Today, we will talk about a business name. You want to be recognizable. You want people to remember your brand. Finding a good business name is more about your creativity. I will provide you with some rules, ideas, and tools that will speed up your process of finding a business name.
The Rules
Rule 1. Your business name should at first represent your mission.
The name should not be too narrow, so you cannot expand your business later. For example, the business name should not be “CardBox Inc.” unless you are planning to focus ONLY on card boxes purely. If you plan to expand your business into different types of packages made of organic materials, plastics, glass, wood, and so on, you’d instead go into something like “Box This Inc.”
Rule 2. Your business name will represent your brand, so please take care when creating it.
You should not be ashamed of it once you grow. Now, it is only you who knows it. In a year, it might be 100000 people talking about this. It’d better be good.
Rule 3. Make sure the name is not trademarked.
The best way is to check two sources. The US and the EU one:
- The US trademarks you can check under the address https://www.uspto.gov/trademark.
- The EU trademarks are registered under https://www.trademarkia.com/
Rule 4. Check if the domain is available for sale.
If yes, then buy the domain name. You can check if the domain is available using services like godaddy.com, domains.google. Remember to acquire the domain from trustful providers. Later on, when you are building your webpage, SEO, online shops, it will be much easier to set up the things when operating on the domain providers like Google or Godaddy.
Rule 5. Make it easy to remember.
The Ideas
Below I have written down 19 inspirational ideas to get your business name from.
| Idea | Example |
|---|---|
| Use your own name | Bayer, Boeing, Grundig, Cadillac |
| Use your name with a location | DKNY |
| Leverage nicknames | Danone (named after the founder’s son’s childhood nickname) |
| Get inspiration from mythology and literature | ASUS, Nike, Starbucks |
| Get spiration from themes (nautical, space) | Magellan |
| Use acronyms | AOL, BBC |
| Take a look at a map | Adobe, Amazon, Fuji |
| Use foreign words | Altavista, Audi (latin name of „listen”) |
| Create mash-ups | Groupon (group+coupon), Lego (leg godt) |
| Make it descriptive | 7-Eleven |
| Tell your story | Virgin (new to business) |
| Use a symbol | Pixar (pixel + initials of Alvy Ray) |
| Abbreviate | Cisco (from San Francisco) |
| Invent an alternative spelling | Reebok |
| Remove or add an extra letter | Tumblr, Flickr |
| Talk about what you believe in | Minolta (japanese: „what you believe in”) |
| Use Latin | Volvo, Verizon |
| Pick a word from the dictionary | Blizzard, Twitter |
| Make a grammar mistake on purpose | Quora |
The Tools
There are plenty of online tools that can support you with figuring out a business name for you. You should always check if all five rules presented earlier apply to Artificial Intelligence creativity.
Often, the tools offer you not only a business name generation features, but also might support you with logo designs.
Tool 1. Businessnamegenerator.com
The best thing about this tool is that it instantly check the domain availability on godaddy.com.
Just type the keyword ideas and click generate.
Tool 2. Shopify.com feature
This is a tool being a part of one of the largest online shopping platform for entrepreneurs.
Type the words and click generate. It checks the domain availability on godaddy.com.
Tool 3. Name-lix
This tool not only creates a business name but also, based on your preferences, it creates a proposition of a logo.
How could the name look different when combined with a logo and stylish form? Check this online tool.
P.S. To sum up, what we have learned so far.
- Firstly, you have learned what the business name creating rules are.
- Secondly, you understand that your business name cannot be already trademarked both in the US and EU.
- Next, you have received 19 inspirational ideas to look for the business name.
- As a result, you understand that there are tools that can make your life much more comfortable in terms of generating a business name.