5 ms·

Ask HN: How do you decide your company name?

• Brewer 15y ago
  I have two things that I'm working on now and the names just sort of popped into my head. They aren't based on anything and they aren't any sort of wordplay, they just seemed to fit.
• jackpirate 15y ago
  My current project is Blogumbus (check it out at: blogumbus.com). It's a type of blog search engine with a graphical layout. The most important thing to me was the availability of domain names. I wanted a dot com, not a .ly .me .whatever else. My intended audience includes lots of people who aren't necessarily the best with computers, and that audience still thinks dot com is the only thing out there. Now I'll tell you the story. I knew I the product had to do with blogs, so I tried to brainstorm names that had blog in it. Obvious things like combining two words, e.g. blogcloud or blogstar, were all taken. It suddenly occurred to me that I my product would help people "circumnavigate the blog-o-sphere" while I was out sailing with my dad. This made me think of bloggellan (from Magellan). This name had the unfortunate side effect of two g's next to each other. So I brainstormed a bunch of other explorers and settled on Blogumbus (for Columbus). I'm not sure yet how good of a name it is, but it's at least tolerable.
  • revorad 15y ago
    Off-topic: Blogumbus looks interesting, but when I tried to search for "shopping" I got an error saying search has been temporarily disabled. What happened?
• dcpdx 15y ago
  Hey there. What I've done in the past is make a long list of words that could be applied to what your company does, how it does it, who it's designed for, etc. Grab a thesaurus and look up synonyms for words that are particularly applicable. Then, start combining different words and see what you come up with. Swap some vowels (a's for e's, o's for i's, etc.) and get creative. Eventually, you'll come up with a list of names that are at least partially relevant to what your company does and hopefully look and sound decent. You may want to search for words in other languages as well (Latin is a good one) for more variety. It takes a long time to come up with a great name that you and your team like, that is at the same time not trademarked and also has a domain available relatively cheap. No matter how arbitrary a name sounds, it almost always has direct meaning for the company. Google was originally called 'Googol', which is a very large number (10 to the hundredth power) and was meant to convey how much information Google indexed. Twitter is perfect because it implies that the service is about short bursts of information (tweets) much like a bird chirping (would the name Chirpr sound as good? Naw). You also have to think about how the name sounds when it's spoken, and if people can easily remember how to spell it when they go to type it in the address bar of their browser. Guy Kawasaki wrote a decent article about naming companies a few years ago which you can find here: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/02/the_name_game.html#axzz1QXrOUxT9 http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/02/the_name_game.html#axzz1... . I can't agree with all of the points but there's some good stuff in there. Whatever you do, don't compromise on a great name. If you're embarrassed to tell people what your company is called, that's not a place you want to be in. Take the time to do it right and you'll reap the rewards tenfold down the road. Best of luck to you.
• gallerytungsten 15y ago
  A variation of this question (Why Naming Your Company Sucks) was posted recently; here is my answer from that thread: I love naming companies. Of course, I've done it a bunch of times, so it's a familiar process. For someone who is suddenly out of their comfort zone, I can understand the frustration. A few tips: 1. Before thinking of names, get meta. What's the company about, what would a "good" name connote, what are the ideas the name should express? Write down a narrative of all the awesome things the name should convey. If you're diligent in following this recommendation, all kinds of new ideas will emerge. 2. Say any potential names aloud. Do they roll off the tongue, or are they awkward tongue twisters? 3. Do your domain lookups via the command line, not some web site. It's been suggested that domain lookup sites snatch your queries and register them. True? I don't know; but you can't go wrong using Whois in your shell of choice.