There’s this running joke that whenever you’re about to start a business, the hardest part is coming up with a suitable name for the company.
When it came time for me to register my first business some 8 years ago, I spent days thinking about what would be a good fit that would describe what I’m doing (marketing & comms) but that would also be a bit quirky. I envisioned how my fancy customers receive the monthly invoice and can’t help but smile when they spot the name.
I finally stumbled upon the name when I was having a stroll in the city. I walked past a bench that has just been repainted and had a hand-written sign on it which read “Fresh paint”. I’m from Estonia and in Estonian the words work quite well together because of alliteration: “Värske Värv”. I quite liked how that sound and how it somewhat illustrated what marketing and comms can do: add a new and fresh perspective to what a business is doing. I also liked that it sounded a bit dangerous even - it’s mostly used as a warning, something to keep people away. So in my head, that was a perfect combination of professional, yet quirky.
The only thing I would change - maybe choose a more international name next time for the global customers?
Good name pick Kristin! Did you also create a logo?
Around the same time - 8 year ago - coincidentally me and a group of colleagues from university decide to start our Data Analytics consulting business, we faced the same dilemma - how to name and what logo to use (which created even more debate)
We ended up with the traditional approach, using the founders first name letters, it emerged LLAB. Which the word stands for laboratory and experimentation, we felt it represented well our strong academic background applied to businesses.
For the logo, we were looking for something to stand out over the traditional consulting firms and match our name and vision. We ended up using a curious chameleon with circuit hand and Gaussian curve tail - the best blend between futuristic looking and science! And of course we had to apply the golden ratio to it
Oh wow, what a scientific approach! I love how there are often so many details behind a name and a logo, it’s really part of the personality of the business.
I didn’t get to the branding part with Värske Värv but now thinking that I should! Something like this?
PS - now I remembered this epic TV ad from Mentos that uses a similar thinking behind wet paint being “dangerous” but also an opportunity simultaneously. Who else remembers it?
This is spot on. The whole process of founding a company in Estonia is fairly simple and can be done in an hour or so but this indeed assumes that you already have a name ready (and which isn’t taken already).
I remember brainstorming for a company name for days, having several criteria (like it shouldn’t be embarrassing to send out an invoice from such company and it should be quirky enough) and plenty of options but all of them were taken or were wayyy too obscure.
Funny enough, the company name just came to me when the TV was on in the background and I heard: “Hey, that’s pretty good…”. So there it came to be, Pretty Good OÜ.
We spent quite some time in figuring out a name for my previous company Holvi.com. We quite liked Holvi (it’s Finnish for Vault) from the start as it suited the banking service we were building for SMEs. But the blocker was that there was another company with a similar name in an adjacent industry. So we went into brainstorming and went through for example:
Beanbox, a twist from an archaic English term Bean Counter meaning an accountant
Circled, a bit more generic version, luckily we didn’t go with this
Keru, runner-up where we had developed a nice logotype with a bird embedded into it and a whole brand story how the bird will become the mascot of the financial freedom
White Vault, a twist from the Vault name
One deciding factor was also the domain availability. As we weren’t too happy with the alternatives we had to bite the bullet and simply negotiate with the other company about buying the name from them, luckily we did!
namelix, is good for inspiration, I use it to have fresh ideas, usually I choose the mode of foreign languages or just catchy name of some syllables that doesn’t have any meaning, it can check domains .com or .io, not affiliated with them, I just find them useful, also now I imagine there is a GPT in the marketplace or maybe a few that can help with that
Funny enough, wrote a LinkedIn post on this one recently. I deal with a lot of early-stage startup branding and actually prefer to be involved in the naming (and not deal with crowbaring some random name in a brand afterwards)
Almost always it’s one of three options:
Some name is already given to the brand. Now we must find some sense to merge it with the creative vision.
No clue what the name is. Now we need an anchor for the creative vision.
We will name it Pink Cakes because I like cakes and pink and it’s my company. I want the logo to include this symbol because it’s so deep and powerful.
There’s a whole company naming industry, since finding & registering a good name is only becoming harder every second. I’ve had my eyes on the only somewhat practical book on the subject for years but it has been sold out - Don’t Call it That by Eli Altman. And of course there’s a bunch of company name makers + the new advent of AI is also a source (https://namelix.com/ is pretty snazzy).
What I find to be the problem is methods of thinking, not tools.
So here’s how the solution will go down most of the time:
Depends what the existing name is, but in general we would abstract from the meanings & build a neutral, good looking brand that does not reference the name in the creative solution too much.
Perfect. We will then start looking at target audience, compile lists of root words that are either associated with the action the client takes or even better the outcome after using your product. Out of the root words we’ll go to town with generators, AI, asking around, dictionaries and all at our disposal to find a form 9of the word that can be registered and put on some decent domain.
We will sit down and focus in on the actual product & audience. Yes, your tastes come in to play but we need to make sure to name things based on impression we want to create in customer’s minds. If it’s say some brand based on your expertise or family history, great. Otherwise we need to make sure the future client gets where the complex personal name comes from.
Naming a company is somehow so simple yet so complex. Some names have seemingly come out of thin air for me. But regardless, they have come out of following these simple methods. Things have to be set in motion somehow, then followed by taking a hard look at the options and abstracting yourself from how much you know about your own product.
I write a lot around these finer things where brand meets content. Nice to meet you, let’s connect if that’s your jam: Ēriks Lapiņš - ThirtySquare | LinkedIn
It really depends on your goals. This time around I decided to promote myself and the brand (not my first business), hence the business name is my name.
me and a group of colleagues from university decide to start our Data Analytics consulting business, we faced the same dilemma - how to name and what logo to use (which created even more debate) 
