So, How to Come Up With a Brand Name? Well, we’ll eliminate all of your worries in the upcoming seven minutes, and we promise to provide you with a decent brand name – not directly, but yes, you’ll have enough idea.
One of the largest decisions in their lives for parents worldwide is to pick out their kid’s name. But picking out a name is a relatively complicated process.
If all the parents keep a pretty common name, their kid will find himself lost in the vast crowd. To get their kid noticed, if they all try to come up with a unique and different name, it must be easy to pronounce and must have some justification. If they pick out an old-fashioned name, then there is a chance that the child could get bullied in school and also later in life.
A startup is no less than a kid for the founders. And that’s the reason why picking out a name for a new brand is pretty tough. A brand name could be regarded as one of the essential assets that businesses require to survive, launch new products, pull some talent, attract a massive number of customers, and differentiate themselves from their competitors.
It’s necessary to come up with a unique and meaningful name that is very sticky to recall.
How to Come Up With a Brand Name
Every entrepreneur needs a magic wand that could produce pronounceable, unique, memorable, creative, relevant, and engaging. Unfortunately, such a magic wand does not exist.
There is no one right and perfect way to come up with a great brand name, and however, based on learnings from some successful brands, entrepreneurs could plan their approach. Some of the components which could help make a brand name are as follows:
Family name:
One of the best natural ways to develop a great brand name is to utilize the founder’s surname or title. Some of the successful brands based on this successful strategy are Ford Motor Company, Disney, Estée Lauder Companies Inc., and many others.
Though this kind of approach sounds relatively straightforward, there is a good catch. The name must be uncommon and must connect well with all types of customers.
As shown in the film ‘The Founder’, the main character Ray Kroc felt that the name “McDonald” is glorious, beautiful, limitless, and better sounding than any other name, so he just preferred to acquire McDonald’s instead of releasing a new brand.
Words with powerful meaning:
Uber means a supreme or outstanding example of a specific kind of thing or person. In the Korean language, the word “Samsung” means 3 stars.
As a caveat, the meaning of this word should be checked in unique languages as many times a name can have a positive sense in just one language but the negative sense in many other languages, leading to a perception challenge during international expansion.
Associations:
Associations are beneficial in relating something familiar with something unfamiliar. Ordinary things might not directly associate with your business. However, evoke a mental image or feeling. Associations could be done with animals, flowers, people, mythological names, rivers, and so on.
For example, the highly known brand name Amazon.com is based on the Amazon River. As you know, the Amazon River is considered the largest river in the whole globe.
One of the most fabulous mythological brand names is Nike. In ancient Greek mythology, “Nike” was a goddess who mostly personified victory. Puma’s brand name is based on a Puma cat that embodies strength, speed, suppleness, agility, and endurance.
Blended words:
A blended brand name could be formed by blending parts from unique words. For example, the brand name “Microsoft” is included from combining the initial part of 2 words: Software and Microcomputer.
Place of origin:
This acts as a challenging component of a brand identity. Initially, the place of origin could help a brand to become famous. However, when a brand becomes globally available, it could help its birthplace to be popular.
One of the impressive examples of a brand name having an area of birth is KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken), which began as a roadside restaurant in the Kentucky city of the U.S., and then became one of the biggest global fast-food chains.
Fascinating stories:
Communities listen and also remember stories; they’re effective tools to communicate with others. An impressive story with universal appeal could amplify the significance of a brand name.
For example, the brand name “Alibaba” is based on the Old Arabic story, Alibaba, and the Forty Thieves.
Coined words:
Coining a word could also help a brand name stand out pretty unique. The brand name “Google” is a play on the word “googol,” the term of mathematics for a one followed by a hundred zeroes.
Another impressive example of a coined name is “Xerox,” which we use as a synonym for photocopy.
Book or Movie characters:
Books and Movies could open up a new world of brand names. The characters in a successful movie entertain us a lot and sometimes leave a long-lasting impression through their significant role, or their names sound pretty catchy.
One of the best brand names – “Starbucks” brand name is inspired by a character – Starbuck in a whaling movie and novel – Moby-Dick.
Link of generic words:
Generic words could generate meaningful, engaging, and memorable names by linking pretty basic and common words in the right order.
The brand name “Facebook” links 2 very common words: face and the second is a book. Identically, the brand name “MakeMyTrip” links 3 common words, which are Make, My, and Trip.
Ingredients:
An ingredient of a service or product is brought into the brightest spotlight as the ingredient’s image can have a positive impact on the consumer.
For example, in the brand name “Coca-Cola,” the first halfword in the brand name refers to the coca leaf, and the other halfword represents an ingredient, the kola nut.
Descriptive words:
An excellent descriptive name is self-explanatory. Some of the examples of self-explanatory names are Naukri.com and Shaadi.com. Along with creativity, coming up with these types of names needs a lot of luck and focus.
A chance for the availability of a domain name and a trademark and a focus as self-explanatory names could be applicable for particular niches.
Business attributes:
In many cases, brand names are based on the attributes like characteristics of a business. The 7-Eleven, the world’s biggest convenience store brand, was specially named after its store timings, have you ever noticed that? The stores were open from 7 a.m. – 11 p.m.
Picking the correct brand name could be problematic. Sometimes, it can be manufactured using one of the methods mentioned earlier and sometimes utilizing multiple methods in combination.
Sometimes it could take months, and sometimes it could be created quickly.
In the short-term, entrepreneurs might think that rather than spending a ton of effort and time naming any new brand, they could focus on other departments.
However, from a long-term perspective, it is worth spending time naming your brand as the brand name will capture your business’s essence.
When any product of competitors becomes identical, when price does not remain a differentiator, when a customer gets confused in making a decision, the thing which safeguards a company is its only brand name.
How to Come Up With a Brand Name: Golden tips for choosing a catchy business name
Keep it short and simple.
Having a snappy, short name is ideal for many reasons: It’s easily memorable, much more comfortable to pronounce, and effortlessly fits in the header of an online store’s homepage.
Finding one could be quite challenging for you, though. New brands are launched every single day, and names that are appealing to you would undoubtedly appeal to someone else as well.
Fortunately, it is a mighty world, and there is plenty of room for your compelling and creative brand names.
Here are some great strategies you could try to get your gears turning:
- Try unique combinations of little words. Two little words that rhyme or are alliterative (Like “Snack Shack”) could be much more memorable.
- Make up any word or tweak any existing one. Tech brands like eBay, Google, and Skype have instantly recognizable and memorable names, even though they are not real words.
- Utilize a word with a personal meaning. It may be a nickname you’ve for your significant other, it might be your pet’s name (a brilliant idea if your store is relating to furry friends), or your name could be useful in this department.
- Utilizing a personal name creates your store pretty quickly to identify on a personal level—though note that stores constructed on personal brands could be tougher to sell.
Be unique
Conduct market research to find out which names are taken by direct competitors, and then you should try to come up with something unique.
The challenge is to come up with a unique name that reflects the type of products you are selling, without your business name mirroring competitors. By definition, if you wanna be unique, you’ve to ‘zig’ when others ‘zag.’
Be Different
For example, if you are selling technology and electronics products, you may have competitors who utilize words like “technology”, “electronics,” and also “future” in their brand names.
Avoid using identical words. Instead, you should think differently and stand out with a unique perspective for your brand name.
Consider your online presence
Once you’ve got a list of choices for your store or brand name, you must find out if your selected domain—a .com—is available to be registered or not. This may be a bit tough, given that .com is the popular TLD (Top-Level Domain) and has been for a very long time.
Having a custom and unique domain name for your store is mission-critical, though you should not let your guard down and search for selecting a great domain name cause you to procrastinate—all the thing is open to change, including a domain name.
But, there’s value in picking a concrete domain name that properly represents your service or brand from the beginning, so it is a decision that warrants some thought.
Consider Your Platform
You may also consider selling products on Amazon, Etsy, eBay, or any other third-party marketplace in addition to your online store.
Even if that is not in the plan, it is an excellent idea to find out your business name idea on the most popular websites to ensure the availability of names. So, customers do not confuse you with any other existing business.
Get creative with your domain name
If the .com (domain) for your selected name is not available, do not fret at all: You are still having the option of utilizing a different TLD (Top-Level Domain).
The reason behind a .com is the gold standard is that anyone recognizes it. However, that does not rule out other TLDs becoming more commonplace as incredible .com choices continue to dwindle. And you could always catch the .com after your business has produced some traction.
Be unique to find your domain name
When they first launched, the Online store – Tattly decided to use a .ly domain, making it tatt.ly. Since then, they have been capable of purchasing tattly.com, that is where their site lives.
While search engine experts believe Google is not as friendly to lesser-known domains, you must still be capable of ranking just as high as a .com if you’ve got a high-quality website with a great user experience.
Additionally, going with any snazzy domain is far more different.
Name modifiers to consider
- Sandytoesshop.com : Shop[YourBrand].com
- Helmboots.com : [YourBrand][Main Product].com
- Getflow.com : Get[YourProduct].com
- Lifeinspirithome.com : [YourBrand][industry].com
- Shopmeekco.com : [YourBrand]co.com
- Mybillie.com : [My/Your][YourBrand].com
- Wearpepper.com : [Verb][YourBrand].com
TLDs to consider:
- .shop
- .store
- Based on the product you are selling (.shoes, .art)
- Continuation of a brand name (e.g., Fuego. clothing for “Fuego Clothing Co.,” or muvo.health for “Muvo Health Supplements”)
Be original
Ensure you are legally permitted to use the business name which you have come up with. For store owners in the United States, begin by checking the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. They’ve got a free database that is a pain in the butt to find. However, it is well worth the effort.
Also, note that the United States does not have a centralized national register to make the trademark in other countries or even any other state.
In Canada, you could search through the Canadian Intellectual Property Office website, which is pretty confusing as well. The only safe way to be hundred percent sure is by consulting a lawyer.
Once you have determined your name’s availability, go to Bing or Google, and see if the names show up. Can you potentially make it to the top of the page? If you select a generic name, you will have a hard time ranking very well.
It’s essential to check Facebook, Twitter, and all currently high traffic social media sites you will want to utilize for availability.
Find new inspiration
If you are short on business ideas for naming your brand, you may want to give yourself themes to think about it.
Maybe you are looking for a business name with nostalgia or speaking to a trend. Other languages could provide tons of ideas, as well.
Inspiration could strike anywhere and anytime. Listen to all the kinds of conversations around you, survey your all surroundings, and you should even consider your mannerisms and expressions.
Why is picking a full, memorable brand name so necessary?
Picking your brand’s name is the first step in establishing your company’s reputation or organization. It also helps show the audience what to expect from your company and brands.
A good reputation means the audience will naturally want to connect with you and do some business with you without thinking aggressively into the decision making process.
That isn’t to say that if you are doing bad work, you could cover it up. With the use of social media and Internet reviews, the audience will quickly figure out if you’re who you say you’re.
If you are like most people running an organization or company or in charge of its marketing department, you’ve limited resources and time to attract your ideal audience.
You want to ensure each second, and each dollar you spend on a brand name empowers it to break through the very competitive noise.
Come up with a Brand Name on a Powerful Foundation
It’s worth the company’s time to choose a proper brand name since it connects so strongly with making a good impression. We will dive into the magic ingredients which go into making the right brand name.
You will leave here knowing that you could make a brand name that has the power to leave customers with that sought-after positive very first impression and also the psychological magnetism which will make it stick in their brains.
When it comes to choosing a brand name, it is helpful first to understand the unique categories of brand names. A few are better than many others, but every type of brand name category has its weaknesses and strengths.
How to Come Up With a Brand Name: Brand Name Types
There are 7 common brand name types, according to “Brian Lischer,” one more respected branding expert in the market. Many other branding experts sometimes break the categories down further along highly technical linguistic factors.
However, they still fall inside these 7 broader categories, and utilizing these higher-level concepts makes the entire subject matter much easier to understand.
Expressive Brand Names
Expressive brand names are a total 180° turn from the descriptive. They’re highly creative, powerful, and bold when executed properly. Often a feeling of the inner power emanates from the brand names.
Some of the globe’s most extremely valued brands utilize this brand name type. Just think of companies like Amazon, Apple, and Nike. Despite their creativity and strength, expressive brand names include some prerequisites to make them successful.
These kinds of names do not quickly describe what their company provides, so extra skill is required in communicating with their brand story.
The tradeoff is the connection that these brands make with customers is even more defensible and more memorable from the competition. Being more defensible means more comfortable time-securing trademarks.
Descriptive Brand Names
You should be aware that a descriptive brand name is a straightforward approach to branding your products. It describes the service or product in its name.
Think of companies like eFax, Dish Network, and U.S. Bank. While these names are pretty easy to understand, they’re impossible or hard to trademark since common words don’t have any superior protection.
A descriptive brand name potentially locks a company in a particular sector despite growth inside new areas over time. Most companies are often drawn to choose these names at first glance because they communicate what they do and make marketing much easier in a concise term.
From the long-term perspective, they could get harder to defend as more competition comes into a market and then dilute the name’s power.
Invented Brand Name
An invented brand name could take on an identical power as an expressive brand name. We can often cite Google as the perfect example here. The name never existed until Google’s founders misspelled another word while their domain and trademark name search.
As per Google’s profound tech swept the global stage, their invented names have become associated with searching the entire Internet, and the rest is history.
Every company that invents a name isn’t as lucky as Google, though. Typically, invented names include the requirement of strong marketing and storytelling to ensure customers associate the brand story with the brand name and the proper meaning.
Since an invented name is unique, they’re also more likely to come up with a more straightforward trademarking process.
Acronym Brand Name
A standard, old-school brand name style. Highly familiar brands come to mind like K-Mart, UPS, IBM, H&R Block, DSW, HSBC, and CVS. While these vast companies have made them work, a new company has a ton of better options to select from in comparison.
Abbreviation or Acronym style brand names are insanely tough to remember, needs time and effort to make connections with customers, and they’re adamant about trademark as well.
With all the other options we discussed, this kind of naming style is pretty much better left on the table. A no-brainer!
Lexical Brand Name
Lexical brand names are kinds of catnip for companies. They often utilize linguistic devices like rhymes, alliteration, puns, onomatopoeia, misspellings, and foreign words, making the brand name ultra-easy to remember.
Like most, though, this kind of brand name has faced abuse to death over the past decades. Such as the sleazy door-to-door salesman, these kinds of brand names tend to be on your face.
Think of the brand names like JiffyLube, Western Sizzlin’ Steak House, and Super Suds Car Wash. entire exposure has made the audience very resistant to communicate with these kinds of brands right off the bat.
They could work very well. However, your brand strategist must be ultra artful and skilled with its execution to ignore turning off your customers.
If you pull off a lexical brand name, you do have the included benefit of easier trademarking because the name skews towards being a different one.
Founder Brand Name
Using the name of the founder as a brand name is a good practice as old as time. Emery Farms, established in 1655, is the quite oldest running family-owned farm in the USA that uses this naming convention.
In the attention of tons of past years, utilizing your family name was a potentially easy and useful way to brand your company. In modern times like this, though, the trend has been repeatedly and overused.
There is certainly nothing special about the name which will make it stand out. So you have to think of the tired cliché of the law firm offices like Brown & Arnold, Smith & Smith, and Thompson & Associates.
Many times industries gotta “feel” you think you require to replicate. However, picking a name like this makes you fade inside the background with everyone else.
Having a unique sounding name from what the company expects could significantly impact making your business stand out.
Geographic Brand Name
The geographical brand name is kind of like the descriptive brand name in which they’re over-used and by virtue hard to be memorable since they cannot command attention in the very first place.
Over the past years, many small companies have begun with names like New York Pilates, Canada’s Best Value Inn, St. Louis Bread Co. (now Panera), and The Miami Distilling Company.
These kinds of brand names tend to run into issues as their early success impacts growth into new regions with the audience that does not connect as easily with the culture and heritage of their geographical roots.
They’re harder to trademark since there’s a high likelihood that someone else has used the identical brand name or something very similar for their company.
How to Come Up With a Brand Name: Psychological Brand Name Factors
Ask these kinds of questions to ensure when you make a brand name. It’s strong from a psychological perspective.
- Is the name pretty easy to confuse with a product, company, or service in any other industry?
- Does the name have any distinct sound compared to any other competitor?
- Does the audience quickly understand the name?
- If yes, could people outside of your primary target audience relate to this emotion?
- Does your brand name inspire a positive, intense emotion in your target audience?
- Could your brand name connect with anything meaningful in the audience?’
- Is your brand name is much closer to a current trend, which might limit long-term growth?
- Does your brand name contain words that are easy to visualize?
- If you plan to grow globally or nationally, does your brand name mesh with new heritage and cultures outside of your beginning geographic place?
- Are there any negative innuendo or meanings which your brand name can accidentally be associated with?
How to Come Up With a Brand Name: Practical Brand Name Factors
If you get all of the psychological factors nailed down, then there are real-world world factors you should also consider when you make a brand name.
Ask the following questions to ensure you are creating a strong foundation.
- Have you checked about your country’s regulatory laws of naming services or products in your specific industry?
- Does anyone else have a trademark utilizing the same or identical words?
- Is your brand or product name easy to spell and pronounce?
- Could you make your brand name shorter enough to make it easier to remember?
- Your brand name easy enough to understand over the phone?
- A .com or identical high-level domain name available?
- Anyone else using the term to a reasonable extent on social media?
- There strong competition on Google for a brand name as a search term?
What Types of Brand Names Make up the Top Ten Brands in the Globe?
Interbrand ranks the globe’s top brands every single year. In 2020, the leading brands were:
- Apple
- Amazon
- Microsoft
- Samsung
- Coca-Cola
- Toyota
- Mercedes-Benz
- McDonald’s
- Disney
Seven out of ten of these global brands are either invented or expressive brand names. The critical information all of these brands have in common, besides trillions in market capitalization, is the powerful emotional connection with their audiences.
Only two out of ten brands in this list got a founder name, and only one out of ten utilizes an acronym.
