Finding the right name for a new product is important. On the supermarkets’ crowded shelves or worse, the endless search feed of Amazon, there’s intense competition for your customer’s attention. Your product’s name is usually the very first thing customers will encounter — and you already know what they say about first impressions.

Whether your product is an app, a snack or a piece of software, it needs a name that shines. Apple’s MacBook Air and Microsoft’s Word are simple, powerful, and memorable while ‘Milky Way’ and ‘Bounty’ create an evocative, indulgent experience.

You have to pack a lot of information and emotion into a name. So I’m going to let you in on the secret recipe for product naming. Read on and let’s find out how to name a product

Why Are Product Names Important?

The word or phrase you give your product becomes the hinge around which your customers’ relationships with that product move. A product name has to stick in the mind of your audience, connect the product with the gap it fills, and create an emotional resonance that makes shopping with your brand a more meaningful experience.

Product naming is challenging because a product name is so much more than a name. It must:

• Contribute to branding
• Promote discoverability and searchability
• Appeal to your customers
• Inform about the nature of the product

Depending on your future plans, your product name might even have to work in a hundred languages around the world, and be modifiable for when your product inspires a spin-off range.

A cautionary tale: when Ford launched a naming product for its new line of cars, internally nicknamed the E Car for its experimental design, they went through multiple iterations of naming. Unsatisifed with their advertising agency’s 6000 suggestions and uninspired by poet Marianne Moore’s offbeat ideas (including “Utopian Turtletop” and “Pastelogram”) they settled on Edsel — named after Henry Ford’s son Edsel Ford.

To those working at Ford, the name made sense and connected to the E Car nickname they’d been using. To customers, however, it was meaningless. They understood neither the connection to E Car, nor the implication of a family business. 

The Edsel was a huge failure and saw Ford lose over $250 million (around $2.5 billion today). Ford disregarded the golden rules for product naming: don’t make an Edsel error.

10 Golden Rules for Product Naming

Product naming choices determine the popularity, reach, and growth potential of your products. It’s important, and you want to get it right, but there’s no need to be intimidated. These product naming golden rules have been tried and tested through the ages, and by sticking to them you’ll know exactly how to name a product.

1. Follow a naming strategy for every product

Most likely, you’re not just naming one product. You’ll have a whole line of products, each one needs to fit into a coherent brand-building project. Apple’s iPod, iPad, iMac,  and iTunes create an immediately understandable range for consumers. A naming strategy allows you to build a coherent brand and streamlines the introduction of new products.

A brand style guide can help identify the character and tone the name should take — for example, cheeky and offbeat or elegant and luxurious. Follow the same process for every new product to create a range that works together. When Ford introduced the Edsel, it was joining the Mercury, Meteor, and Comet. It was a winning strategy, so why did they change it?

2. Research competitors and audience expectations

Before you can name your product, you need to know the market you’re entering. Are your competitors’ products emphasizing cheap and cheerful affordability? If so, a luxury name will put you at odds with customer expectations and hamper a reputation for value.

When you’re lost in the naming process, it’s easy to make false assumptions about the connotations a name will have for your customers. For Ford, Edsel equaled experimental, and implied family and history. For customers, it lacked any meaning altogether.

3. Make it functional

Not every product name has to tell customers what it is or does, but if it fits with your overall branding project, a functional product name can have a big impact. Google Docs and Microsoft Word are good examples of product names that are simple, explanatory, and memorable.

4. Evoke an emotion or idea

A good product name will integrate your product into your customers’ lifestyle. Perfume names work to sound luxurious and provocative — see Black Opium, Goddess, Scandal, and Flowerbomb, as examples. Think about the context your customer is using your product: how do you want them to feel in that moment?

Similarly, Nike’s Dunk, Vision, Air, and Grind are all evocative sneaker names. These aren’t just shoes that take you from A to B. With evocative product names they hint a the life you’ll be living with these sneakers on your feet.

5. Be fun and catchy

Every name we’ve discussed so far, from sultry Scandal to plain old Google Docs is short, sharp, and memorable. A fun and catchy name will be far more effective at sticking in your customers’ minds and ensuring that when they require your product they can recall it, find it, and buy it.

6. Test it out loud

There’s a big difference between a name on a sheet of paper and a name being passed from customer to customer by word of mouth. You want your product to be shared and organically promoted, so the verbal is just as important as the visual.

Amazon was initially to be called “Cadabra” (as in ‘abracadabra’) until someone misheard it and thought the name was “cadaver”. Close call — would Amazon have been dead in the water with that original name?

7. Be easy to spell and pronounce

In an effort to be creative, unique, and memorable, it’s easy to forget the basics. If your customers have a hard time spelling and pronouncing your product name, you’ll cripple searchability and shareability. 

Sometimes an alternate spelling can work. Ride-sharing app Lyft swapped the ‘i’ for a ‘y’ and Crazee Burgers managed to make ‘crazy’ even… crazier with a double ‘e’. When an alternate spelling is common and coherent or emphasizes your brand, go for it. But don’t go rogue. Switching an ‘f’ for a ‘ph’ will confuse your customers. 

8. Be unique

With an estimated 2.6 million active trademarks in the United States, being unique isn’t easy but a product name that’s yours and yours alone ensures you’ll stand out on the shelves.

While registered trademarks might be up for grabs for your product name if you’re in a different region and industry, it can cause confusion, not least in search engines when users seek out your products online. Validate your name with our free Trademark Check Service.

One way to ensure your product names are unique is to preface them with your brand name, like MacBook Air, Nike Dunk, and Dacia Duster. To achieve this, you’ll need a powerful business name.

9. Become part of your customers’ vocabulary

Whether you’re grabbing a Band-Aid or a Kleenex, doing the Hoovering or FaceTiming a friend, if you can turn your product name into a part of your customers’ vocabulary you’re destined for success. These product names have become so ubiquitous that they’re now synonymous with the products themselves.

To achieve this, you need massive reach but it doesn’t hurt to aim for the stars. So, before you name your product, consider whether you want it to become a noun (Band-Aid, Kleenex) or a verb (Hoovering, FaceTimeing), and choose a name that works.

10. Google it 

When you’re naming a product, you bring your own experience and biases to the table but your product will be seen and heard around the country, if not the world. Googling your product name is the bare minimum for checking that it’s unique and doesn’t have any unpleasant associations in other cultures or languages.

Product Naming Mistakes to Avoid

Following our 10 golden rules for product naming should see you right. However, there are some easy product naming pitfalls to fall into, so let’s check out the top product naming mistakes.

• Foreign language trap: Maybe you’ve used a word that evokes all the right feelings like Nokia did with their Lumia model, named for the Finnish word for snow. If you’re launching a product internationally, however, you’ll need to check for any awkward foreign meanings. In Spanish, ‘lumia’ refers to a sex worker.

• Inconsistent with your brand: You’ve come up with a great name for your product: it’s catchy and functional and customers will instantly understand the meaning. This might not be enough: a product is one brick in your wider branding product. If your product name doesn’t fit with other names in your product line, or if it has a tone or character that opposes your overall brand positioning, then it will create incoherent messaging that hurts your project.

• Difficult to design: Consistency in branding is hugely important. That means that the visual choices for your brand, such as color scheme and font, should work for every product name. Before choosing a name for your new product, make sure it works with your other style choices: some fonts, for example, might have ‘g’ and ‘y’ look overly similar which would rule out “Googly” as a product name.

Wrapping Up

Now you know how to name a product, it’s time to get started. Alongside your colleagues, brainstorm some great product names — but not 6000 like Ford tried to do for the Edsel.

If you find it hard to land on the perfect product name, don’t worry. At Atom, we know just how hard naming is. That’s why we’ve built a thriving community of over 300,000 creatives to help get the job done. Lean on our international community to find your next name.