Naming Your Business
According to David Burd, president of The Naming Company in East Stroudsburg, Pa., it’s common for new entrepreneurs to try to convey too much in their business names. “A name is not an ad campaign,” he says. “It allows you to write checks and do business. It’s not the end-all, be-all of marketing.”Instead, he says, your name should be memorable, simple and easy to pronounce. Start-ups should avoid long names such as Genevieve’s Fishing and Tackle Supplies, which are difficult in some media, he adds. “On the radio, she’d be saying, ‘that’s Genevieve, spelled, g-e-n-e-v-i-e-v-e-no apostrophe-s hyphen fishing hyphen tackle dot-com, let me repeat, that’s…’ ”
When conjuring up a name for a new company or product, Mr. Burd and his team consider four types: descriptive, suggestive, arbitrary and fanciful. A descriptive name says just what it is (Beaded Jewelry Inc.). A suggestive name applies a quality or attribute of your product (say, Indonesian Jewelry, if all your beads were from Indonesia). An arbitrary name has no connection to what you are selling, along the lines of, say, Apple Computer Inc. A fanciful name is a made-up word: Xerox Corp., or Accenture Ltd.
Ted on February 28th, 2005 4:29 pm
In my own case I recently changed my company name from Dodecahedron to Eastern Business Solutions.
I don’t miss the old name a bit. I finally have a name I don’t have to repeat three times or spell it out. The new name is long, but I feel it better describes what we do.
Bill Erickson on February 28th, 2005 7:51 pm
I’ve also had a naming mishap. I had (still have) a web development company named Aesthetic Studios. We chose it because it did represent our business well and the domain was available. We forgot that 90% of americans don’t know how to spell it, and 90% of brits can’t pronounce it :)
Business Opportunities Weblog En Español on February 28th, 2005 1:31 pm
Dándole Nombre a tu Compañía
Startup Journal: Segun David Burd, presidente de The Naming Company en East Stroudsburg, Pa., es común que los emprendedores intenten elaborar mucho el nombre de su nueva empresa. “Un nombre no es un aviso publicitario,” dice el. “Te permite escribir…
Leave a Reply