5 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make When Naming – Part 4: Naming Too Quickly

This is Part 4 of our 5 Part Series on 5 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make When Naming. Check out Part 1 here, Part 2 here and Part 3 here.

Mistake #4: Naming too quickly.
We’ve all been in those situations where we have to make a decision quickly.  Too quickly. And often, those quick decisions are decisions we regret making later. It has been said that there is no virtue in thoughtless action.  This is especially true with naming.

One thing that makes naming so difficult nowadays — much more difficult than it was ten or even five years ago — is that many, many names have already been taken.  Both large and niche industries now have many players with many products.  And each and every one of them has been named.  And those names are already out there: trademarked, patented, or even simply in the broader cultural memory. Worse, if you’re launching a business and you come up with a name, you want to register it as a dot com. And it seems like most of the great .coms (top level domain names) are seemingly gone.

This means that many times, when an entrepreneur comes up with a possible name, it’s unconsciously drawn from something everyone knows.  It’s the name of a song that used to be popular.  Or a product that already launched and failed.  Or it sounds just like a competitor’s name. Or it sounds unique at first but people remark that it’s too cute or too generic or too obvious.

It’s all too easy to come up with a name that, well, anyone would have come up with if they sat and brainstormed about a similar company.  And that’s what you need to beat if you’re company name is going to be a winner.  You have to get past the obvious names and find one that has real power for your customers.

Here’s the good news: Once you’ve made a long list of names and none of them end up sounding that original.  You’re in the right place.  You’ve gotten all those names that are floating in everyone’s heads out of the way.  Now you can come up with something that really is spectacular.

Stay tuned for Part 5 in the series and leave your comments below.