Business Naming Basics

A few days ago I mentioned Google as a naming resource and how you could use the search function to find comprehensive lists of naming terms for about any niche.

Well, there are other ways to use Google to find words and phrases you might find useful when compiling long lists of name candidates.

But first, you need a Google AdWords account. Don’t worry, it’s simple and only costs five dollars. You can get one by clicking here.

Then go to the Google Keyword Tool from your basic Google account page by clicking AdWords, then Tools in the upper row of buttons, and finally, on the Keyword Tool.

The Google Keyword Tool was invented to help those wishing to advertise (Google AdWords) on Google to identify keywords those advertisers could target. The lists compiled through the Google Keyword search facility are relevant words to the main keyword you type into the search box. Be sure to search for synonyms as well as the regular “long-tail” keyword search. Long-tail refers to phrases that are more specific than most one and two word keywords, i.e., “high heeled red pumps” as opposed to the more generic “red shoes”.
So by querying the Google Keyword search function, you will get a hundred
or more words and phrases relevant to your inputted keyword. And then you can search some of the likely candidates you discovered by running them through the search process again. You are drilling down even further to expose more long-tail naming candidates.

You can select the ones you wish to “keep” and save them to a text file or a .csv (Excel) file. An example of such a selection, based upon the keyword “score”, is presented on the left. The words gleaned from this search offer additional fields to plow for even more relevant words and phrases you may use in naming a business or product. In the case of the example to the left, 17 candidates were found in an initial list of 100-plus in about 15 minutes, less than one candidate a minute.

Thus, you are adding to the list of name candidates. And remember, the longer the list, the more likely a super name will emerge.

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Naming help can come from your good friend, Google.

By searching for your “trigger” word followed by “+names”, you can find many specialized lists of names that might be adopted for your business or product name.

And remember, the more name candidates you can generate, the more likely a great name will surface.

For example, if you want to explore using bird names, your search for “birds+names” would bring up several very relevant web sites. One site in this category brought me to Cal Photos where hundreds of birds from around the world are named – and photos provided.

Starling, Mallard, Grosbeak or Sparrow might be a good business name

Another site provided Obsolete English Names of North American Birds
and Their Modern Equivalents

While another brought up not only a list of bird names but also the “group” names to which they belong. (We know about bevies of quail, but did you know about convocations of eagles and wedges of swans?)

And then there’s the authority site, Ornithology.com, where six or seven different sources of bird names are linked.

Well, you get the idea. And if you don’t get many “hits” by adding “+name”, you can try “+list” or “+identify”. Each subject will have a different set of nomenclature, and people passionate enough to compile comprehensive name lists. But a five-minute Google search ought to identify many naming ideas.

Google is indeed a great naming resource.

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Name generators are special databases attached to software that allow you to combine the words that are stored in those databases to form new words, aka names. There are many, many such web sites available.

Several of the naming generators available at Seventh Sanctum

A quick and easy way to find and use name generators is a special site all about name generators. It’s called Seventh Sanctum and it’s an authority site and directory for name generators of all types, both those they’ve created and scores of others. Another great thing: it’s free to use.

If you’ve been following this blog at all – and thank you if you have been – you know I advocate generating long name candidate lists, lists that have been generated from a variety of sources. Name generators help you populate those lists, and often times surprise you with real gems.

Not all of the name generators listed at Seventh Sanctum are appropriate for brand names – some are for naming cats, rock bands and Star War aliases. But they’re so simple to use that you won’t waste much time seeing if three or four of them might be of some help. Quality of results vary – some just generate random strings of letters. But there are some surprisingly fruitful ones.

Explore, even the ones you’d normally shun. You just never know when or where the “right” name will pop up.

Seventh Sanctum even provides directions for constructing your own generators. So if you have collected different types of words for use in naming like I have, you might be interested in making them databases you can call up and mix and match with other data-based word collections.

Tags: Name Evaluation, Naming Resources by MartinJ
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Researching the Internet for naming ideas is surprisingly easy – if you know where to look.

I’ve found several really great sites for name ideas, but one with a lot of potential I keep coming back to is Use Wisdom.

Types of naming words you can find at Use Wisdom

This is an unbelievably diverse and comprehensive source of potential names. I’d suggest going there and just browsing to get a feel of the site. If you’re on a specific search in your category, I’ll bet you’ll find relevant lists, which are mostly links to other word-related sites.

There are two areas I visit a lot: The lists under Jargon, Lingo and Slang, and those under Trivia. There I found, for instance, the lists of Sports Cliches ripe with naming ideas, there’s a short list of nautical terms at the Colloquial Phrases site, and lots of stuff under Political Cliches.

One thing, though: quite a few of the links to what look to be inspiring sites seem to be broken, quite often lists compiled and stored on university websites. This can be frustrating, but just go on to find other gems in other fields.

The site also links to a variety of dictionaries, thesauruses and writing resources – style guides, grammar sources, and sites about semantics, syntactics, semiotics and more.

Warning: if you’re a word maven, you can spend literally hours chasing links here.

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Here’s a business name a wish I’d thought up: Wigglebutt Inn.

It’s pretty clear we’re talking about a dog kennel. Yet it’s so refreshingly unique and, shall I say it, “cute”, that it just makes you smile. It’s a name that builds relationships, that represents a business where the people know dogs and have a sense of humor to boot.

It just goes to show you needn’t take yourself too seriously when naming your company.

You can read more about this brilliant name at Content Marketing Today.

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This naming company is called Nameboy.

It is first and foremost a domain name site where you can purchase domain names.

But it has a neat word generator feature that allows you to enter two words of your choice and NameBoy will display over 30 different combined-word name ideas. Many just won’t work, but for each run-through, I usually find 10-15 I can legitimately add to my candidate list. Do that with 10-12 tries and you have another 100-plus candidates within a half-hour.

An added feature: all the words generated are supposed to be available as domain names. Now it may not be available as a .com, but the page will show you exactly what major domain name classifications are available for each candidate.

If having a business name that can also be a domain name, this is a very handy feature.

And when you’re done you can, of course, order your domain name directly from the Nameboy site.

Tags: Naming Resources by MartinJ
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Naming Resources come in all sizes and shapes, some free and some with a price.

As a professional namer, I’ve hunted down and identified many name resources, some of which were worth while bookmarking and using when the old muse stopped feeding my creative fires.

One such site is WordLab.

Here’s how the creators of this valuable site describe their objective and their resource:

“The leading free resource for naming and branding, Wordlab is both a Universal think tank, where users employ the services of anyone and everyone willing to contribute their own personal naming and branding genius to the Wordboard for immediate use, and an ever-expanding database…from the site’s co-creators, Quark and Snark. With over 40 categories ranging from Acronyms to Zen Koans, Wordlab’s original think-bank will have you sometimes smiling, sometimes howling and sometimes running for the trademark office. Browse and explore the vast riches.”

There’s an awful lot of naming help on this site, but much of it frustrating because there’s no relevance between your business or product and the suggestions you generate from their databases. Never-the-less, quite often you’ll see suggestions that resonate with you. Just jot these letter groups down without judging them. They may work as name parts or they may spark ideas that do. It’s all part of the creative process.

Then there’s the WordLab “Big List” – a list of “new words” invented by readers and WordLab staff that may trigger ideas or provide a couple of relevant candidates.

WordLab also maintains a naming forum where you can post your need for a name. Just describe the business or product and several contributors will provide some ideas for you. There’s no guarantee that folks will respond, or that responders will present good name candidates.

But all in all, if you’re attempting to create a long list of name candidates from many sources and from many perspectives, include the resources of WordLab in your quest.

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When you’ve been in the company naming business as long as I have, my family knows what to give me for Christmas.

Books about words.

I love words – their meanings, their origins, their attributes.

So this Christmas, as in days past, I was delighted to find books under the tree. This year my wife found three really unique ones. All are enjoyable in themselves, and are also welcome additions to my naming resources library.

First was Hunter Davies’ Book of Lists: An Intriguing Collection of Facts and Figures. I own at least a dozen “books of lists”. This one comes from England and is a real olio of topics; everything from “Burial places of the famous” to “Favorite car colors”. And in between I found several lists that promised to be fruitful in naming a business or a product. For instance, under “American mountain biking slang” were these gems: acro-brat (a kid “jumping” his bike) and endo (flying over the handlebars end-over-end). Oh, I’ll spend some time during TV commercials of Lost enjoying this one.

Speaking of enjoyment, the kind that comes from an “aha” experience, Bloom’s Bouquet of Imaginary Words is an absolute prize. This small volume takes real words and with a deletion or addition of a character, or a combining of two words, or the switching of phonemes create new words the authors then define cleverly. Examples:

cabooze – bar car
bamboom – explosion in a rattan furniture factory
Lincoin – a penny
sermoan – a dull Sunday speech
martiny – a small cocktail
pugeon – chubby bird

I’ll use this book for naming ideas, and I’ll find it a source of instruction about how some of the words on my list of name candidates can be manipulated into new name possibilities.

Third is another England-originated reference: How Not To Say What You Mean: A Dictionary of Euphemisms (Oxford Paperback Reference). The majority of euphemisms have negative connotations – that’s the reason we use them in the first place. However, leafing through this 450-plus page, and using its thematic index, I found some fascinating words and terms that might lend themselves to name development. Problem is, the euphemisms are of English, not American, origin so there meanings are sometimes obscure.

I would like to see a compilation of only-positive  euphemisms, slang, idioms and colloquialisms published one day. It sometimes gets tiresome browsing the existing specialized dictionaries because of the raft of negative words that need to be culled.

Anyway, if you didn’t receive any good books for Christmas, you can check these three out by clicking on their titles above. And if you did, why not share them in the comments section below?

Tags: Naming Resources by MartinJ
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   There are some reference books I keep going back to during the business naming process.

(Note, I created the Ah, Books name and logo for a client several years ago.)

Here are my most prized company naming in-print resources:

Word Menu by Stephen Glazier.

Roget’s 21st Century Thesaurus edited by Barbara Ann Kipfer.

The Complete Word Book by Mary A. De Vrie

The Synonym Finder by J.I.Rodale

Word Stems: A Dictionary by John Kennedy

Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase & Fable, edited by Ivor H. Evans

Dictionary of Art and Archaeology by J.W. Mollett

Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion by W. L. Reese

Merriam Webster’s Geographical Dictionary

The Complete Rhyming Dictionary by Clement Wood

The links above will refer you to Amazon. They were current at the time of posting. But several of these books are out of print and only used copies are available, so you may find upon clicking the link that a particular volume is sold out. But usually one of Amazon’s used book partners will have a copy on hand, usually very cheaply.

Now I don’t use every volume for every project, but I do find myself going back to these resources time and time again. They only account for perhaps an eighth of my naming research library, but as I said, they are my "indispensable’s".

If anyone has a particular favorite naming resouce or two, please add it (them) as a comment below

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Like almost anything else, corporate names can be classified by type or category. Why would you want to do this?

Well, some types are more effective, more powerful name types than others. So with the descriptions below, I’ll also give my opinions about each types business naming effectiveness.

Before proceeding I must insert a couple of disclaimers. Quite often a name could logically fall into more than one category.

Also the categories themselves are not what you’d call “industry standards”. You’ll see other classifications in which different terminology is used, or where additional name types are defined and one or two of my list are omitted.

The purpose to this blog post is to identify name effectiveness.

Personal Names

These are businesses named after people. Both last names and first names qualify for this category. Multiple names are also included. Naming your business with your own name can be effective if your name carries some recognition with your market, or if you wish to establish a “personal brand”. However, personal names are not very distinctive. And if you ever plan to sell the business, your name on the door may be a deal-killer. You may also have a problem trademarking a personal name depending upon the other words contained in the name.

Geographic Names

These names are derived from place-names. They might be names of municipalities, states, geographic landmarks or features, regional “nicknames” (Queen City) or streets and other man-made places. Not included in this category are names beginning with “American” or “National”, or ending in “International” or “Global”. Using a local name as your business name will not differentiate you in the least. Just open a phone book to the name of your city or state to see what I mean. There may be gold in a geographic name as I pointed out in the post, 10,000 Business Names at your Fingertips, so don’t reject this name source out-of-hand. But please, don’t follow the crowd. One other thing: geographic names may be difficult to trademark.

Descriptive Names

These are names that, to some extent, describe the business being named. Many names in this category will begin with a suggestive word or benefit followed by one or two descriptive words. (Integrated Management Services, Enterprise Information Management, etc.). They can also be descriptive of the business’s industry, product category or product function. Descriptive names are, by and large, the least effective names. They normally rely on passive, Latin-derived words. They are usually too-long. Quite often descriptive names get shortened to an acronym, and that ain’t good as I explain in the next paragraph, Names from Initials. One last thing, as companies evolve over time, descriptive names become obsolete causing companies to re-name in order to reflect new directions and trends. Descriptive names can also be difficult to trademark.
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Names from Initials

In this group are names comprised of initials. There may be a word or two following (C&S Construction), but the name is about initials. They may or may not be acronyms. But the fact that they are just a string of letters makes them hard to remember and to associate with the company, its products, services or brand. Initials have no personality, do not differentiate and generate no passion. They are like model numbers. Nuff said.

Arbitrary Names

In this category are names that are not descriptive or suggestive of the companies having assumed them. Nor do they fit in other categories like geographic or historic. Examples include: Arbor Networks, Gryphon Technologies, Blue Pumpkin. Here are names that can become house-hold words, that can be promoted with imaging and messaging “out-of-the-box”. The best example is Apple. But be careful. Many companies have attempted to follow Apple’s lead only to call. Think of Zebra and Radish, both hi-tech darlings for a few minutes. They probably didn’t thrive because of other factors, but imitating a name type might demonstrate a “me-too” approach to running the businesses. Arbitrary names are usually not too difficult to trademark.

Suggestive Names

Here, a business incorporates a word, usually the first word, that suggests a benefit, or at least a positive attribute of the company. Examples: Summit Mortgage, Priority Leasing, Precision Staffing. Also included in this group is a sub-category, Historic/Classic names. They were enfolded here because these words are usually suggestive of positive attributes (Athena, Lincoln, Galileo). If a suggestive name is meme-like, it can be powerful. (Memes are words or images that upon exposure are instantly associated with an idea, situation or activity, and evoke a common reaction.) Trademarking a suggestive name is usually fairly easy.
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Offbeat Names

This is a potpourri of small categories. They include: alphanumeric names (5Linx Enterprises), whimsical/humorous names Jamba Juice), names comprised of phrases (Counsel On Call), and non-English names. There’s just too much variation within the offbeat class to classify the category as to effectiveness or trademarkibility.

Coined-Word Names

This group is comprised of names that were “made-up” or derived from sets of letters from other words. Five types are identified here: combined words (CyberStaff America), fuzed words (Amerisource Funding), tacked/clipped words (Fanta), alternately spelled words (Sirius Solutions), and morpheme constructions (Adonix). Although there are a great variety of coined-word names, I can generalize about them. First, most people don’t like them initially, but with exposure and association, coined names grow on people. It does take time, however. In addition, they are the easiest to trademark. They, like suggestive names, can be powerful if they are derived from memes. They can also be based upon parts of descriptive, suggestive and even personal word-parts. When combined, fuzed, tacked or clipped, they become differentiated even though they impart the connotations of the original words. I’m a fan.

Summary

Yes, the list above is somewhat arbitrary. But every list of name types is somewhat arbitrary. I’ve recently performed an analysis of some 5,000 names and used this classifying system. And even though you can place some names in more than a single category, there was room for every single name.

So I hope you’ll find this classification useful. And remember, coined-word names and suggestive names are generally the most effective in differentiating a company with a unique and compelling presence.

Tags: Naming Resources by MartinJ
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