How to find creative business name ideas

A good business name reflects the identity of your brand or company. A well-chosen name can also con­trib­ute to the success of your company by catching the attention of potential customers. Your business’s name should be unique and easy to remember, so choose it with care. In this article, we explain how to find a creative business name and provide some business name ideas.

What should you look for in a business name?

Finding the right name for your business is no easy task. It should be short, unique, memorable and easy to pronounce. The right business name will reflect your company and its image without being too com­plic­ated. And in the best case, you’ll find a creative business name that sets you apart from the com­pet­i­tion and grabs potential customers’ attention. But be careful when waxing creative—your name should also convey cred­ib­il­ity and trust­wor­thi­ness.

You should also be careful to avoid any lin­guist­ic traps, like un­in­ten­ded double meanings. This is es­pe­cially true if you intend to go abroad with your brand. Good in­ter­na­tion­al business names are not only easy to un­der­stand but also don’t have any offensive double meanings in other languages. Here are some ideas for business names that in­ter­na­tion­al­ise well:

• Your own name, e.g. Albertson’s
• Acronyms, e.g. IBM = In­ter­na­tion­al Business Machines
• Com­bin­a­tions of two or more words, e.g. Netflix = internet + flicks
• People and words from lit­er­at­ure and mythology, e.g. Nike = Greek goddess of victory
• Foreign words, e.g. Volvo = Latin for ‘I roll’
• Ab­bre­vi­ations, e.g. Adidas = first letters from the founder Adolf Dassler’s first and last names
• Nicknames, e.g. Mercedes = daughter of Emil Jellinek, who used her name as a pseudonym when entering Daimler cars into races, one of the most sig­ni­fic­ant being the Nice Race Week in 1889.

What are some examples of creative business names?

The dif­fer­ence between a cringe and a cool business name is hard to pinpoint and depends in large part on whether your company is suc­cess­ful. A perfect example of this is ‘Apple’. The fruity name actually has nothing to do with the brand’s products but is now re­cog­nised worldwide. The idea for this unique business name came to Steve Jobs when he was at an apple orchard.

Another example of a well-known and suc­cess­ful company and its name is Amazon. The name of the online store comes from the Amazon River in South America. Google got its cool business name from the number ‘googol’, which is a 1 with a hundred zeros. The name is meant to symbolise the endless in­form­a­tion provided by the search engine. Lego owes its unique business name to its Danish roots. ‘Leg godt’ means ‘play well’ in Danish. The company then shortened the name to ‘Lego’ to make it easier for in­ter­na­tion­al customers to un­der­stand.

Unique business names: how creative is too creative?

When looking for business name ideas for your company or sole trader­ship, cre­ativ­ity brings along a lot of ad­vant­ages. Creative business names usually haven’t been taken yet and help set you apart from the com­pet­i­tion. They may also be easier to get a re­gistered trademark for. Ad­di­tion­ally, it will also make it easier to get the right domain name so that you can implement your business’s website ideas as soon as possible.

Creative business names do, however, come along with some dis­ad­vant­ages as well. This is es­pe­cially true if your name doesn’t have any con­nec­tion to your company or product and as a result doesn’t evoke anything for potential customers. It takes a lot of time and effort to imbue that kind of name with meaning and get customers to associate it with your brand or service. It also takes search engines a while to learn which branch to associate an overly creative business name with. Un­con­ven­tion­al spelling and difficult pro­nun­ci­ation can also be sources of confusion.

That’s why your name should:

• Be short and easy to spell
• Have a con­nec­tion to your branch or what your company does
• Be easy to remember
• Sound pleasant and be easy to pronounce
• Have positive as­so­ci­ations
• Be unique and not easily confused with other business names

How do you find good business name ideas?

The search for the right name for your business is often even harder than finding startup ideas. After all, cre­ativ­ity doesn’t always arrive on cue. To avoid writer’s block, try taking a struc­tured approach. You can collect ideas by writing them down and pinning them to a board. This will likely give rise to more ideas. You can also look for in­spir­a­tion from these sources:

• Books, movies, art and music
• In­ter­est­ing moments from everyday life
• New places you explore while traveling
• Your way of de­scrib­ing your company to others

It’s important to stay open to new ideas and per­spect­ives and not rely on a single source for in­spir­a­tion. In­spir­a­tion often strikes when and where you least expect it.

How can you brain­storm good company name ideas?

Whether you’re looking for new business ideas or searching for the perfect name for your company, brain­storm­ing is a good way to generate new ideas. Here are some tips for how you can approach brain­storm­ing sessions for a unique business name:

• Cre­ativ­ity knows no bounds: some ideas might seem absurd, but they could lead to other, better ideas.
• Collect all your ideas: write down all the words and phrases that come to mind in con­nec­tion with your company or product.
• Use word as­so­ci­ations: combine the words that you collect with other words to generate new ideas.
• Use different methods: free writing and mind mapping can help you organise your thoughts and draw new con­nec­tions.
• Think about your target group: think about who your potential customers are and what kind of name suits that group best.
• Take your time: brain­storm­ing isn’t a race. Take your time to come up with ideas and keep working on them.
• Evaluate and improve on your ideas: after you’ve developed a list of ideas, choose the best ones, and then polish and improve those until you’ve finally found the perfect business name idea.

What do you do once you’ve found a cool business name?

You’ve found the perfect name for your business? Before you move forward with it, you should check the avail­ab­il­ity of your business name: is it still free or has it already been trade­marked? If you are con­sid­er­ing going in­ter­na­tion­al in the future, you should also check the avail­ab­il­ity of the name in other countries and make sure it works in other languages.

Once you’ve done that, the next key step is sharing the name with others and getting their feedback. Test the name with your friends, family and also with people outside of your close circles. Just because you think you’ve found a cool business name doesn’t mean that it will land well with others (i.e. potential customers). Input from others might also trigger ideas that can help you refine the name even more. If the feedback you get is positive, you should move forward with trademark re­gis­tra­tion.