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In general most people massively underestimate the importance of naming and treat it with indifference. The cost of advertising is the long-term tax you pay fo
by PatrolX 7y ago
In general most people massively underestimate the importance of naming and treat it with indifference.
The cost of advertising is the long-term tax you pay for poor short-term decision making when naming your product or service.
What most people don't realize is that it's the "sound" of the name that's most important, not the way it looks on a logo or in a domain name.
The reason for this is the part of the brain's working memory called the phonological loop that gets excited by short repetitive rhyming sounds and rehearses them repeatedly, which is why you sometimes can't get a song or tune out of your head. This function results in repetitive and rhyming names being more readily committed to long-term memory, thus making good names not just memorable but unforgettable.
All the the best names are alliterative and rhyming, and I'd argue that Coca-Cola is the best name ever conceived so far.
"So does the available domain matter?"
Yes, but nowhere near as much as the name itself.
It's very possible to come up with original great sounding unique names that position you well in the marketplace, it just takes time and a lot of patience.
- chubot 7y agoAlong that criteria, Google might be one of the best brand names ever. In an internship in summer 2000, I remember hearing "just google it". It was good, and the name stuck, and I started using it. That was only 2 years after the company was formed! Despite some (deserved) local Silicon Valley backlash, the brand is really strong and unblemished around the world AFAICT. It seems to avoid bad connotations in other languages AFAIK.
- buboard 7y agoIs ‘google’ easy to memorize for English speaking ppl? Its not even grammatically correct. Lycos or altavista was easier
- Macha 7y agoLycos is ambiguous to pronounce - is it lie-cos (as in cost) or lie-coas (as in telcos). Altavista has more syllables than google.
- Smithalicious 7y agoI'm not a native English speaker but I'd read Lycos as lee-cos, so neither of your options ;)
- gerdesj 7y agoQuite and I remember getting werewolf connotations from the name back in the day. Lycanthrope.
- elliottkember 7y agoThere’s a very good reason for that: lýkos (λύκος) is Greek for wolf. Lycanthrope would be lykos (wolf) + anthropos (person). Language is fun
- lonelappde 7y ago/lee/ is also a standard way to pronounce "lie" (as in Lie Algebra)
- freehunter 7y agoGoogle is very difficult for me to say. I don't think I have a speech impediment, but perhaps my northern Midwest American accent just slurs the end of the word and I end up saying "Goo-chl". I hate saying the word because I know it's so difficult for me to say. But since "google" is now a verb, it's pretty entrenched. I say "I googled this" even when I actually used Bing or DDG. It's harder to imagine Lycos or Altavista becoming a verb. Maybe it's because Google has been a verb for so long, but "google it" sounds better than "lycos it" and I cannot imagine ever saying "just altavista it". I certainly cannot image someone saying "I dogpiled this".
- mkl 7y agoIs "frugal" easy to say? Or "bugle", "centrifugal", "MacDougall"? They all end the same for me (NZ).
- freehunter 7y agoSince you mention that, it might be the first syllable that is difficult. Frugal and bugle are easy to say. Google is not. Maybe it's the back-to-back hard-G sound?
- Izkata 7y agoTo me it's the same "g" as in the word "good". "good" + "frugal" -> "google"
- lonelappde 7y agoYes the double G is hard for some people, because you have to leave yhrG and come back to or immediately.
- puranjay 7y agoIn general, the "oo" vowel sound is easy to pronounce across languages. And I daresay, its the most fun vowel sound too.
- earthboundkid 7y agoIt’s misspelled (should be “googol”) but the misspelling aligns it better with English speaker’s intuitions. A similar issue is how “tinnitus” is often called “tinnitis” and nooklear (nuclear) is pronounced nookular.
- scarmig 7y agoIt's actually two misspellings that counteract each other. Yes, the googol is the number, but when naming the number the mathematician asked his nephew what it should be, who responded with the name of his favorite cartoon character, spelled Google.
- lonelappde 7y agoDo you have a reference for that? Google.com can't find it.
- jacobolus 7y ago> name of his favorite cartoon character, spelled Google Source? A web search is not corroborating this version. What I can find is this, from Perfect Figures (Crumpacker, 2007): > On a walk with Milton and Milton’s brother, he asked if either of them had any ideas, and Milton came up with googol. > At this late date—Milton died in 1980—we can only speculate about why that was the word he thought of. Did he like the burbly, messy, baby sound of goo? Or did it sound monstrous, like a name for an ogre? Had he heard of Barney Google with the goo-goo-googly eyes?” Seems like this explanation is at best pure speculation. (Didn’t stop someone from adding it to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barney_Google_and_Snuffy_Smith https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barney_Google_and_Snuffy_Smith as a factual claim, improperly referencing the book quotation above. I just fixed it.)
- scarmig 7y agoI'm guessing this question is unresolvable, given that nine year old Milton never specified where he got the idea of the google word. Apparently Larry found it a convincing enough story that the first book scanned for Google books was The Google Book, which was itself th source for the name Barney Google.
- viraptor 7y agoIt's only one word - how can it be grammatically incorrect?
- JeanMarcS 7y agoWe have a dash in the company name, which was perfect at the time we started if (1997). But then came the mandatory domain name (expensive back then) and email adresses. So we when we had to spell it on the phone, it was a nightmare, even mor in french because we had to explain it was the dash on the 6 and not the dash on the 8 (underscore on French keyboards). So it was something like "g, dash, yes the one on the 6 not on the 8, etc.." No need to say that there were a lot of lost emails back then. And that we bought the domain name without the dash when it became affordable !
- zepearl 7y agoI agree. I used to have a dash ("-") in my domain name and all my friends and colleagues (italians, french, germans) hated it (I ended up hating it as well when having to type it on the phone) => don't ever use these kind of chars in the domain name. Additionally try not to use long top-level domains - I'm using now ".digital" but every time I have to type it it feels too long to me => I'm regretting having moved my (outdated) webpage there.
- wdfx 7y agoAlso agree. The domain I bought for my family (my wife and myself) is hyphenated after our surnames and it time and again has been a pain to dictate to 3rd party.
- lonelappde 7y agoWhy not register the unhyphenated name also, and redirect? NB: domain names are not for sale. You cannot buy them. You can only register control of them for a time period.
- rolltiide 7y agoUse initials for the last names and thats the default, firstnameln.com redirects to firstnamelastname.com And neither of those have hyphens
- 7y ago
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y agoI had a startup with a friend (first red flag) that I allowed him to name. He picked something hard to spell and pronounce. It was a terrible idea. Learn from our mistake.
- brandnamehq 7y agoIt’s the branding that matters most. Prefer a great brand over an exact match .com domain. We think {brand}hq.com domains are a great choice. We have several for sale at reasonable prices. https://www.brandnamehq.com/#/domains https://www.brandnamehq.com/#/domains
- SheinhardtWigCo 7y ago> I'd argue that Coca-Cola is the best name ever conceived so far. I wonder if their $3.8 billion yearly advertising budget has anything to do with that.
- egfx 7y agoWhat happens when the internet disputes the core pronunciation of the name like in the case of gif.com.ai