Your brand’s or business’ name is one of its most important aspects. A great name can set your business apart from the crowd and create a positive first impression with your future customers and clients. A mediocre one will do the opposite.
Naming a business or brand can be scary, but it’s also a great opportunity to figure out who you are, what you do, and what you want to be. In fact, you need to do that to find the right name for you business, and we can help.
Name Types
There are three main types of names we explore when we’re naming a business or brand. These are Created Names, Metaphoric Names and Concrete Names. When we present business and brand names, we will include at least two of the following name types, often all three.
Created Names come from combining parts of words, breaking them apart, bringing in word-pieces from other languages, and playing with sounds and language. You know, like Google.
Concrete Names describe what a business is or does, or what the experience of interacting with that business or brand is like. Examples are law firms that use the names of the partners for their names, or the Dollar Store. These usually aren’t as potent or fun as the other name types, but sometimes they’re what’s called for.
Metaphoric Names are any names that don’t describe your business or brand literally, but rather through evoking something else. We use all those English Lit devices: synecdoche, metonymy, analogy, allusion – we have to put our degrees to use somewhere, right? The best metaphoric names are extremely powerful, drawing upon deep layers or meaning and association, and many of the most well-know brands use them: think Nike and Amazon.
URLs
Another thing to consider when coming up with a brand or business name is the URL. With every name we present, we will include some possible available URLs (some that are open, and some that may be for sale). Clearly, a short .com URL is ideal, but we will also explore longer URLs (like ours, cloudburstnames.com instead of the unavailable cloudburst.com) and alternate extensions (such as .co, .net, and the newer ones like .name).