Business Naming Basics

If you’ve followed my blog postings concerning business naming, you’ll know I emphasize going for quantity first.

By getting as many word combinations and approaches to naming as you can – not stopping until you have at least a couple of hundred name candidates – you’ll enjoy two advantages. The first, at least a dozen or so candidates that will work as your company name. The second, and probably most important, are the directions that some of the candidates will lead you. They become catalysts for fresh naming ideas that are relevant but novel, the very characteristics I look for in a business name.

One method of creating that long list of candidates involves building a “mind map” of synonyms and associated words. You begin with a characteristic you’d like your name to possess. In the example below, it’s a “sexy name”.

Then think of the obvious words that convey sexy: romance, passion, spicy, etc. Make each one a branch from the sexy name root. Then for each of these sub-branches, list their synonyms. Just take them directly from a good thesaurus like Roget’s 21st Century Thesaurus. (I particularly like this one because of the cross references to concepts, i.e. associated words which I can also add.)

You might also add some sub-branches for animals, flowers, colors, scents, etc. that you think convey sexy.

Now begin combining words from one branch with words from a second branch, then a third, etc. It won’t take but 10 to 20 minutes until you have a large list of candidates, each that might be a name or a path to one.

Tags: Name Development, Name Management, Product Naming by MartinJ
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Business names that were created prior to the Internet becoming as pervasive as it is now sometimes struggle with their name because their original name is just too long to be used as a domain name.

I believe that’s why we’ve seem many of these traditional marketers using abbreviated names – nick names or a string of initials – in their promotions recently. Otherwize, I don’t see why they’d mess with their name’s equity.

Most recently observed company to take this course of action: American Family Insurance.

Now first of all, even 15 years ago that name was a mouthful. But over time, and especially with the on-going use of the American Family Insurance jingle, the name has become well-known and well-appreciated. But they adopted a short domain name – AmFam – and have begun using that name as well as the long name in their advertising.

I think that just leads to confusion and dilutes the brand.

Even in the environment of texting and twittering I believe the longer, well-known and well-respected American Family Insurance name stands for something they are in danger of losing if they become known as AmFam. That loss is their heritage and their image of a responsible and well-respected insurance company. I personally look for stability and traditional values from my financial services, especially in light of the recent AIG and banking disasters. WaMo didn’t do much for Washington Mutual, did it?

Let me know if your agree or not with my admittedly reactionary response to this nick name approach to being “up-to-date”. Leave your comment below.

Tags: Name Management by MartinJ
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