Why choosing a business name can kinda suck

One of the most fun things about starting your own business is coming up with an original, clever name that everyone will love and that customers will happily tattoo across their foreheads in exchange for a year’s supply of your product.

FALSE.

Coming up with a name for your startup is freakin’ hard. (Tweet this quote)

Or at least, it was for us clowns at Buildicus.

The experts weigh in

There is tons of literature about the things to consider when naming your business. I read one such post this morning, in fact: “Naming Your Business? Consider These 3 Points First,” written by Jodi Helmer for Entrepreneur.

Jodi’s advice for choosing a name is:

1. Pick a unique name so as to stand apart from competitors.

2. Don’t pick a generic name.

3. Be unique, but not too unique.

Great. Thanks, Jodi. (For the record, I’m sure Jodi is a nice person who recycles and is kind to animals and kids and all that. I’m unfairly picking on Jodi only because her article is the latest I’ve read on this topic.)

When we were trying to come up with a name for what eventually became Buildicus, I read plenty of articles like Jodi’s. While they gave us a (somewhat vague) place to start, they didn’t tell us what we eventually came to realize on our own: that choosing a business name can suck.

The reality

Just as Jodi advises, we wanted something clever and unique, that conveyed what the product is about (building websites), but was fairly easy to pronounce and spell. We wanted to express the ease and simplicity of using our product, but also the world of possibility it opens for those looking to expand their businesses online.

We wrote lists and lists of words that we thought evoked the essence of our team, our mission and our product. We combed the dictionary for unique words. We looked to other languages. We combined words. We took the first letters of everyone’s names and rearranged them to make up words.

And once we had an ordered list of names we loved, we set about trying to acquire domain names and social media accounts. Guess what? Every single name we came up was already taken.

Every. Single. Name.

We quickly exhausted the list of names we loved, and set about making a list of names we kinda liked.

Same result.

This went on for a month. We went from trying to find a name we loved to just trying to find something, anything that was available. At one point, we thought we’d found a great name, and even sent out a letter to our customers alerting them to our name change. Then we heard from our lawyer telling us the name was a no-go, so back to the drawing board we went.

It sucked.

Eventually, we found a name that met some of our requirements and was, most importantly, available.

Advice from a non-expert (me)

So here’s my addition to Jodi’s advice: prepare yourself for disappointment.

Just kidding (kinda). My advice is to use a startup name generator like NameYourCo to see if the unique name you come up with truly is unique. (If you want your name to have a “.com” suffix, or TLD, make sure to check that box.)

Also, to make sure there isn’t already a company in your class that has trademarked the name you want, check the Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s site. Or find someone smart (like a lawyer) to do it for you, which is what we did because we’re good at tech stuff, but not super great at reading government web sites.

There are branding companies out there that make thousands and thousands of dollars coming up with names for businesses, and with good reason: it is hard.

So if you find yourself struggling with this, just know you are not alone.

(For funsies, take a look at this post which reveals how some of the world’s biggest brands got their names.)