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Great rules for choosing a name

Choosing a great name for your brand is hard. Very hard. Shitty names can kill. Great names can save the day. Seth Godin told me that the reason Qwitter was so successful was because the name was perfect. He must have been right. It certainly wasn’t because the app actually worked.

It’s an art

If any core element of business is more art than science, it’s marketing. Great marketing is driven my instinctual, creative forces of genius. But whenever I’m naming something, I still refer to a checklist of seven criteria of stand-out names by Marty Neumeier, which first featured in his book The Brand Gap and then in his presentation by the same name.

1. Distinctiveness

This is important for brand recognition and recollection. Human brains are hardwired to notice that which is different. Now more than ever, us folk in the web racket need great reasons to gain the attention of a potential customer amongst the sea of new web products. (Using “cloud” in your name is now a bad idea.)

2. Brevity

This is important for word-of-mouth growth. I’m in a rush. I can tap only so many characters in a day. Long names get abbreviated and shortened and screwed around with. And that’s a branding disaster, in my opinion.

3. Appropriateness

This is important for brand recognition and recollection and education. My name’s Eoghan. I think that’s appropriate because I’m similarly Irish and difficult to understand—people outside Ireland simply cannot pronounce my name, see point four also. If you met me, you’d realise I’m no Zack, Chad or Bret. Great names fit. Assistly is for helping people, Github is the place git repositories live, Postmark is a unique way of sending automated mails, Dropbox is a safe place to throw your possessions into, etc.

4. Easy spelling and pronunciation

This is important for word-of-mouth growth. A great name isn’t worth a damn if people can’t spell it. Plus you feel like an idiot spelling your company name out over the phone. And the moment someone says your name wrong, you’re in trouble. And it’s kinda awkward.

5. Likability

This is important for word-of-mouth growth. Is someone going to feel dumb for saying your product name? (See “Ireland’s Best Local Job and Service Marketplace!”.) Worse, do you second guess yourself when using the name to pitch your business? Everyone needs to “like” your name.

6. Extendability

This is important for your long-term business strategy. Don’t box yourself in. Leave room for expansion by focusing on the vision, not the specific solution. “Dropbox” works for music, photos, documents and more. “Picbox” (or similar) works for photos. But beware, there’s a fine line between extendable names and meaningless nothingness—think Interlink, Multiweb.

7. Protectability

This is important for your long-term branding strategy. Can you get a trademark for the name? Or are you clearly stepping on someone’s toes with it? It’s likely not worth an argument with the owner of a trademark down the line after you’ve established the name. I know a couple of companies big and small who have had to publicly change the name of their product due to trademark disputes.

The quality scale

Like with any list of advice, you’ll get the most out of trying to understand these pointers rather than trying to follow them too carefully. There are great names out there that break some of these “rules”. The best closing advice I can give and something I try to bear in mind myself is this:

  1. The bottom 10% of names on the quality scale, the really shitty ones, can hurt your business potential. Work hard to avoid these.
  2. The next 80% of names, the ones that are fine or even good, the ones you see every day, won’t really impact on your business relative to everything else you need to work hard at. If you’re in this group, you should probably stop stressing over your name.
  3. The top 10% of names have magical, force-multiplying powers when used with great products and great marketing concepts. If you can afford to put in the work required to find these, good for you. But these are rare and hard to find.

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