When Shakespeare’s Juliet asks, “What’s in a name,” she’s questioning whether names themselves mean anything, since roses smell the same no matter what you call them.
When it comes to brand naming, well … yes and no. Your name doesn’t affect the quality of your organization, product or service. It does, however, shape perceptions, influence purchase decisions and ultimately affect your success in the market. A rose by any other name would smell — but not sell — as sweet.
Your name represents an important, ubiquitous element of your branding mix. Done well, it can encourage affinity with customers, partners, investors and employees — from first impressions to long-term relationships with your organization.
But the naming process can also be daunting and at times even downright frustrating.
The truth is: Naming is hard. It’s boiling down a brand’s entire being to its most basic elements. It’s communicating a lot with very little. It’s balancing creativity with practicality. It’s finding a single word, or short set of words, that capture your brand’s essence, resonate with your audiences and deftly navigate cultural and legal landscapes. It’s threading the needle of objectivity and subjectivity, of timeliness and timelessness.
And it’s not for the faint of heart: Just when you think you’ve arrived at the perfect name, you’ll discover it’s trademarked by another company or means something unspeakable in another language. It happens to all of us. (Do we sound bitter?)
Now for the good news. Brand naming is also fun, rewarding and demonstrably possible to do well with the right balance of research, testing and creativity. If you trust the process, you’ll come away with a name you, your organization and your partners can be proud of and stand behind for years to come.
How to choose a brand name in 8 easy* steps.
Step 1: Look inward; think outward.
Your name should communicate something essential about your brand. That could mean using direct terms that describe what your brand does. It could also mean conveying your brand’s values, mission, origin story or personality.
Brainstorm keywords, themes and concepts that embody your brand’s benefits. Then, take it a step further, and think of emotions and feelings you want your name to evoke and your brand to inspire.
This exercise can take you down wildly diverging paths that reach different destinations, all equally valid. Some successful names are highly descriptive of what the brand offers (i.e., The Container Store). Some are invented words that combine a couple descriptors (i.e., Netflix). And others are just wholly made up (i.e., Febreze).
Whatever path you take, this is the time to dig into understanding your brand at its core level, embracing creativity and exploring all kinds of possibilities. So at this stage, it’s not unusual to have a list of hundreds of potential contenders.
Step 2: Keep it simple.
Choose a name that is easy to spell, pronounce and remember. Simplicity will aid in brand recall and facilitate better word-of-mouth marketing (or even user-generated content), which can be valuable for brand awareness and growth. One study even showed that investors prefer shorter brand names.
In the spirit of this tip, that’s all we have to say about that.
Step 3: Carve out your space.
Think about where you want to position your brand within your market. There may be norms to follow (or intentionally break). You may want to establish your brand in a pantheon of competitors, or you may want to set a new standard.
For example, Lyft and Uber — which vary on the spectrum from descriptive to abstract — are both four-letter names with Germanic roots. Corn Flakes and Life cereal, on the other hand, take markedly different approaches in both regards (although both use recognizable English words).
Whichever direction you choose, make sure it’s grounded in research and in line with your business strategy.
Step 4: Consider associations & connotations.
Think about the range of emotions, images and associations that different names evoke. This is where it’s valuable to engage others, both formally and informally.
Words carry different weight with different people. Ask friends, family members and business contacts what naming options mean to them, and start to pare down your list of names according to their reactions.
Step 5: Test & revise.
Once you’ve narrowed down your names to a shorter list, gather feedback from colleagues and target customers to gauge their perceptions of your proposed brand name. Conduct focus groups and surveys to zero in on what lands and what doesn’t. Keep an open mind and remain receptive to feedback. Conduct research to ensure that none of your possible names have negative connotations or conflicting meanings in different cultures or languages.
No matter how attached you are to a name, it’s important to consider how others receive and perceive it. But also consider alternate spellings and incremental changes to avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Step 6: Check availability.
We’re so sorry about this one: Before finalizing a brand name, conduct research to ensure that it’s not already in use by another company or trademarked.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office is a good place to start. Then, check domain availability and social media handles to see what’s not already taken. You’ll also want to keep these branded elements as consistent as possible.
Having been down this road many times, we know how disheartening this process can be. Stay focused and positive. If your favorite name or domain is already spoken for, it was never really yours to begin with. Your best brand name is out there, and this process is all part of making sure you find it.
Step 7: Think visually.
Sometimes your brand name will present as plain text in a paragraph like this. But sometimes it will function more like a piece of art, in a wordmark, a cornerstone to a logo or a graphic element on a homepage or billboard. Some names lend themselves to graphic styling and legibility more than others.
Give your design-minded partners a chance to see how different names might come to life visually. A word that’s fun to pronounce might have tricky typography. A name that doesn’t fly off the page in normal text might look stellar with the right creative treatment, or might lend itself to a visual shorthand that transcends (Golden Arches, anyone?).
All this is worth considering as you narrow your list to a few final candidates.
Step 8: Crown your winner.
At the end of this process, you may be so fortunate as to have an obvious choice. Or you may have a few strong contenders.
A final caveat: Our years of experience have taught us that it’s rare for every single stakeholder to agree on the name in the last phase, and that’s OK. You can decide by consensus, you can look to your agency partners for guidance or your leadership team might just need the final say.
In any case, you can be confident that every name left on the drawing board at this stage will be well vetted and a good match for your brand. And, as studies show, the more people are exposed to it, the more they will grow to like it.
There’s always room to grow.
In an ideal world, you’ll choose a name that can grow with your business and remain relevant and meaningful over time. Many of the most recognizable brands have names that have stood the test of time for centuries.
By the same token, brand names, like brands and the organizations they represent, are meant to scale and evolve. Nike was once Blue Ribbon Sports. Google was originally BackRub. Pepsi was founded as Brad’s Drink. Dunkin’ dropped its “Donuts” in 2019.
When the market changes, or when your brand evolves, you can always refresh your name. So while choosing a brand name for right now should be approached with a healthy sense of respect and an eye on the future, you’re not locked in for life.
With the right partners in your corner and the right process in place, there’s no reason to fear brand naming. Sunup has a vetted system for helping brands find their best names, and together, we can make the process painless and productive.
Sunup’s approach to brand naming in a nutshell.
- First, we host a discovery session with the client to understand their naming goals and preferences.
- Next, we brainstorm hundreds of names as an agency team based on the client brief and drawing on the principles above.
- Then, we deliberate and we debate, we verify and we vet — distilling our list down to our top five recommendations. When presented to the client, each name has a story and rationale attached to it, along with options for URLs and social media handles.
- Next up, the client either a) selects a winner or b) chooses a few favorites for validation testing by an external audience. (In the latter case, once validation testing is completed, we share each name’s score with the client, along with other contextual feedback for consideration.)
- Finally, once the client has chosen a name, we offer to connect them with an attorney to begin the trademarking process, if desired (but always recommended).
Whether you’re just starting out and looking for the right name to launch, or seeking to turn your AuctionWeb into an eBay, it’s best to work with a partner who knows the ropes of naming and can help you along the way. If you ever need support naming a brand, product or service, just reach out to Sunup.
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*None of this is easy.
