9 ms·

How to Name your Company

98 points by judegomila 14y ago

bluetidepro 14y ago
Although I have heard quite a few of these tips before, this is still a great article refresher. I like the idea of tip "8. Light up a MRI scanner", but I'm a bit skeptical on how easy that is to access/try.
- pavel_lishin 14y ago
  It's also not really actionable. Cool, my company name lights up the parts of the brain that deal with mathematics, shape recognition, and spatial coordination. Is that good? Is it better or worse than lighting up the part of the brain that deals with vocabulary, puns and humor? Or one that tracks moving objects?
sneak 14y ago
Counterpoint: "xkcd"
- judegomila 14y ago
  Agreed there are exceptions! We need an xkcd sketch for this....
- Samuel_Michon 14y ago
  I don't find 'xkcd' particularly easy to pronounce or remember. Given its target audience, it works for xkcd. Geeks like geeky sounding, hard to pronounce names (like gnustep, xmlhttprequest and PostgreSQL). If a name like 'xkcd' were chosen for a consumer service, it probably wouldn't work very well.
  - jtheory 14y ago
    The name was chosen explicitly to be difficult to pronounce and remember.
    - sneak 14y ago
      No, it wasn't. I named my company in the same way Mr. Munroe named his webcomic: a four-letter domain available in .com, .net, and .org.
      - jtheory 14y ago
        http://www.redhat.com/magazine/025nov06/features/xkcd/ http://www.redhat.com/magazine/025nov06/features/xkcd/ "Actually the domain name came after the instant messaging screen name, which I picked late one night. Five, six, maybe seven years ago, I was tired of having names that meant something. Skywalker4, Animorph7... I wanted to pick a name that I wouldn’t get tired of. That would just always mean me. So I just went down combinations of letters that weren’t taken, until I could find one that didn’t have any meaning, didn’t have any pronunciation, and didn’t seem like an obvious acronym for anything."
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
tptacek 14y ago
Or, just name your company quickly and move on. We lost a couple weeks early on to naming Matasano, and after some false starts, eventually gave up and thumbed through a list of exotic plants. By the time the book of plants had been opened, the naming premise had been accepted: we were done trying to find a semantically "fitting" name for the company. We just picked a plant with a cool name. We ran into two "problems" down the road; first: it turns out that a "Matasano" is a "quack doctor" in South America, which we discovered shortly after hiring someone from Argentina. We quickly convinced ourselves that the irony was a value-add, not a cost. Second, we kept getting confused with Monsanto. This sounds (a little) sillier than it actually is. A lot of our clients, particularly back in 2006-2007, were large enterprises where the staff was particularly likely to have some confusion. We had more serious conversations about renaming over the Monsanto thing than over the "quack doctor" thing. Ultimately, we just got over it and kept plowing forward. Equity goes into your name; it usually doesn't get extracted from your name. There's some sense in picking a good name, but keep in mind that weeks of time --- which is what we were facing --- is a very steep price to pay for something that might only be marginally important down the road. I submit that the term "Airbnb", while memorable, has very little intrinsic meaning to most people who rent out their places on Airbnb. Ebay has none whatsoever. "Heroku" was one of YC's biggest acquisitions; that name breaks one of the rules of thumb of this post (3 syllables, yet means nothing to its customers). "Stripe" and "Square" and "Paypal" are great names, but "Braintree" seems to be doing pretty well too, and if "Braintree" is OK, I humbly suggest that "Mindweasel" and "Thoughtpants" will work too. This is a good post. All I'm saying is, be careful of the procrastinate-y issues that come up early in your company. They all matter less than execution on everything else.
- judegomila 14y ago
  You should be able to pull off a great name in 1 day. Heroku is a great name: abstracted, unique, interesting and developer related. Ebay is also a great name.
  - domainregistry 14y ago
    "You should be able to pull off a great name in 1 day." One of the things I always suggest to people is running name choices by potential customers when appropriate. As such you simply wouldn't be able to do this in one day. Even if you just wanted to check and see how well people hear the name when you say it and can easily spell it that is going to take some time. The amount of care you take in this area of course is related to what the name is being used for of course.
dreeves 14y ago
Great points! But just to list more counterexamples, from another Hacker News thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3181272 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3181272 I'm pretty pleased with my own similar essay on this topic, which I called "Nominology": http://messymatters.com/nominology http://messymatters.com/nominology
- judegomila 14y ago
  Useful.
- bduerst 14y ago
  Speaking of defining names, "Nominology" comes across as the study of eating.
  - dreeves 14y ago
    You're thinking of nomnomology. :)
hellosmithy 14y ago
What? Airbnb are re-branding to Air? That's a terrible idea.
- judegomila 14y ago
  Just a prediction there...
- tg3 14y ago
  I was also under the impression that BankSimple rebranded to Simple due to regulatory issues (I think certain states have rules about the type of company that can have the word "Bank" in the name).
austenallred 14y ago
Pinterest has a pin in its logo? At first I thought I had never noticed this, but then as I look for it I'm not sure if it really was designed to be a pin.
guylhem 14y ago
Alternative suggestion : name it after anything you have the matching .com domain as long it is not offensive.
calinet6 14y ago
... All that and the best you could come up with was "Heyzap"?
- awolf 14y ago
  I did not realize that the author was from the company named Heyzap. When they used it as an example of a good name, I scoffed and then hit the back button. That name is one of the worst out there. I don't know why in particular but it annoys the hell out of me every time I see it.
spiritplumber 14y ago
Mine is named Robots Everywhere and has a 1950s logo. This came from my mom's exclamation in entering the workshop while we were testing mesh-networked antbots.
aneth4 14y ago
A good list of considerations. The most important ones I think are still the classic two: 1) Emotive - The name should evoke some sort of emotional connection. This is essential to being memorable and likable. This is why computers.com and chairs.com are not so great for selling computers and chairs unless you are going for mass-market, price-based, SEO-optimized, unbranded sales. 2) Meaning - The name should evoke some sort of actual meaning associated with your product. This becomes less important as a company becomes established. When a name is established is the right time to separate the meaning component, not when the company is formed. Apple was formerly Apple Computer, but Apple would have been a terrible name choice in 1979 because it would require too much explanation. Hipmunk is terrible name for a travel product, despite Jude calling that out as a good one. It has decent, if confusing, emotive response, and zero meaning or association with travel. Establishing that as a travel brand will be much more work than, say Kayak, which has at least some association with travel. I, for one, struggle to recall "Hipmunk" much more than Travelocity, Kayak, or Orbitz. AirBNB is a good name, but fails is the secondary concern of being easy to communicate and spell. Despite that, it is strong in the two primary concerns above, so it is ultimately a good name. I agree with Jude that at some point they may follow the path of Apple and reduce the name to a more essential emotive component, such as just Air.
- justincormack 14y ago
  Agree, other than I will only call Orbitz for space travel. In 500 years time they will be a great brand.
IsaacL 14y ago
The best resource for this I've found is: http://www.thenameinspector.com/10-tips-for-naming-your-company-product-or-service/ http://www.thenameinspector.com/10-tips-for-naming-your-comp... And the rest of that guy's blog.
smickie 14y ago
Lots of people are pulling Airbnb up on their name, but I think it's great: Air = air travel, BnB = Bed and breakfast I'm not sure if some people don't know what it means because it might be a British colloquialism or whether it's totally unintentional Airbnb's part.
- minimax 14y ago
  Airbnb is an iteration on the company's original name, which was "AirBed and Breakfast." The idea was (and I think still is) that there is a ton of unused potential "capacity" in terms of empty couches and inflatable mattresses (airbeds) that people could offer for rent if given the opportunity.
mise 14y ago
We struggle with our name: Bitesize Irish Gaelic. It's a language learning tool. The Irish language is called "Irish" in Ireland, but often "Gaelic" elsewhere (depending on who you're speaking with). The name we've ended up with is a mouthful of a compromise :) I don't know if there's a fix for that...
- dpark 14y ago
  Your name is fine for the product. If you went with just "Bitesize Irish" or "Bitesize Gaelic", you'd likely be much more confusing to a big chunk of your target market. "Bitesize Irish Gaelic" isn't great as a company name because it's so narrow, but "Bitesize" is a good name if you want to expand to other languages at some point. I don't know what you'd have to pay for the domain, but it's probably available since it's just parked right now.
- tankbot 14y ago
  Call it Eolas, the Irish/Gaelic word for knowledge. Interestingly yours is the first site listed when Googling "Irish/Gaelic word for learning" so grats on your SEO.
ThomPete 14y ago
Great names are built not found.
OldSchool 14y ago
Keep in mind these things change like fashion and it depends if you're selling to consumers or business. You'll also want to be sure that the name appeals to your target audience or you risk it being liked only by clones of yourself, which are likely to be few.
TallboyOne 14y ago
When in doubt, name it after a fruit!
- ndepoel 14y ago
  And then your next startup is called Banana. Great idea!
ahmetteke 14y ago
ask on coWonder and let the crowd decide it http://www.cowonder.com http://www.cowonder.com
- yen223 14y ago
  Talk about company names, I thought this is pronounced cow-onder, and is a tool to communicate with cattle.
bsimpson 14y ago
I disagree about the vagueness of a name. If I see a great name, I'll understand the point-of-view of the company (usually, a key element of their product or audience). If the company pivots so much that the name becomes detracting, they can always rebrand later: "NewProduct by NoLongerRelevantName" eventually becomes just "NewProduct".
InfinityX0 14y ago
Something missing here: SEO considerations. It matters less as the days pass, but there is still value to getting an important keyword or two in the domain name (or to be the important keyword, better still). This is especially true if your business is planning to generate lots of business through organic. Especially false if it doesn't.
- shredfvz 14y ago
  The audience for your corporate name is most likely: investors, bankers, family members, and people who know nothing about you. In light of this, a perfect company name is easy to say over the phone, memorable, and suggestive in roughly that order of importance. A perfect example is "3D Robotics". Your company name is the only chance you have to verbally communicate everything there is to know about your business in a split second. Your corporate name != your app name, and your app name != your URL.
ndepoel 14y ago
Golden tip: go and play some Wordfeud. You'll come up with tons of nonsensical abstract words and names that have an interesting sound to them while trying to place your letters. I'll bet you some of those would make for great company names.
aaronbasssett 14y ago
Hey guys you know what is a cool name? HeyZap. There's a lot of names you could call your company, like Zap Hey, or Hi Nap. But I really like HeyZap. You know what looks awesome? Lighting bolts. You know what name has a Z which looks like a lighting bolt? HeyZap. Did I mention HeyZap is a cool name? Do you like the name HeyZap? If you're trying to name a company I think you should pick a name which really has PUNCH, something disruptive, something like HeyZap. Don't you think HeyZap is a great name? Obviously you're not going to think of a name as cool as HeyZap, but if HeyZap wasn't already taken you should really think about naming your company HeyZap. Has anyone heard of HeyZap? It has an awesome name, it's HeyZap. We really put a lot of effort in; we tried HelloBuzz, HiZing, GreetingsEbullience but we finally decided on HeyZap. It's just so catchy, HeyZap, HeyZap, HeyZap.
baddox 14y ago
I believe the syllable division should be "Ap" "ple."
kwr 14y ago
This just inspired me to throw out my startup's name and buy a new domain.
- mcherm 14y ago
  Really? If you don't mind my asking, what did you throw out and what did you switch to?
keeboard 14y ago
This is invaluable advice. You should start a web service with which people like me can submit all the crappy domain names we think about buying and you give us feedback. I'll let you think of the name for it though...
grayc 14y ago
slashdot?
joonix 14y ago
Meh. These days it's so hard to find an available .com name that any bootstrapped startup is probably going to find its name by spending quality time at a domain registrar.
zerostar07 14y ago
Considering that you are naming a new company some of these points are not valid/applicable. Being memorable is not easy unless people can repeatedly bump on to you which requires that your keep it in the news/advertising or that people can find you through mental or google searches. If you choose an abstract name people are not likely to find you again through search. I believe it's important for the name or part of the name to contain something descriptive. Names like "apple" "stripe" "zynga" are completely random; it would be a bad idea to name your bookmarking app after a tree or a liquor. Now, 'paypal', that's a great name. In the end however, a name is just a name, and doesn't really matter that much.

98 points by judegomila 14y ago

Although I have heard quite a few of these tips before, this is still a great article refresher. I like the idea of tip "8. Light up a MRI scanner", but I'm a bit skeptical on how easy that is to access/try.

pavel_lishin 14y ago
It's also not really actionable. Cool, my company name lights up the parts of the brain that deal with mathematics, shape recognition, and spatial coordination. Is that good? Is it better or worse than lighting up the part of the brain that deals with vocabulary, puns and humor? Or one that tracks moving objects?

sneak 14y ago

Counterpoint: "xkcd"

judegomila 14y ago
Agreed there are exceptions! We need an xkcd sketch for this....
Samuel_Michon 14y ago
I don't find 'xkcd' particularly easy to pronounce or remember. Given its target audience, it works for xkcd. Geeks like geeky sounding, hard to pronounce names (like gnustep, xmlhttprequest and PostgreSQL). If a name like 'xkcd' were chosen for a consumer service, it probably wouldn't work very well.
- jtheory 14y ago
  The name was chosen explicitly to be difficult to pronounce and remember.
  - sneak 14y ago
    No, it wasn't. I named my company in the same way Mr. Munroe named his webcomic: a four-letter domain available in .com, .net, and .org.
    - jtheory 14y ago
      http://www.redhat.com/magazine/025nov06/features/xkcd/ http://www.redhat.com/magazine/025nov06/features/xkcd/ "Actually the domain name came after the instant messaging screen name, which I picked late one night. Five, six, maybe seven years ago, I was tired of having names that meant something. Skywalker4, Animorph7... I wanted to pick a name that I wouldn’t get tired of. That would just always mean me. So I just went down combinations of letters that weren’t taken, until I could find one that didn’t have any meaning, didn’t have any pronunciation, and didn’t seem like an obvious acronym for anything."

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

tptacek 14y ago

Or, just name your company quickly and move on. We lost a couple weeks early on to naming Matasano, and after some false starts, eventually gave up and thumbed through a list of exotic plants. By the time the book of plants had been opened, the naming premise had been accepted: we were done trying to find a semantically "fitting" name for the company. We just picked a plant with a cool name. We ran into two "problems" down the road; first: it turns out that a "Matasano" is a "quack doctor" in South America, which we discovered shortly after hiring someone from Argentina. We quickly convinced ourselves that the irony was a value-add, not a cost. Second, we kept getting confused with Monsanto. This sounds (a little) sillier than it actually is. A lot of our clients, particularly back in 2006-2007, were large enterprises where the staff was particularly likely to have some confusion. We had more serious conversations about renaming over the Monsanto thing than over the "quack doctor" thing. Ultimately, we just got over it and kept plowing forward. Equity goes into your name; it usually doesn't get extracted from your name. There's some sense in picking a good name, but keep in mind that weeks of time --- which is what we were facing --- is a very steep price to pay for something that might only be marginally important down the road. I submit that the term "Airbnb", while memorable, has very little intrinsic meaning to most people who rent out their places on Airbnb. Ebay has none whatsoever. "Heroku" was one of YC's biggest acquisitions; that name breaks one of the rules of thumb of this post (3 syllables, yet means nothing to its customers). "Stripe" and "Square" and "Paypal" are great names, but "Braintree" seems to be doing pretty well too, and if "Braintree" is OK, I humbly suggest that "Mindweasel" and "Thoughtpants" will work too. This is a good post. All I'm saying is, be careful of the procrastinate-y issues that come up early in your company. They all matter less than execution on everything else.

judegomila 14y ago
You should be able to pull off a great name in 1 day. Heroku is a great name: abstracted, unique, interesting and developer related. Ebay is also a great name.
- domainregistry 14y ago
  "You should be able to pull off a great name in 1 day." One of the things I always suggest to people is running name choices by potential customers when appropriate. As such you simply wouldn't be able to do this in one day. Even if you just wanted to check and see how well people hear the name when you say it and can easily spell it that is going to take some time. The amount of care you take in this area of course is related to what the name is being used for of course.

dreeves 14y ago

Great points! But just to list more counterexamples, from another Hacker News thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3181272 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3181272 I'm pretty pleased with my own similar essay on this topic, which I called "Nominology": http://messymatters.com/nominology http://messymatters.com/nominology

judegomila 14y ago
Useful.
bduerst 14y ago
Speaking of defining names, "Nominology" comes across as the study of eating.
- dreeves 14y ago
  You're thinking of nomnomology. :)

hellosmithy 14y ago

What? Airbnb are re-branding to Air? That's a terrible idea.

judegomila 14y ago
Just a prediction there...
tg3 14y ago
I was also under the impression that BankSimple rebranded to Simple due to regulatory issues (I think certain states have rules about the type of company that can have the word "Bank" in the name).

austenallred 14y ago

Pinterest has a pin in its logo? At first I thought I had never noticed this, but then as I look for it I'm not sure if it really was designed to be a pin.

guylhem 14y ago

Alternative suggestion : name it after anything you have the matching .com domain as long it is not offensive.

calinet6 14y ago

... All that and the best you could come up with was "Heyzap"?

awolf 14y ago
I did not realize that the author was from the company named Heyzap. When they used it as an example of a good name, I scoffed and then hit the back button. That name is one of the worst out there. I don't know why in particular but it annoys the hell out of me every time I see it.

spiritplumber 14y ago

Mine is named Robots Everywhere and has a 1950s logo. This came from my mom's exclamation in entering the workshop while we were testing mesh-networked antbots.

aneth4 14y ago

A good list of considerations. The most important ones I think are still the classic two: 1) Emotive - The name should evoke some sort of emotional connection. This is essential to being memorable and likable. This is why computers.com and chairs.com are not so great for selling computers and chairs unless you are going for mass-market, price-based, SEO-optimized, unbranded sales. 2) Meaning - The name should evoke some sort of actual meaning associated with your product. This becomes less important as a company becomes established. When a name is established is the right time to separate the meaning component, not when the company is formed. Apple was formerly Apple Computer, but Apple would have been a terrible name choice in 1979 because it would require too much explanation. Hipmunk is terrible name for a travel product, despite Jude calling that out as a good one. It has decent, if confusing, emotive response, and zero meaning or association with travel. Establishing that as a travel brand will be much more work than, say Kayak, which has at least some association with travel. I, for one, struggle to recall "Hipmunk" much more than Travelocity, Kayak, or Orbitz. AirBNB is a good name, but fails is the secondary concern of being easy to communicate and spell. Despite that, it is strong in the two primary concerns above, so it is ultimately a good name. I agree with Jude that at some point they may follow the path of Apple and reduce the name to a more essential emotive component, such as just Air.

justincormack 14y ago
Agree, other than I will only call Orbitz for space travel. In 500 years time they will be a great brand.

IsaacL 14y ago

The best resource for this I've found is: http://www.thenameinspector.com/10-tips-for-naming-your-company-product-or-service/ http://www.thenameinspector.com/10-tips-for-naming-your-comp... And the rest of that guy's blog.

smickie 14y ago

Lots of people are pulling Airbnb up on their name, but I think it's great: Air = air travel, BnB = Bed and breakfast I'm not sure if some people don't know what it means because it might be a British colloquialism or whether it's totally unintentional Airbnb's part.

minimax 14y ago
Airbnb is an iteration on the company's original name, which was "AirBed and Breakfast." The idea was (and I think still is) that there is a ton of unused potential "capacity" in terms of empty couches and inflatable mattresses (airbeds) that people could offer for rent if given the opportunity.

mise 14y ago

We struggle with our name: Bitesize Irish Gaelic. It's a language learning tool. The Irish language is called "Irish" in Ireland, but often "Gaelic" elsewhere (depending on who you're speaking with). The name we've ended up with is a mouthful of a compromise :) I don't know if there's a fix for that...

dpark 14y ago
Your name is fine for the product. If you went with just "Bitesize Irish" or "Bitesize Gaelic", you'd likely be much more confusing to a big chunk of your target market. "Bitesize Irish Gaelic" isn't great as a company name because it's so narrow, but "Bitesize" is a good name if you want to expand to other languages at some point. I don't know what you'd have to pay for the domain, but it's probably available since it's just parked right now.
tankbot 14y ago
Call it Eolas, the Irish/Gaelic word for knowledge. Interestingly yours is the first site listed when Googling "Irish/Gaelic word for learning" so grats on your SEO.

ThomPete 14y ago

Great names are built not found.

OldSchool 14y ago

Keep in mind these things change like fashion and it depends if you're selling to consumers or business. You'll also want to be sure that the name appeals to your target audience or you risk it being liked only by clones of yourself, which are likely to be few.

TallboyOne 14y ago

When in doubt, name it after a fruit!

ndepoel 14y ago
And then your next startup is called Banana. Great idea!

ahmetteke 14y ago

ask on coWonder and let the crowd decide it http://www.cowonder.com http://www.cowonder.com

yen223 14y ago
Talk about company names, I thought this is pronounced cow-onder, and is a tool to communicate with cattle.

bsimpson 14y ago

I disagree about the vagueness of a name. If I see a great name, I'll understand the point-of-view of the company (usually, a key element of their product or audience). If the company pivots so much that the name becomes detracting, they can always rebrand later: "NewProduct by NoLongerRelevantName" eventually becomes just "NewProduct".

InfinityX0 14y ago

Something missing here: SEO considerations. It matters less as the days pass, but there is still value to getting an important keyword or two in the domain name (or to be the important keyword, better still). This is especially true if your business is planning to generate lots of business through organic. Especially false if it doesn't.

shredfvz 14y ago
The audience for your corporate name is most likely: investors, bankers, family members, and people who know nothing about you. In light of this, a perfect company name is easy to say over the phone, memorable, and suggestive in roughly that order of importance. A perfect example is "3D Robotics". Your company name is the only chance you have to verbally communicate everything there is to know about your business in a split second. Your corporate name != your app name, and your app name != your URL.

ndepoel 14y ago

Golden tip: go and play some Wordfeud. You'll come up with tons of nonsensical abstract words and names that have an interesting sound to them while trying to place your letters. I'll bet you some of those would make for great company names.

aaronbasssett 14y ago

Hey guys you know what is a cool name? HeyZap. There's a lot of names you could call your company, like Zap Hey, or Hi Nap. But I really like HeyZap. You know what looks awesome? Lighting bolts. You know what name has a Z which looks like a lighting bolt? HeyZap. Did I mention HeyZap is a cool name? Do you like the name HeyZap? If you're trying to name a company I think you should pick a name which really has PUNCH, something disruptive, something like HeyZap. Don't you think HeyZap is a great name? Obviously you're not going to think of a name as cool as HeyZap, but if HeyZap wasn't already taken you should really think about naming your company HeyZap. Has anyone heard of HeyZap? It has an awesome name, it's HeyZap. We really put a lot of effort in; we tried HelloBuzz, HiZing, GreetingsEbullience but we finally decided on HeyZap. It's just so catchy, HeyZap, HeyZap, HeyZap.

baddox 14y ago

I believe the syllable division should be "Ap" "ple."

kwr 14y ago

This just inspired me to throw out my startup's name and buy a new domain.

mcherm 14y ago
Really? If you don't mind my asking, what did you throw out and what did you switch to?

keeboard 14y ago

This is invaluable advice. You should start a web service with which people like me can submit all the crappy domain names we think about buying and you give us feedback. I'll let you think of the name for it though...

grayc 14y ago

slashdot?

joonix 14y ago

Meh. These days it's so hard to find an available .com name that any bootstrapped startup is probably going to find its name by spending quality time at a domain registrar.

zerostar07 14y ago

Considering that you are naming a new company some of these points are not valid/applicable. Being memorable is not easy unless people can repeatedly bump on to you which requires that your keep it in the news/advertising or that people can find you through mental or google searches. If you choose an abstract name people are not likely to find you again through search. I believe it's important for the name or part of the name to contain something descriptive. Names like "apple" "stripe" "zynga" are completely random; it would be a bad idea to name your bookmarking app after a tree or a liquor. Now, 'paypal', that's a great name. In the end however, a name is just a name, and doesn't really matter that much.