example:
Diaspora, Deus Ex.

