Naming Ventures - One of my largest IM Hurdles

Hi Melissa,

I would suggest trying a name generator, might just give you that inspiration or spark that you need.

Here are a few that I found, hopefully they are useful to you:

Web 2.0 Domain Name Generator

Suggest.Name - The Web 2.0 Name Generator

New Media Company Generator

Good luck!

Melissa,
I often spend far too much time on this myself.

One thing for sure that really helps is to have a clearly defined USP first.

Also, have you tried doing some visual brainstorming (i.e. Dan Roam "style" visual brainstorming).

I think sometimes just seeing images on paper for the idea can really help with coming up with a great name that actually carries the meaning you intend.

All the best with your new venture!
Jack Duncan

I generally have a difficult time naming my ventures too. I like to use keywords that get searches in Google a lot for websites.

Don't be afraid to pull out a piece of paper and start
brainstorming some of the names that you could use.
Ask your peers, family members or friends to see if they
like the name.

I can suggest the following:

1) Brainstorming and trying to identify clever rhyming words.
2) Sleep on it - your perfect name might appear in a dream!
3) Get really drunk - sometimes we have strokes of genius when we are battered...sometimes!
4) Ask around your friends for name ideas - sometimes they will jokingly say something that you actually like the sound of. Just remind them that just because they came up with the name, that does not entitle them to 10% of your profits!

Hope that helps :-)

Melissa,

I run a naming company, where clients generally come to us after they have tried to name their company and are dissatisfied with what they've come up with. I've also taught seminars on naming and supervised people trying to come up with names. So I've been in a position to observe the reasons why people get stuck in this process.

The four most common reasons why the naming process gets stuck are:

1. People don't know fruitful processes for brainstorming. Ncmedia has given you some great tips on how to generate lots and lots of possibilities. Most people can come up with 15-20 ideas and then they run out of steam. When I look at their lists, I can see that they're barely getting started. I teach them some brainstorming tools (using a thesaurus is the most obvious one, but there are many others) and remind them to brainstorm all parts of speech, including verbs, which for some reason most people forget about.

2. They're waiting for a name they can fall instantly in love with. This does occasionally happen, but most of the time determining the best name is a matter of carefully weeding through the possibilities for their pros and cons, tweaking some names, deciding on the finalists and sometimes repeating the brainstorming to get more possibilities. You can select a great name without falling in love with it.

3. Committee-itis. Involving too many people in the naming process, whether co-workers, people who get a vote but don't really care, or just friends and family, often sabotages the process. Why? Because most people approach naming in terms of love/hate or opinion rather than setting out more objective criteria for what would make an excellent name. If it's all opinion, of course it's hard to get consensus.

4. One-track minds. Even the most creative people can have limitations in their imaginations, where they always think up a certain kind of name or idea and never go beyond that. For example, they always turn to puns, or compound words with animals in them, or tech-sounding madeup names. Sometimes this works out well, but more often people in this situation get stuck and don't know why. The solution is to consciously pursue many different types of names and name ideas. For example, looking at a list of companies in another industry can trigger lots of names that you wouldn't otherwise think up.

I hope this is helpful! Thank you for triggering what will soon be a new article...

Marcia Yudkin

Thank you very much ncmedia,

That is without a doubt excellent advice, I am going to give it a shot right now. Thank you for taking the time to explain and also include an example.

@marciayudkin

Thank you for highlighting those points, I agree - you definitely have a great article there!