Company Naming with Phonics
One way to expand your corporate name candidate list – and possibly find a winner – is to look at some of the basic words you’ve introduced into the list that can be spelled differently. Mostly these will be the descriptive words that always creep into the lists even if you’re not planning to develop a descriptive name. (it’s a good idea not to develop descriptive names as I discussed in the blog, Business Naming with Descriptive Words: a Bad Idea.) However, they will slip in.)
Examples of five variations on a theme
Some of those words can be spelled alternatively or phonically.
Thus if you were naming a naming agency, you might explore “Knames”, “Gnames”, “Naims”, “Naymes” and “Naimz”.
There is a caution in that some candidates are really homonyms that could become confusing. (Homonyms are words pronounced the same way but spelled differently. (feet, feat, fete).
In addition, you may run into legal hassles if someone in your trademark classification has trademarked a name containing the more common spelled word. If the courts were to decide your variation led to confusion in the marketplace, you would probably have to change your name.
A thorough trademark search for variations before adopting a name is always a good idea.
Related business naming posts:
- Naming Idea: Misspelling Familiar Words For this technique you deliberately “misspell” words to create a new name: Qwest, Ikon, Duque. ...
- Tacking for Company Names Isn’t Tacky At All Some business naming techniques have a long history, yet still manage to produce fresh name candidates. The activity of “tacking”...
- Adding a Personal Touch to Business Naming. For unique business names, there are naming customs that permeate certain cultures that can be adapted to non-name words to...
- Naming Idea: Combining Familiar with the Unfamiliar We know unique names are better than descriptive, mundane names. But people don’t like completely new, coined-word names in the...
- Business Naming Terminology Helps Identify Name Effectiveness Like almost anything else, corporate names can be classified by type or category. Why would you want to do this?...
Stumble it!
Clever branding ideas. English can be so confusing. No wonder it’s so tough for English language learners. Laugh a bit and sigh a bit as you check out English Can Be So Confusing.