Naming a product or service isn’t quite as big a deal as naming an entire business, because products can come and go, but it’s still extremely important. The shelves, both physical and digital, are full of an endless assortment of things, and one of the best ways for yours to stand out and succeed is to have an excellent product name.
Name Types
Just like with businesses and brands, there are main types of names we explore when we’re naming a product or service. These are Created Names, Concrete Names and Metaphoric 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. Google is the best known example. These are somewhat less common for product names than for business names, but sometimes they’re the perfect fit.
Concrete Names describe what a product is or does, or what the experience of interacting with that service or product is like. Examples are law firms that use the names of the partners for their names, or the Dollar Store. Sometimes these are perfect for product names, especially when people are familiar with the company but want to know what the new product or service is right away. For example, Apple Music.
Metaphoric Names are any names that don’t describe your product or service literally, but rather through evoking something bigger. 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 product or service name is the URL. For product names, a standalone URL is not always necessary – if you’re starting with a strong company, your individual products can live at your website. However, we search for available URLs (at least some that are open, and some that may be for sale) for product and service names – even if you have a page on your company site, a standalone product page or URL can always be helpful. Clearly, a short .com URL is ideal, but we will also explore longer URLs (like ours, cloudburstnames.com instead of cloudburst.com) and alternate extensions (such as .co, .net, and the newer ones like .io, .xyz, etc).