6 Creative Ways To Choose A Brand Name

Are you looking for the perfect brand name for your new startup? I know there’s no doubt that choosing the perfect brand name is one of the most exciting and important elements of startup branding. But it’s also one of the hardest.

There are more than 300 million companies in the world today and according to the Small Business Administration over 6,27,000 businesses open each year. It’s getting harder to create and find a unique name such as Apple, Uber, Coca-Cola, Google, Nike, and so on.

So how do you create a great brand name? how can you play and win the name game, that can help position your company in this increasingly more competitive scenario and stand out from a huge crowd?

Well, if you’re worried, don’t worry, I’m here to help, 6 creative ways to choose a brand name.

1. Research On Your Niche and Competitors:

Before selecting your brand name for your startup, you’ve to do research about your niche and your competitors. It helps to get an idea about what types of brand names are suitable for your startup.

There are so many websites, they provide various types of ideas and information. Also, look for Facebook pages, Instagram, and Twitter account using the same or a similar brand name.

Research on your niche what types of business you want to start and visit competitors’ profiles and websites. Find out what they’re doing? how they create their name? How are they different than others? and How can you be different from them?

2. Select The Type Of Name That You Want:

After doing research on your niche and your competitors, select what type of name you want. This is one of the most important, essential, and hardest processes for everyone to choose a great brand name for a startup.

So, take time take and write down on paper one by one. Make a list of all the names that come to your mind. After doing this choose the best one that really represents your startup. You can also take help from your family, relatives, friends, or mentor to choose a name from that list.

There are seven different categories of names and pretty much every brand in the world falls within one of these seven categories.

A. Eponymous Names

Eponymous names like Disney and Burberry work by embodying the vision and beliefs of their founders. Adidas is more unique it derives from Adolf “Adi” Dassler the company’s founder and Tesla created by Nikola Tesla.

B. Descriptive Names

Descriptive names like American Airlines and The Home Depot work by telling you exactly what the company does but these names can be a mouthful and are much harder to own and protect.

C. Acronyms Names

Acronyms like GE and BP are just shorthand versions of descriptive names. Some acronyms are more strategic Kentucky Fried Chicken switched to KFC because Fried Chicken didn’t sound too healthy and the Hong Kong and Shanghai bank changed to eight that changed to hate HSBC to help the bank expand globally.

D. Suggestive Names

a. Real

Real words like Uber and Slack a straight out of a dictionary and suggest attributes or benefits. Uber literally means an outstanding example so it works well for a company with big broad bold ambitions beyond ride-hailing.

b. Composite

Composite names are created by gluing two words together like Facebook and Ray-Ban. These names have a kind of one-two punch and can be really memorable.

c. Invented

Kleenex and Pinterest of invented names by changing, adding, or removing letters for impact because it’s so hard to find real words.

E. Associative Names

Associative names work by reflecting imagery meaning back to the brand the Amazon in South America is the world’s largest river. Therefore, the earth’s biggest selection of books, clothes, content, and so on. Red Bull Associates to a drink with bull light qualities such as power and confidence.

F. Non-English Names

Some brands are derived from Non-English languages like Samsung which means three stars in Korean, Lego means play well in Danish.

G. Abstract Names

Abstract names like Rolex and Kodak these names have no intrinsic meaning but instead, rely on the power of phonetics to create really powerful brand names.

3. Decide What You Want The Name To Say:

Once you decided what type of name you want, you need to decide what your name should say. Ask yourself, what is your brand vision? What is your company’s mission statement?

The best brand names don’t describe, instead, they translate into some sort of emotional appeal. You want your brand to articulate your brand heart.

Nike’s emotional appeal is about winning, overcoming adversity, being a champion. When you think Nike, you think professional athletes, Olympians, champions, right? Just do it.

Coca-Cola gives you this sense of nostalgia, happiness, spending time with family and friends. GoPros about heroism, Apple is about simplicity and usability, Google comes from the math term that’s a one with a hundred zeros after it. So, you need to figure out what your big idea is and how you can translate that into your brand name.

4. Trim Down The Complexity:

The stickiest brand names out there are simple. If you have a brand name that’s hard to pronounce are too long, or it’s not easy to memorize, well, it’s going to have a negative effect.

Did you know when Jeff Bezos was incorporating Amazon, he wanted to name his business to be Cadabra, right? After the magic word Abracadabra. But when he got a call from his lawyer who was helping him incorporate, his lawyer thought the name of the company was Cadaver.

He didn’t know it was Cadabra then Bezos knew and he realized that name wouldn’t work. Hence you see the name now of Amazon. Luckily we’re not all going to Cadaver or Cadabra. Amazon is much easier to understand the name.

So, try to make a unique, memorable, and unforgettable name as possible such as Apple, Google, Nike, Tesla, Yahoo, Amazon, and so on.

5. Check The Language & Cultural Connotations:

Before you published your brand name publically, don’t forget to check the name’s meaning. Is your brand name doesn’t mean anything negative in other languages or countries. There are so many businesses that fail because of their brand name.

Some words are like “Gift” means “present” in English but in German “Poison,” “Cookie” means “Biscuit” in English but in Hungry “Small Penis”, “Face” means “Face” in English but in France “Buttock”.

Once you get your brand name don’t forget to check the name’s meaning. Use google translate to check the name meaning.

6. Check That The Name Is Available:

Check the name isn’t already taken you might have to create hundreds of names perhaps thousands before you find one that’s even available.

An important thing is a legal trademark. Check out a legal trademark for your brand name, is your name is available or not. Also, check domain availability, is your domain name is available or not.

Alphabet the parent company of Google is now one of the world’s most valuable companies but there was only one issue with an alphabet. Alphabet the company forgot about to calm Alphabet Dot Com URL.

Alphabet Dot Com URL woned by car company BMW. But they found a shorter and more unique and memorable web address ABC dot XYZ.

This does not mean that it happens to everyone. So before you register your brand name legally, check out your domain name as well.

Some Final Thoughts

Your brand name is the first and last asset of your company. So before you named your startup you must have to research.
So many startups don’t care about the brand name and once their startup grows then they face brand name problems.

Did you know, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank changed its name to “HSBC” to expand globally. Because the name of the bank represents only Hong Kong and Shanghai. That’s why the perfect brand name is so important.

We all know Jeff Bezos is the world’s richest person but someone asked us who is the world’s richest person? then Which name comes to your mind first? Bill Gates is right, cold drink means Coka-Cola, search engine means Google, gadget means Apple. Why this is happening because of a unique, memorable, and unforgettable brand name.

These are the creative ways to choose a brand name for your startup. So, take time, do some research, get help from your family, relatives, friends, and mentors.

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