A powerful business name tells a story: think of Amazon, whose name implies the depth and diversity of the jungle, or Dolce & Gabbana, where the foreign overtones combine with an implied sweetness to create a name synonymous with luxury and elegance.

Of course, there’s more to building a brand than a name — but no brand can last without a name that connects with customers and narrates your mission, value and identity. The best ideas for naming a business include all these ingredients to create an intoxicating cocktail that customers can’t put down.

Maybe you started the naming process, before hitting a brick wall. Or perhaps you’re intimidated by the task, already recognizing that you’re determining the future of your brand. Either way, you’re in the right place. Our expert tips for naming a business have been accumulated through years of experience, working on big brand projects with global names.

So let’s find out what’s in a name.

Understand the Impact of a Name

Perhaps the most important first step in naming your business is understanding the power of a name. Many businesses choose names off-hand, early in the process of launching. Sure, it’s exciting, and it gives you a helpful way to reference your project!

But a business name is so much more than a word.

Your business name must capture your solution, your mission and your brand identity in one. It should cause your customers’ emotions to stir, and stick in their minds long after they’ve bought or considered your product or service.

A good business name lowers the cost of customer acquisition, increases customer lifetime value and produces opportunities for growth. Naming your business can have huge ramifications for your brand’s future.

Here’s why a business name is so important:

• 77% of consumers use brand name to guide a purchase.
• Name recognition is an important factor for 82% of investors.
• Apple’s name and logo alone are valued at over $408 billion.
• Changing your name is challenging: Only 18% of consumers look favorably on brand name changes.
• Name is central to brand awareness, the #1 goal of surveyed marketers.

Grasping the magnitude of the project at hand? Naming your business matters, but don’t be intimidated. There’s a tried and tested process and we have some expert tips for naming your business to help you along the way.

23 Expert Tips for Naming a Business

So you’re naming a business? Choose a name that informs, inspires, and promotes a coherent long-term brand identity with our tips for naming a business.

Build a Brand

1. Start with your unique selling proposition: You’ve started your business because you have a unique and novel solution to a problem faced by your customers. Ask yourself what makes your product or service different, and superior, to your competitors, and find a name that differentiates you.

2. Centre your core values: Before naming your business, take a step back to understand where you came from. Your business name needs to have an impact on your customers and a story of your values creates a deeper connection. Why have you chosen this problem to solve? Are you motivated to change the world, or to have an impact on your customers’ lives?

3. Build brand imagination: As well as understanding your business’s origin story, you must envision its future. This requires brand imagination: a creative visualization of the future of your business, its character and the relationship you’re building with customers. Our AI brand builder is a springboard for developing your key brand assets.

4. Follow your customers: Who is your target market, and what do they love in a brand? Is it quirky, cheeky brand tone with an irreverent social media channel? Or should your name inspire trust and security? Your name needs to match your customers’ expectations.

5. Track industry trends: Following naming and branding trends in your industry gives you a shortcut to telling customers who you are. Bucking the trends makes you stand out as an innovator and disruptor. Which approach matches your brand identity and draws your customers in?

6. Plan for future growth: Family or location-based names might sound great at first, but what about when you want to expand? Choose a name that tells people who you are without limiting future opportunities for new markets.

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

7. Build a naming brief: If you’re naming your business as a team, it’s vital to have everyone on the same page. A naming brief lays out your brand identity and projects the future of your business: it ensures every name your team comes up with is coherent with your brand, and tailored to your target audience.

8. Collaborate effectively: The whole can be greater than the sum of its parts, but when naming it’s easy to get bogged down in the details. Rather than collaborating on the whole naming process, delegate team members to come up with names individually, and then test them as a group.
   
9. Avoid decision by committee: Decision by committee is when stakeholders without the appropriate experience are involved in decision-making. Without an overall plan, poor and irrelevant ideas (or in this case, names) can weigh down the process and the overall quality of your shortlisted names can be watered down. Involve everyone, but sure there’s a role for leadership and quality control.

10. Get outside help: While you may understand your product, or the problem you’re solving better than anyone, you also may not be best placed to communicate that. Seeking external input, such as through an Atom naming contest, can bring new, powerful ideas into the fray.

Naming Ingredients

11. Keep it simple: When the creative juices are flowing, it’s tempting to overcomplicate the naming process. Keep spelling and pronunciation obvious, otherwise customers will struggle to remember, search and share your name. 

12. Avoid generic names: Generic names like “Spicy Tacos” or “Email Marketing Hub” might tell your customers what you do, but they won’t stand out when you’re surrounded by competitors.

13. Avoid obscure names: On the other hand, overly obscure names fail to make an impact on customers because there’s nothing to connect to. Ford’s flagship Edsel floundered in part because the car, named for Henry Ford’s son, had a name that meant nothing to customers.

14. Avoid geographic names: Geographic names might sound great when you’re serving the local community, but Westside Mechanics makes it very hard to open a second garage on the Eastside, and you’ll waste brand equity with a new name. Don’t limit yourself with a geographic name.

15. Avoid acronyms: DHL, HSBC, IBM: there are countless acronymic business names out there, making it tempting to consider an acronym for your business name. However, acronyms are emotionless and, due to their short nature, difficult to match to domain names. Avoid acronyms without good reason.

16. Sound good: One study found that simply named stock options were more likely to be purchased than those with hard-to-pronounce names, so make sure your name fits comfortably in your customers’ mouths! At Atom, we like the crowded bar test: could your name be heard and understood with the background hubbub of a bust bar?

17. Be unique: Your business name has to be yours alone. Sharing a name with an existing entity not only confuses your customers and risks your reputation, but it could even land you in legal trouble. Come up with a unique name that differentiates you from your competitors and gives you a brand that’s all yours to build.

18. Become vocabulary: The ultimate brand goal is to establish yourself in your customer’s vocabulary. We don’t video call, we FaceTime; we don’t vacuum, we Hoover, and most people ask for a Kleenex rather than a tissue. Think about how your customers will use your product or service, and find a name that could land in their vocabulary as a verb or noun.

Validate, Validate, Validate

19. Research the rules: For certain types of businesses, local, state and federal regulations will determine the kind of name you choose. For example, DBAs (Doing Business As) names must not be overly similar to other registered names in your state, while LLCs must be appended with LLC, Limited, Ltd., or other abbreviations. Make sure you know the rules ahead of time, otherwise you could have your business name rejected by the local regulatory body.

20. Conduct a trademark search: Falling foul of a registered trademark could require an expensive name change or an even more expensive legal battle. Use our free Trademark Check Service to future-proof your name.

21. Find an exact match domain name: Every ambitious brand needs a piece of prime digital real estate for its online platform. A domain name to match your business name, paired with an elite TLD (top-level domain) like .com, improves trust and memorability, and ensures your customers can find you online. Incorporate a search of a premium domain into your naming process.

22. Get feedback from the right places: Ask a range of friends, family and colleagues what they think of your name, and look out for any offbeat associations you didn’t notice. Then, use an Audience Testing Service to find out what a representative panel of your customers think. Take your name into the world with confidence.

23. Trust your target audience: Don’t get emotionally attached to a name of your own choosing: if audience testing reveals other names are preferred, trust the data. Remember, you’re not marketing to yourself.

Naming Inspiration: Ideas for Naming a Business

Ready to find a name for your business? Staring at the blank page is hard, so here are some ideas for naming a business to get you started.

• Be inspired by naming types: Naming types can be chosen based on your predicted brand identity, match your brand character and give you a headstart in naming your business. Here are our favorite naming styles at Atom: 

Real Word: Apple, Swoop, Slack

Misspelled: Lyft, nimbl, Mohawx

Compound: SnapChat, SplitWav

Phrases: StumpleUpon, Ready to Rise

Blends: Groupon, Yuconic, Winvested

Descriptive: Whole Foods, The Body Shop

Made Up/Abstract: Orizia, Itorix

Transmutations: Zappos, Zumba

Acronyms: IBM, HP

Play On Words: Deja Brew, EyeQ, Inner Peas

Metaphoric: Nike, Silverline, LoanSpring, RobinHood

Visual: Iron Flame, Blue Cabin

Foreign Words: La Brosa, Nomi d’Italia

Latin, Greek, Anglo Roots: Rinsio, Bluntly, Omni Lend

Poetic: Dunkin’ Donuts, Lula Learn, Piggly Wiggly

This & That: Abercrombie & Fitch, Lydia & Park, Owl and Lark

Names and Surnames: Oskar, Windsor Harlow, Barnes and Noble

Alliterative: Blackberry, Krispy Kreme, Coca-Cola

Come up with a few names for every type, or delegate across your naming team, and you’ll have a great long-list to choose from.

• Brainstorm: Start by letting go of your assumptions, take the pressure off, and write down the first thing that comes into your head. It doesn’t even have to be a name: start filling the page up with brand tone, emotions, and characteristics of the product or service you want to emphasize.

• Look to competitors: Stuck for business name ideas? Look to your competitors. Spot the naming trends that are flourishing in your industry and see the kinds of emotional connections and characteristics they’re leveraging. Ask yourself what you like about competitor names as well as what could be improved on. Pretty soon, you’ll have some ideas for naming a business yourself.

• Start with a long list: Once you start validating business names according to audience responses, domain availability and trademark restrictions, you’ll find that quite a few favorable names get crossed off your list. Don’t narrow it down too much.

• Use a business name generator: Atom’s AI-powered business name generator can take your business idea and a few brand keywords and come up with evocative business names for you — and every name is paired with an available name. Use the business name generator to find a name you love, or to kickstart your brainstorming process.

• Try Atom’s Premium Marketplace: Your perfect business name could be out there waiting for you. Our premium domain marketplace houses thousands of experly-curated premium domain names across every industry. Each one is selected for powerful brandabilty, emotional connotations and connects to key naming trends.

Wrapping Up

Now you’re armed with great tips for naming a business as well as powerful ideas for naming a business, there’s nothing left to do but get started. Or maybe you’d rather focus on the hard work of launching your business, and leave naming to the professionals?

At Atom we have a creative community of over 300,000 people, from all across the world. A curated naming contest taps into this community and, working from a naming brief you provide, we can find you a powerful new name, matching logo and available premium domain name to boot. Find your name today.