Ask HN: Naming My Startup

While there are some generic rules for brandability, majority of naming issues boils down to personal issues founders have with liking or disliking a name. Many startups have funky names until it becomes known. Don't get too caught up on this.

As long as you can get the .com, it easy to spell, relatively short enough, and people can pronounce it, and it isn't trademarked or going to infringe on any such issue, you're more than halfway towards an okay name.

I run a naming company, and you might find our methodology and case studies pages useful:

http://nomvilla.com/methodology

http://nomvilla.com/case-studies

As far as your specific questions go:

1) The name is the first impression when someone sees the site via other media; i.e. a news article, or word-of-mouth, or an email. It can be the first impression when someone visits your site, but the logo and general design of the site can be the immediate first thing. In either case, the name is in the top 5 things a user first notices, and like a horrific site design, a really bad name can turn off some users.

2) The best possible scenario is an emotional company name with a descriptive product name. Apple: human, small, unlike cold, sterile computer companies of the time. iPhone: descriptive and straightforward. iMac: likewise.

If you don't have a separate company and product name, try to pick something that's in the middle. Don't be overly descriptive, but still try to have the name relate to your company, even in a tangential way.

Name is important to some extent. Ease of remembering, easy to spell and its association to your service/product/app are all some factors.

Here is how i go about finding names:

* Start with a list of nouns/names that you think your product should be called. Put it in a spreadsheet.

* Use a service like http://impossibility.org/ to find domain names that are available and related to your list.

* Keep iterating it over a week/10 day period. I am sure you will stumble upon good names.

Don't over try. Use a codeword till you find a good name. Also, ask for opinions from a couple of people.

I often use a mind mapping exercise. You start with a word that's central to your product or service and then branch out with words that spring to mind. You'll be surprised by how the associated words in your thought cloud will bring forth great imagery. Additionally, this exercise is great for logo design ideas.

Just be sure whatever you come up with is easy to spell and recall. Also, your name strategy should be 'future oriented'. If you should pivot will your name still work? Think ahead of how your product & services may evolve over time.

This article by Rich Barton might be helpful for you to come up with a name for your startup.

http://hopperanddropper.com/syllables-scrabble-letters-and-p...

But generally, I would agree that you should just spend some time on it, and move on to focus on building your product and getting it out to market fast to validate your assumptions and business model.

For us, it was ~5 lunch meetings where one of us wrote down all of the ideas the other had for ~10 minutes, then we switched.

We finally decided that naming the company was too hard and we were just going to go back to our day jobs (I'm exaggerating, but only slightly).

We decided to back-burner it for a day or two, and the next night while I was playing D&D I came up with the name.

I think naming he startup is by far not as important as naming your product (except of course if they are identical). It's probably a good idea to choose a name that helps people understand what it does. But I wouldn't stress out about it, getting the actual product ready to ship is the only really important thing. If your naming goes horibly wrong, you can always change it later.

I'm not sure how important it is overall. Focus more on starting to ship stuff. There are tons of companies with weird names.

I think the main thing is if you say it out loud, can people spell it correctly first time with no prompting from you?

If you shout out a few potential names to friends/family - if they start producing random mis-spellings, cross it off your list.

Spend some time on this but don't get mired in it.

Two sides:

On the one hand, I spent enormous time dreaming up a name for a business. I then registered it with the county, bought the domain name, and blah blahblah. It never resulted in the first sale.

On the other hand, I spent five years working for a Fortune 500 company which has changed it's name twice, once on "a gentleman's coin toss".

The right name has some value (or Bigco wouldn't have changed it) but as others have said you need to worry more about getting customers first.

Best of luck.