Nov 14, 2007

The Great Naming Debate: How to choose a business name.

Rick Spence, of Canadian Entrepenuer, wrote a post today on choosing a company name. His suggestion was to favor names that describe what the company does, and stay away from "[a] mash of two unrelated words". He goes on to write, "The name ... makes sense – but really, only once you know what the company does. "

His post reminded me of one of Seth Godin's post's on the same topic. Seth writes,

"Starbucks is made of two words that have nothing at all to do with coffee (except for their profits!) and the reference to Moby Dick is tenuous for most of us. But over time, the shape of the letters, the way they sound and the unique quality of the word makes it close to perfect.

He goes on to discuss some of the considerations he went through in choosing a name for squidoo.com, such as finding a name with almost no Google matches, one where the company can build a strong "secondary meaning" to the words used. It is probably one of the best articles on naming a company that I have read. Read it here.

Rick Spence does make a great point at the end of the article, "just maybe, resource-short startups have different branding needs than do established companies."

Correct, they need to be remarkable.

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