Business Naming Basics

Using a descriptive business name, as I wrote yesterday, leads to a dead-end for rapidly growing companies.

But that’s just one problem when trying to morph a description into a corporate name.

Another major problem is that to truly describe a business usually takes at least three words. Not only that, they are usually multi-syllable words. The names are too long and too “intellectual”.

Here are four such company names from the latest list of INC 500 Rapidly Growing Companies:

Advanced Planning Services
Ancillary Care Management
Apex Facility Resources
Assured Information Security

Each is certainly a mouthful. But besides being hard to remember because of word-length, there’s nothing with a spark. Nothing “grabs” you.

And I’ll bet by now stakeholders within and outside the respective companies have resorted to calling the companies by their initials: APS, ACM, AFR, AIS.

And pretty soon, one or more will officially change their name to those initials and believe they’re making a wise choice.

But as I’ve stated more than once (my blog entitled Business naming with three initials – bad branding, for instance), initials have no personality or vitality. The name becomes a liability instead of an asset.

So for a multitude of reasons, descriptive names are bad names and should be avoided.

Related business naming posts:

1. Business Naming with Three Initials – Bad Branding IBM, RCA, AIG and MSN are recognized corporate names, but I wouldn’t follow their lead when naming a company. That's...
2. Business Naming By Contest: Another Bad Idea Quite often a business owner will ask his employees to help name or rename the business through a contest. I...
3. Business Naming Should be Well Considered Quite often a business name will come to mind, and then adapted by the entrepreneur in charge even before the...
4. A Business Naming Lesson From the School Yard As you’re in the throes of naming a new entity, think about how people will try to twist the name...
5. Company Naming with Phonics One way to expand your corporate name candidate list – and possibly find a winner – is to look at...

Tags: Naming Issues // 1 Comment »