Here is a list of 9 things that should be taken in consideration when naming a new business or product:
1. The Name Achieves Differentiation From Competition – your name should be different from the competition, as should your messaging.
2. The Name Reinforces Positioning in Marketplace – a name should make an impact and should bring forth some sense of the company’s position as it enters the marketplace.

3. The Name Engages Customer or Prospect – it should be something that causes interest, causes inquiry and causes potential for action.

4. The Name Is unforgettable – it should embed itself in the collective consciousness, tie to mental signposts in the consumer’s brain and help the consumer remember the name when speaking to friends.

5. The Name Has a Life of It’s Own – A company name needs to carry a self-sustaining message, something that identifies what the company does or provides, without additional messaging or clarity being added.

6. The Name Evokes Deep Well For Graphical Images – it helps develop a logo, and design for websites, etc.

7. The Name Rises Above the Goods and Services You Provide – it should have a greater, more encompassing edge than the things you provide – because if it is tied to services or products, and they change, your name might well need to, also.

8. The Name Has What It Takes to Dominate the Category – this comes from the idea of timelessness, of speaking to the consumer in an unforgettable way, but it also goes above and beyond that.

9. Url has to be Available for Registration For Web Address- extremely important issue in today’s time and age of the internet.

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In any event, for you start-up execs, here’s a handy guideline for how not to name your company:

1. Avoid redundancies. This was a lesson lost on Internet Gold-Golden Lines of Petach Tiva, Israel.

2. Don’t sound like you may have a criminal or shady past. This one’s for you, DepoMed. It sounds like you’re going to sell vitamins out of the trunk of your car, not like you’re a developer of advanced medical technology for gastric conditions.

3. Don’t be lurid. Hello, XenoPort, NuVasive, and WiderThan. If you can spare the money, hire a focus group of 13-year-old boys to give you their reactions to all name suggestions.

4. Triple words are out. Yes, that’s you, VendareNetblue. It didn’t help PriceWaterhouseCooper. Even the Germans try to limit the combining of words to two.

5. Don’t sound desperate or obvious. Good Technology. KnowFat. Though, sometimes it works. Hurray Holding: Enthusiasm makes up for a lot.

Via

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It was Lewis Carroll who first used the word “portmanteau” to describe a word made up of other words – in this case, the words he had invented for the poem “Jabberwocky.” While some portmanteau words, like “guesstimate,” have an immediately obvious meaning, “brillig” and “slithy” are not so obvious.

There are two reasons portmanteaux make good company names. The first is that, as coined words, they are much easier to trademark than natural words. (But you still need to check the trademark database to make sure no one else invented the word before you did.)

The second reason for choosing a portmanteau name is the ability to evoke two or more concepts with one word: Verizon, for instance, is a combination of the Latin word veritas, meaning “truth,” and the English word “horizon.”

More resources on the subject:

• Wikipedia
• Portmanteau Dictionary: Blend Words in the English Language, Including Trademarks and Brand Names

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What’s in a name?

Just about everything if it identifies your company or organization and tells the public what it can expect from you. Which is why the fin de siecle trend toward re-branding that picked up steam in the late ’90s is unlikely to end any time soon. “Old” businesses and organizations want to sound new. New organizations want to sound cutting-edge. “NYNEX,” after all, is so…20th century.

These days, even mom-and-pop shops are in the business of renaming themselves. Small nonprofits, looking to gin up more support from major donors, are attempting to recast themselves as well.

To be sure, companies [...] need to review their logos and their overall graphic identity periodically just to make sure they don’t look outdated. That activity is something else, though — a brand refreshment, if you will, not a true re-branding.

True re-branding involves overhauling a firm’s identity and positioning.

Typically, existing customers, if they are happy with the service you provide, will come along regardless of the name change you make. It’s your prospective customers, that vast universe of potential business growth, that you want to hear from.

Don’t lose sight of your mission. Small nonprofits and small-cap companies can’t afford to give up their hard-won identity in the hope that an ill-considered new name will somehow position them better with their donors and customers.

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• Distinctiveness.
• Brevity.
• Appropriateness.
• Easy spelling and pronunciation.
• Likability.
• Extendibility.
• Protectability.

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Along with the Ingredients and Qualities of Good Brand Naming, Brand Naming Tips or Myths presented here before, here is a list of some other five things to consider when choosing a name for your business of product:

Length

The length of the name you choose for your small business is paramount to how well your prospective customers perceive it. A short name might be more difficult to brand, while a longer one will be difficult to remember and to promote. It is best to keep the name of your small business to three words or fewer, if possible.

Logo

Ideally, the name you choose should be easily turned into an identifiable logo. Your logo – even more than your name – will be the symbol with which your customers will readily identify your small business. The name of your small business will become synonymous with that logo, and you should be able to come up with a name that can be translated into a logo.

Made-Up Words

Many of the world’s most successful companies have thrived under a name that never existed before the business. While this can turn into a powerful marketing tactic, stay away from made-up words that will be difficult for your customers to pronounce or spell. You want your small business to be easily found on the Internet, in the Yellow Pages and on advertisements.

Research

Before you head for the line at the DBA or begin the incorporation process, research the name you have chosen for your small business and be sure that there isn’t a likeness in your industry. For example, “Tom’s Pictures” might be a name that you have come up with for your photography business, and it is certainly descriptive. But if “Tom’s Prints” sells pictures and frames down the street, you will have a hard time overcoming the confusion.

Connotation

You’ll want the name of your small business to convey the atmosphere and philosophy of your business.

via.

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Meanwhile there are cases that we use such a noun without even thinking that the word itself used to be a registred brand name, say escalator for example. This is the downside in terms of branding.

Well, these words are called eponyms.

An eponym is a general term used to describe from what or whom something derived its name. Therefore, a proprietary eponym could be considered a brand name (product or service mark) which has fallen into general use.

So, what leads a brand name to become eponym? Well, for one thing, other brands of similar nature must exist; but even more importantly, the original product, even if discontinued, must still function pronominally. In other words, a specific can be used to designate a class of generics with no loss in meaning. A usual result: lower case transcription of the brand name.

In this matter there is the American Proprietary Eponyms website, which have some of the most common eponyms in english language.

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On a very fundamental level, there are two basic ingredients of the best evocative names:

Differentiation

A competitive analysis is an essential first step. How are your competitors positioning themselves? What types of names are common among them? Are they all projecting a similar attitude? Do their similarities offer you a huge opportunity to stand out from the crowd?

Positioning

The next step is to carefully define your positioning. The idea is to position yourself in a way that rings true in a fresh way–that cuts through all of the noise out there. The goal is to have your audience personalize the experience of your brand, to make an emotional connection with it, and ultimately to take you in. To redefine and own the territory.

From there, a name should contain as many of the following qualities as possible. The more of them that are present, the more powerful the name:

Self-propelling
A name that people will talk about.
A name that works its way through the world on its own.
A name that’s a story in itself, whether it’s at the local bar, on the job, or on CNBC.

Emotional connection
What does the name suggest? Does it make you feel good? Does it make you smile? Does it lock into your brain? Does it make you want to know more?

Poetry
How does the name physically look and sound? How does it roll off the tongue? How much internal electricity does it have? How does it sound the millionth time? Will people remember it?

Personality
Does the name have attitude? Does it exude qualities like confidence, mystery, presence, warmth, and a sense of humor? Is it provocative, engaging? Is it a tough act to follow?

Deep well
Is the name a constant source of inspiration for advertising and marketing? Does it have “legs”? Does it work on a lot of different levels?

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Tag: naming, brand name

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Myth #1: Size doesn’t matter.
Yes, it does. Shorter is better in everything from memorability to packaging.

Myth #2: There are no words left to steal from the dictionary.
Not true. Your speaking vocabulary may only be 30,000 words, but a hefty dictionary will yield 750,000 words

Myth #3: Coining a new word is easy.
But the trick is to create a new name that is meaningful, impactful and starts the positioning process for the brand or company.

Myth #4: Manufactured names are all the same.
A made-up name might be a simple fusion of two easily recognized words, it might be an altered form of a recognizable word or it might be a foreign word that some people would recognize

Myth #5: Customers will take our name literally.
Good names are suggestive. They are bundles of possible meanings. They are not contractual commitments.

Read the full 5 Myths about Brand Names

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What better way to honor the brash origins of this city, the owners of Houston’s new professional soccer franchise reasoned, than to name their team “Houston 1836,” a nod to the year when two entrepreneurial brothers from New York arrived here to build a city atop the swampy bayous of southeast Texas.

Many Latinos in Houston, though, greeted the unveiling of the team’s name this week with a shudder. Eighteen thirty-six also happens to be the year that a group of English-speaking interlopers waged a war of secession that resulted in Mexico’s loss of Texas, ushering in more than a century of violence and discrimination against Mexicans in the state.

Read full article here. (via)

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