How To Come Up With a Great Business Name (10 Tips & Free Tools)

Ideas for a new business can come randomly, while you’re walking, watching or reading something or simply pondering. On the contrary planning it, jotting ideas down, doing effective research and analyzing the market competition takes a great deal of time.

What if after going through months of hard work and sleepless nights you are ready with your plan of action to be launched in the market but get stuck at deciding a name for it. Naming your brand may seem easy but is the most important thing in a start-up and the name will define the brand as well as will be attached to your brand image for years to come.

Use the following tips to refer to before finalizing the name for your business startup.

Here are the top 10 helpful suggestions on how to come up with a business name.

1.Express your idea

Whatever name you’re planning for your startup make sure it’s expressive enough and describes the brand purpose or its service through its name. The name of the startup should be relevant to the brand or the services provided by it. The startup name can be made more indicative, by taking help of business name generators like Namelix. Namelix will generate business names after you enter descriptive keywords related to your idea of startup.

2. Avoid Hard-To-Spell Names –

The pro tip in naming your business is that “keep it simple”. There is no need to go out of the box and find such a name that can’t even be spelled by many. For instance, Xobni, pronounced ZOB-NEE, is an add-on service that provides analytics and other tools for programs like Microsoft Outlook and Gmail. Many people found it nearly impossible to remember and difficult to spell. You would never wish to be always engaged in correcting the misspelled version of your startup.

3. Search and Search –

Before finalizing a name, do your homework. Bring out the sherlock homes in you and search for the name you’re planning to keep. Sometimes a name which means something particular in a language would mean completely opposite in the other. Which is why try to look out for a name that would have a fixed meaning even if its translated. Furthermore, try to find out whether the name you like is already in use or not. BrandBucket is a business name generator where you can search for business names or browse by industries, so then you can find out whether your business name is already in use or not.

4. Keep it Catchy –

Come up with a catchy, short yet creative name for your startup. Generally, catchy words tend to remain in the viewer’s or reader’s mind and on their mouth more easily, also again helps in word-of-mouth marketing. Unless and until your startup name is not creative, people would not remember it.

5. Don’t be peculiar –

No doubt the name should suit the idea or the brand but additionally, you must keep in mind that the name is not way too particular. You might initiate your idea of a startup with the selling of shoes and might keep a name related to it, for instance shoebuzz. But over a course of time, you might wish to expand your startup and include other accessories like clothes or handbags and so on. In such a case, your already existing name wouldn’t suit your new idea. Furthermore, try to keep a generalized name by keeping the future aspects in mind. This is what Jeff Bezos did while naming “Amazon”.

6. Check the availability of Domain –

While deciding the name keeping in mind to check whether the Domain Name is available for your selected name. Most of the time the “.com” Domain Name are taken and people tend to settle for other alternatives such as “.net, .org ,.biz”. Don’t go for other alternatives as customers are accustomed to associating .com domains with an established business. Generally speaking, someone will already own your desired .com name but many domain owners are willing to sell their name for the right price. This is why try to use Business Name Generator like “Shopify” which would help you by creating a list of business names that have an available domain name.

7. Sort out trademark issues –

You would never want your name to be used by anyone else, so keep in mind to “Trademark” your name. A trademark is a brand name. Once you use trademark then your startup name, symbol or any combination could not be copied and used by anyone. Also, check whether the name you have selected for your startup is a trademark name or not by visiting USLTO’s trademark database, otherwise, you will be sued by the trademark owner for using their name. Similarly, you can check for your logo as well.

8. Conduct a Secretary of State Search –

You need to be a more serious Sherlock Homes in this case. Anyone wants their business to structure as a corporation, this is why you must go through the Secretary of the State Records to make sure whether your name would not be confused with similar other registered and established business names. As a rule, similar names would be debarred by the Secretary of the State and you would not get a chance to register your name.

9. Be a stylist –

While customizing your name, try to be a stylist. You can even tell-a-tale to the customers by your startup name and make it more prominent in the market. Also, creative acronyms can be kept, for instance, “GOOGLE” which is an acronym of ‘Global Organization of Oriented Group Language of Earth’. A single word can be kept, likewise, the name of the startup can also be based upon the founder’s name. Try to style it and keep it by keeping in mind your startup’s logo. Your name should also get a justifiable logo. Use Novanym Business Name Generator, as it would help you by narrowing down the search results in terms of styles and sector.

10. Take Feedback –

The most important step after finalizing your startup’s name is to take feedback not only from others but also from yourself. Try to think and visualize whether your name would have an impact or not. Say it loud, again and again, to understand whether anyone would face any difficulties in spelling it. Take feedback from your family, friends or colleagues. If any suggestion is made by them, don’t shun them but take them into consideration as they are given by your potential customer.

Top Business Name Generators

If you’re still struggling to zero down on the name hunt, these free business name generators can assist you to get the naming done with multiple combinations.

Namelix: Enter your business-related keywords, it will recommend related business names with logo ideas
Shopify Business Name Generator: Once you provide your choice of keywords , it will create a list of business name ideas along with the domain name availability.
Brandroot: It has the option to search by keywords or by business category.
Novanym: Once you have an initial search done with keywords, you can narrow down by style and sectors.
BrandBucket: With BrandBucket, you can search for business names or browse by industry.

What’s in a name? Well, much more than you can think. So spend qualitative time on it and once you decide it, then go for it.