Initech is already taken....

April 18, 2007 4:35 PM

How do I name a new company?

I am starting a software company in the next few months and want to get incorporated and start setting up the necessary details.

The company will make web based software tools for software developers. I'm not asking for a name, but the process of finding a name.

The key though is that I need to find a name that is not already a registered .com. I know I can just add software to the name, but that seems so gimicky to me.

I'm not against paying somebody to help (and do the trademark search? is it worth it?), but I'd prefer to come up with something on my own.

posted by cschneid to work & money (20 comments total)

Do you mean:

• "How do I come up with a name for my company?"
or
• "How can I verify that the name I thought of for my company is unique/trademarkable?"

posted by misterbrandt at 4:58 PM on April 18, 2007

Make sure you get the .com, if you will be doing any retail-level business at all.

Search to make sure it isn't trademarked on TESS.

Make sure that random people can spell it, if they hear you say it.

Make sure it's short enough that they can remember it.

Don't do foosoftware or fooconsulting or whatever. Make the name just plain foo, as nobody will remember the other part.
posted by Tacos Are Pretty Great at 4:59 PM on April 18, 2007

Use a fold out map for inspiration, paying special attention to the names of fields, lanes and old farmsteads. You will find some very odd names and then all you need to do is add -tech on the end.
posted by fire&wings at 5:00 PM on April 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

Misterbrandt, my question is how do I find a name. I've come up with several names, but they've all been registered, or simply dumb after thinking about them.
posted by cschneid at 5:14 PM on April 18, 2007

I have this book (The Name's the Thing), which is for exactly that purpose, although it was published in 1991 - but an older book might help you come up with a solid idea not grounded mainly in modern technology. The Amazon page also has links to a list and a guide for this purpose.
posted by amtho at 5:21 PM on April 18, 2007

I find it easiest to start with totally made-up words, from scratch. You could jot down a few dozen random stream-of-consciousness words and then go back and cross out the bad ones. I'd just aim for 5-8 letter words that don't sound like someone drowning a klingon.

If you're having trouble spontaneously inventing words, try dumping a scrabble set on the table and playing with the letters.

You know that moment, when you're playing around with your tiles during a scrabble game and you come up with that seven-letter word that you know, "man that's gotta be a word, I must have heard that somewhere"? -- that's what I aim for.

On preview: seconding the "make sure they can spell it if they hear it" suggestion.
posted by churl at 5:23 PM on April 18, 2007

http://instantdomainsearch is by far the best way to search for domains.
posted by delmoi at 5:23 PM on April 18, 2007

There are no 6-letter pronounceable words left that aren't "dot comed" already. Much less something shorter. So unless your consulting company / software company is going to have a lot of letters, adding software / interactive / consulting / or-something to at least the domain name, you'll be in a tough place.

I've been thinking about why a lot of cool companies have been putting numbers in their names, and getting a good but short domain name is certainly a good reason to do so (see 37signals, 9rules, etc).
posted by zpousman at 5:24 PM on April 18, 2007

Oh, and if you think of anything you might want to use, buy it. Don't wait for a final decision, just buy it. Domains are cheap.
posted by Tacos Are Pretty Great at 5:35 PM on April 18, 2007

My main suggestion: make something up. Don't use an already-existing word.

What's Flickr? You know what it is. Googling for "flickr" had zero results before that company was started. Now 100% of the results are about that company. Heck, Google is so sure that you want Flickr that they'll correct you if you type in "Flicker".

Take an alternate example. Here's a guy who named his forum software "Vanilla". Idiotic. Completely ungoogleable, and always will be - anyone googling for info about Vanilla will get pages about vanilla extract, vanilla ice cream, and vanilla software configurations. The only way to get results limited to what the user wants is to search for "vanilla lussumo", using the (good) company name to limit the result set. The poor choice of name has probably doomed this very good forum software to permanent obscurity.
posted by jellicle at 5:59 PM on April 18, 2007

You might consider exploring some of the excellent marketing/branding blogs for ideas on conceptualizing a distinctive name:

Brand New

Brand Autopsy

Seth Godin's posts on brand names

Duct Tape Marketing's posts on name creation

Guy Kawasaki's post "The Name Game"

Once you've decided what you want your company's name to evoke, sound like, be spelled like, etc and you've determined that it's unique enough, you can approach the .com purchase, trademark, logo design, etc. issues.
posted by superfem at 6:02 PM on April 18, 2007

Naming companies is a business in itself. I did a related post in the blue a while back.
posted by beagle at 6:57 PM on April 18, 2007

Be careful not to pick an overly clever name or pun. Give the name time to settle into your brain before you jump on it--something that sounds great when you first think of it in the morning while high on caffeine may seem juvenile by the evening.
Any associations your name evokes are permanent, but your business focus may change so try to pick names that don't evoke ideas that may become irrelevant later on.
posted by Osmanthus at 6:59 PM on April 18, 2007

jellicle is right on. Good advice. Oh, Google itself is another perfect example. The word has no dictionary definition.
posted by Gerard Sorme at 7:11 PM on April 18, 2007

I always try to pick out one name from Astronomy, and one name from Electronics. That's why my company now is called "Uranus Hertz."

(sorry. I couldn't help it. apologies to Scott Adams, too.)
posted by leapfrog at 7:42 PM on April 18, 2007

That "completely ungoogleable" Vanilla is the second result in Google, and even then it's only second to the Wikipedia entry on vanilla.
posted by mendel at 9:25 PM on April 18, 2007

The the wordboard naming forums.
posted by Izzmeister at 11:36 PM on April 18, 2007

The key though is that I need to find a name that is not already a registered .com.

Or to buy it from the person who registered it. If you love the name, you might want to drop a little money on it, and the guy sitting on the domain name might want a little of your cash more than he wants to own the domain.
posted by pracowity at 12:05 AM on April 19, 2007

I asked a similar question awhile back. The best answer I got was to mash two little words together; I ended up choosing somebits.com.
posted by Nelson at 12:37 AM on April 19, 2007

You may also want to cut some slack to the ones that seem stupid. When my darling girlfriend and I started Nice Mirror we really wanted Mirror Mirror, as a reference to Snow White. Unfortunately a company selling auto rear-views had it as a redirect. So after much back and forth we ended up with Nice Mirror because the .com was available.

And, as insipid as it is, it's really grown on us. It works well in the context it gets used in - street fairs and art shows - and is memorable. It doesn't pass jellicle's google test (though it's no 'vanilla') but that's not our customer source and isn't likely to be. More importantly, and what you should consider, it resonates well with the people more likely to be our customers. That may be less of a disconnect for you since you're making tools for tool users, but don't discount the idea that your market will have different tastes than you.
posted by phearlez at 10:07 AM on April 19, 2007