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How to Come Up with the Perfect Business Name [2023 Guide]

By Grant Polachek

In How to Create and Find a Business Name

March 17, 2022

40 Min read

How to name your business in 2021

Choosing a name is one of the hardest parts of starting a new business — and if you’re wondering how to come up with a business name, you’re probably well aware that there are very few easy parts of starting a new business! With naming, though, there are rules to follow that make it easier.

At Squadhelp, we also have plenty of resources, brainstorming tricks, and post-name-choice checks that will add up to help you find a name you can build an impactful brand around. 

One of the reasons choosing a name is so hard is that it’s incredibly important! Businesses live or die based on their brand, and the cornerstone of that brand is its name. 

If you’ve been working on the name game for a little while, you probably know that Google was originally BackRub, for example. Can you imagine us all backrubbing things? Me neither. But even that wild name (thankfully changed in 1997 to, of course, Google) was based on some rough naming logic. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin chose it because their search engine prioritized sites in its list of results by tracking backlinks – backlinks… Backrub… there’s something there. But it seems pretty unlikely the two utilized audience testing as a couple of 20-year-olds in a dorm room. 

Luckily, you have more resources available to you. Admittedly, mostly because Sergey and Larry gave us Google and you could find this ultimate guide to business naming. Thanks for changing your mind on that name, guys!

So, clearly, a brand name is important. But just how important is choosing the right name for your business?

Why Are Brand Names Important? 

To put it simply, names are important because they’re often the first thing potential customers hear of your business. Your name has to be remembered for you to get repeat business, build buzz, and ultimately create a well-known and respected brand. Need some proof? Here are some stats on the importance of brand names:

At Squadhelp, we see many founders stall during the naming process. If you don’t understand the importance of a business name, or if you understand the importance but don’t have a strong naming toolkit, mistakes can be made before the process is underway. In turn, this could lead to unforeseen consequences for your branding and revenue. So let’s get you set up with that toolkit!

Common Early Business Naming Mistakes

As the founder of a new business, you might find yourself:

If you pause and think about what a name means for your long-term business prospects, you’re already one step ahead of many of your competitors. 

So, choosing a name is incredibly important for your new business, but there’s no need to be intimidated. Our proven process has helped over 35,000 customers find a powerful name for their business.

And this ultimate guide to coming up with the perfect business name will walk you through the process. Get ready to find a name that matches your idea, innovation, or the potential of your brand.

Read the following:

  1. Understanding the Power of a Business Name Business Naming Mistakes
  2. Common Pitfalls to Avoid When Naming a Business
  3. Final Tips for Choosing a Business Name With Confidence
  4. Frequently Asked Questions

Understanding the Power of a Business Name

The first step towards coming up with the perfect name for your business is understanding the power of a name.

Don’t view your business name as inert. Names are dynamic, and they continually shape the way that customers both new and returning interact with your business. Your name will limit or maximize opportunity, determine brand strategy, facilitate industry leadership, and stimulate or suppress growth.

A good name: 

A bad name, on the other hand:

When you understand the power of a name you’re ready to invest in the naming process — and the future of your business.

The Role of Business Names in Branding

Imagining the day-to-day reality of your brand when it’s up and running is key to finding a name. Ask, Who do I want to be when I grow up?

Concrete, clear, and well-defined ideas are much easier to name than hazy, vague ones.

If you’re planning to open a chocolate shop, you need to know more about it than the simple fact that you’ll be selling chocolates! So, let’s dive in.

How a Business Name Can Influence Customer Perception

Alongside building a coherent identity around which your brand can form, your name directly influences how customers perceive your business.

These characteristics, secondary to identity, relate to the product or service you’re offering the world. For example, a name can emphasize quality, luxury, durability, or affordability.

This link between name and identity is particularly clear in fashion. Elite fashion brands like Gucci, Balenciaga, and Prada benefit from the association conjured by their classic names with old-world style and luxury manufacturing. If you’re launching a luxury brand, you need a timeless name so your products can command a timeless price tag.

Modern fast-fashion outfitters, on the other hand, choose names like Uniqlo and Boohoo to signal a “cheap and cheerful” approach. Customers can tell from the modern naming conventions used that these brands will be affordable without compromising on style.

There’s no point spending time coming up with a business name until you know how you want to be seen, and by whom. Whatever name you choose, potential customers will make assumptions and adopt expectations about your brand. If those expectations don’t align with reality, customers will lose faith in your business.

So a name should signal to your audience the qualities and characteristics of your product or service, as well as your fundamental values. By influencing customer perception with your name, you’ll reinforce your position in the market.

The Impact of a Strong Name on Business Growth and Success

Naming is one of the first steps in launching your business, but a strong name will facilitate growth throughout the lifespan of your brand and influence your success well beyond those initial months.

For example, Grandma’s Cookies might be a good start for your cookie business, but Grandma’s Kitchen gives you the option for a natural expansion into brownies and beyond.

You might not be considering the spin-off branded baking trays, spatulas, and whisks at this point, but thinking too small when choosing your name can place a ceiling on expansion that hurts you down the line.

Your name will have a powerful effect on the ultimate value of your brand. Among S&P 500 companies, brand makes up 30% of the stock market value. Given that your business name is central to your brand, a bad name could ultimately wipe out 30% of the potential value of your business.

Choose a name that leaves the door open to growth, and expansion into related markets.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid When Naming a Business

No matter how great your business idea is, a bad name stops could hold you back from becoming the brilliant brand you should be.  Before we walk you through the naming process, you should be aware of these common pitfalls to avoid. 

Because of the desire for a creative and eye-catching name, many business founders push too far beyond the bounds of the English language. While a creative twist of spelling can help you stand out, if your customers are failing to find you in a Google search because of your unspellable name, you’re losing business.

The app-based taxi service Lyft got this one right. It’s instantly pronounceable and their customers won’t struggle to remember this alternate spelling. But how many people have gotten lost looking for denim brand ‘Pheelings’ and gone for a pair of Levi’s instead? 

And it’s not just on-the-ground purchases that you should worry about. Daniel M. Oppenheimer, professor of psychology at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, identified that hard-to-pronounce stock names were less likely to be purchased than those with simple names.

Of course, if you’ve established a brand with a hard-to-pronounce name (or entered a foreign market where new customers will struggle), it’s not too late to turn it around, like Hyundai did with a 2023 campaign boldly scolding its customers for getting their name wrong.

Lumia seemed like the perfect name for Nokia’s new line of mobile devices. It’s a catchy, memorable word that means snow in Finnish, the language of Nokia’s home nation, and to the rest of the world the association with light should have set this product up for success.

Unfortunately for Nokia, Lumia is a slang term for a sex worker in some Spanish dialects. Even though it’s niche, once the internet caught on the news spread like wildfire.

If a brand as huge as Nokia can fall into this trap, so could you. Perform due diligence to assess the cultural associations of any name you’re closing in on, including wide audience testing. Even if you might be a long way from entering international markets, don’t limit yourself with a name that holds you back around the world.

Many new business owners land on a name that sounds right because it’s very similar to existing names within their industry. This can lead to multiple problems – firstly, it makes your name generic and could cause confusion between your two brands, it also pits you directly against that other brand which is an issue if they’re established. Finally, too close a similarity could land you in hot water with a trademark dispute.

Trademarking is essential to protecting your brand, so don’t settle on a name before carrying out a trademark check to determine whether there’s any obvious conflict with your chosen name. After a free check, once you’ve got a shortlist of names, it’s also well worth it to run further trademark research with the help of an attorney and register the trademark for your name with the USPTO or your country’s trademark office. 

Many successful businesses are started because the founder spotted a gap in the market or a niche to fill and, naturally, they’re looking for a name that identifies the business with this niche.

But by focusing your name too specifically, you’ll limit the opportunity for growth in the future, whether that means expanding geographically or into adjacent services in your industry.

One common naming mistake is for people to settle on a name that’s geographically limited. If you’re offering a service that’s physical, rather than digital, the desire to connect with your community is understandable — but a name like 4th Street Automotive will prevent you from connecting with customers when you open a second location over on 81st Street. In this particular scenario, it’ll also lead to a lot of people who need an oil change getting very lost!

Standing out among your competitors is hard enough without a generic name that signals nothing about your business’s identity and values. Your business name should be unique and pique the interest of your potential customers whenever they hear it. In the modern marketplace, simply stating the service you offer, for example, is rarely going to be enough. 

Generic names are also extremely hard to attach a valuable domain to — something we’ll get into later.

Before you choose a name, make sure you know who it’s supposed to appeal to. Expensive patio furniture in traditional styles, for example, should be aimed at an older audience who own homes and buy rocking chairs! They value traditional, historied, trusted names. But if you’re selling build-at-home furniture that’s affordable and bought online, your audience is probably younger and is likely to respond to a more modern brand name.

How to Come Up with a Great Business Name in 6 Steps

Naming a business can be broken down into 6 steps. By following our clear process, you’ll avoid getting overwhelmed by the possibilities and stalling. Nor will you speedrun the naming process, missing out on key components like understanding how your name connects to your brand identity or the vital audience validation process.

1. Clearly Envision Your Business and Value Proposition

Concrete, clear, and well-defined ideas are much easier to name than hazy, vague ones. So, before beginning the naming process ask yourself how well you understand your business, really?

Many founders, with an implicit sense of their business, fail to make explicit exactly what their business will do for its customers. Before you start seeking a name, you must envision your business in both the grandest terms as well as the details:


A great way to start building your brand is with our AI-powered brand-building tool. With just a little information from you, we create a free brand book, sometimes called brand guidelines or a brand bible, that you can refer to for all things branding for years to come!

Once you understand your brand, you can create your value proposition: a breakdown of exactly why your customers will choose you over your competitors. If your value proposition runs to more than a couple sentences, scrap it and start over. You’re honing in on exactly why you exist and why that matters. If you can’t say it simply, your customers won’t understand it any more than you do. 

Let’s say you’re opening a chocolate shop. Don’t focus on broad operational details like the top-of-the-line equipment you use or the color scheme of your interior. Instead, focus on the details that your customers will truly value, like the fact that you are starting this shop so that people can enjoy the little things in life or the ethical considerations that go into your stock selection. These are the kinds of details that will help you find a name.

With a value proposition that captures your business in a sentence or two, you are one step closer to a name that sums up your business in a word or two.

naming a business with tone

It’s important to develop your brand imagination at this stage. This advanced naming concept is often missed by founders who see a name and think “that’ll do” without getting excited about its deeper meaning.

Building brand imagination lets you connect your name to your future logo, website landing page, your business’s story and mission, and the evocation of emotion in your customers. 

To develop brand imagination in the naming process, try to imagine how a logo could spring up from every name you assess,  then imagine that logo on a website. Picture your customers finding that website, and imagine how they will connect your name to your story.

Without brand imagination, you might find yourself rejecting names because you lack the creativity to see how they fit at the center of your brand identity. Until you have brand imagination, a name is just a word on a page: brand imagination brings potential names to life.

2. Define your Brand Identity

Your value proposition helps you understand what your business does and why your customers will care. Now it’s time to go deeper into generating your brand identity.

Start With Your Customers

Before you can identify a brand identity, you need to understand your target audience. Who will your customers be, and what will appeal to their passions, values, and desires?

You can define your audience based on a range of factors, from behavioral to demographic; psychographic to geographic. Market research and competitor analysis will help you determine your target audience and what’s important to them.

Find Your Brand Tone

Once you understand your potential customers, you can reach for a brand tone that chimes with what they want to see. Your brand tone should coherently connect your value proposition and your target customers.

So what is tone? Tone is a general term for a character or attitude of a place, a story, or, yes, a business or brand. The tone of your business should speak to your audience while also appealing to your business aspirations.

The right tone will set a foundation for your brand and allow you to control how your brand is perceived. Think of the brands Gucci and Fossil. People who are shopping for high-end products will gravitate towards Gucci, whereas Fossil makes a direct appeal to durability and lasting practical quality.

Some of our favorite brand tones include:

To pick up our chocolate shop example, if you’re focussing on luxury chocolate for gifts and special moments, then you might take a prestigious tone for your brand. But if you’re in business to offer your customers a spark of joy that breaks up the hustle and bustle of their everyday lives, then a fun and playful tone fits your overall mission.

Understand Your Industry Position

Before you settle on a brand tone, one last thing to consider is the wider industry within which you’re positioning yourself. Brand tone can help you fit in among, or stand apart from, your competitors. So what do you want to do?

Are you an industry disruptor, barrelling into the marketplace with tongue firmly in cheek?

Or are you setting yourself apart from your competitors with a higher standard of professionalism and customer service? Your brand tone will influence how you’re seen within your industry, as well as by your customers.

Brand Tone Leads to Name Style

Once you’ve worked out a brand tone, you should start thinking about name style. This is closely linked to brand tone, but not the same thing. Name styles can work for multiple brand tones, and the appropriate style of name for you depends on your business area, your customers, your products, and current naming trends (although trends should be considered carefully if you want your name to stand the test of time).

Here are a few examples of name styles:

To help illustrate the connection between brand tone and name style, let’s take a look at which tones and styles work together, and which don’t:

Winning combinations:

Clashing combinations:

As you can see, there’s not a one-to-one connection between tone and a single style, but knowing your brand tone narrows things down and gives you direction when choosing a style and, ultimately, deciding on a name.  

Expert Tip — Identify Secondary Branding Elements

If you want to take a deeper dive into your brand, tying your naming choices to secondary branding elements will allow you to create a powerful and coherent vision for your long-term branding strategy.

To understand your secondary branding elements, you need to understand the big ideas, personal values, and stories that will drive your brand.

Your story should contain the reason you’ve started your business, your personal investment in the industry, and the problem you want to solve. Into this story, thread your values as well as those that are most important to your audience. And lastly, place this narrative within the bigger picture of your business plan and your overarching strategy.

Now ask yourself: which name contains all of these elements? Not just something that’s tonally aligned with your brand but a name you can grow into every step of the way. It’s a question of who you want to be when you grow up.

Naming a business

3. Brainstorm Unique, Catchy, and Creative Business Name Ideas

With a strong sense of your brand identity, you’re ready to begin the creative process. It’s time to brainstorm for names that sum up your value proposition, appeal to your target audience, and match your brand tone.

There are many business name types to help guide your process. These include:

Try creating a handful of names for every category on this list and you’ll be off to a good start. Not every name you come up with will be good, but that’s all part of the process so don’t be afraid to make mistakes, all in the name of getting your creative juices flowing.

Creative Techniques

Alongside the name types, you can be guided by creative techniques to help you come up with names. Lean on these techniques if you feel your creativity drying up: write out a list of adjectives related to your brand and a list of emotions you want to evoke in your audience and see where it takes you, or choose Greek or Latin words as the root of your name. 

There are several additional exercises to work through on Squadhelp’s Brand Naming Worksheet. Interested in DIY naming? Just enter your email address and we’ll send you the worksheet, which was carefully developed by Squadhelp experts, for free!

You can also use our AI-powered, real branding data-informed name generator to get a list of powerful names to work with. 

Finally, why not look for inspiration from competitors and industry leaders? What name types have industry-adjacent brands opted for? 

Reverse engineer their naming process to understand how their choice of name relates to their target audience and brand tone. Ask yourself if there’s anything they’ve done well that you can learn from or anywhere they’ve made a mistake that you can correct with your own business name.

Expert Tip: Literary Devices

You don’t have to be a poet or a bookworm to use literary devices. Understanding a few literary tricks can be helpful for creating a catchy, memorable name. Here’s a primer:

Alliteration: Alliteration uses the repetition of a first sound across multiple words to enhance memorability.  Dunkin’ Donuts, Coca-Cola, and Range Rover have leveraged this tool to create memorable brand names. Hard consonant sounds combine well with alliteration to create powerful, unforgettable names.

Assonance: Assonance relies on similarities in the stressed vowel sound of combined words to create a name that’s easy for customers to say, and remember. See: YouTube, FedEx

Wordplay: While wordplay and wit aren’t appropriate for every brand identity, they can be a strong option to create a memorable name. There’s a reason so many Chinese takeaways are called Wok This Way.

Rhyme: Rhyme is often employed as a memory aid, such as in expressions like “I before E, except after C”. Brands can leverage this for memorability, 7-Eleven being an excellent example.

Imagery: Connecting your name with an image or an emotion gives your customers something more meaningful than the letters on a page. Olive Garden successfully conjures the image of relaxed, Mediterranean dining through the paired imagery of their name.

Metaphor: Slack’s ironic name and Amazon’s association with gargantuan size both helped propel these brands into our collective consciousness.

Enlist Help

A word of advice: don’t undertake your brainstorming sessions in a vacuum. Not only is it creatively draining to brainstorm for a name on your own, but you miss out on the curve balls and creative twists that other people provide. You’ll also have no one to use as a sounding board – “Does this name actually sound weird, or have I just said it 150 times” is a very common question!

While asking friends and family members for name ideas can provide some offbeat ideas, it’s better to assemble the core members of your business and provide them with a naming brief containing everything you considered in steps one and two

Your naming brief should include your value proposition and an overview of your brand identity, and it ensures that every name you consider stays on-brand.

Without a naming brief, a team member might come up with a catchy name that you gravitate towards. But if it doesn’t fit with the vision of your brand it will be a false start and could lead to incoherent branding, confused customers, and lost business down the line.

Our naming contests are the perfect complement to your own brainstorming process.  With a naming contest, you gain access to a community of naming creatives and receive a long list of powerful business names that align with your brand tone and business identity. You can filter, give feedback to creatives and hone in on the perfect name for your business.

4. Build a Shortlist of the Best Business Name Ideas

The brainstorming process will give you a long list of name ideas. Some will immediately appeal to you, while others might leave you cold, and maybe one stands out as a clear winner (in your opinion).

But even if you’re gravitating towards a particular name and you think you’ve found ‘the one’, there’s work to be done yet. These next steps will future-proof your name and give you confidence in your business name on the long road ahead.

Expert Tip — Assessing Industry Trends

With an understanding of the themes that connect your competitor’s names, you can assess each of your potential names within your chosen market. Are you hitching your wagon to naming trends, leveraging the expectations of your customers when they hear a name that immediately fits into your chosen industry? Or are you boldly switching it up and choosing a name that surprises your audience?

Choosing a name that disrupts industry trends can be a bold choice. It will give you more scope to forge your own path and become a leader in your industry.

But it will also take more work to build trust and loyalty among your target audience when you start off as an outsider.

5. Validate Your Chosen Business Name Ideas

With your shortlist of great business names at hand it’s time to assess their performance in the wider world.

This validation stage is incredibly important for the practical implications of your name. Sometimes the catchiest, coolest business name will have to be rejected on a technicality — a trademark infringement, a problematic connotation in a foreign language, or a clumsy combination of syllables that will prevent seamless customer referrals.

A relevant domain name is integral to how your customers find you. If you have simple, real-word names on your shortlist, then domain availability will be limited.

Your business name and domain don’t have to align exactly, but they must be closely related for your customers to find you online. If you’re considering naming your chocolate shop Bliss, Dulce, or Sweets, domain availability could force a rethink.

Considering there have been more than 6.7 million trademark applications, and there are only 171,476 words in the English language, it’s likely that some of your shortlisted names will fall foul of preexisting registered trademarks.

To ensure your business has room to grow and to protect your brand, trademarking is essential. Trademark conflicts can lead to costly legal battles and brand-damaging name changes.

Our Trademark Research Service can validate names at this stage. A comprehensive analysis will flag any potential conflicts and provide you with an overall Risk Score for your chosen names.

You’ve shortlisted names based on how you expect them to appeal to your target market, but validating these assumptions with detailed audience analysis is an important step in building confidence in your name.

You can ask a selection of strangers, pay a focus group, or run professional audience testing. Our deep-targeted audience testing service is designed to provide you with essential insights. You can design a survey to ask real people anything, from your name’s unique appeal to its association with your intended values. 

Although asking friends and family about your final shortlist is tempting, they’re usually not a great audience. Not only are they probably personally invested in your project emotionally, but they know you! They’ll be able to tell which names you like, and that will lead them in their answers. Beyond that, your friends and family may fall well outside your target audience, making their opinions far less relevant. 

Many business founders are concerned about surviving their first year, and at Squadhelp we understand the challenges of doing so. But a name isn’t just about your first year trading, it’s about every year after that too. Your name should give you limitless room to expand into new markets.

So, consider the linguistic and cultural implications of your name. Are there English homophones (words that sound the same, but carry different meanings) with problematic associations? Do your chosen names have any unexpected meanings in different languages?

Your chosen name must have semantic associations that relate to your business’s character and values. But a name is also, simply, a series of letters: you also need to step away from meaning and assess the objective sound, pronunciation, and visual appeal of these letters.

We like the Crowded Bar Test for gauging your name’s practicality. Can your name be understood in conversation in a loud, crowded bar? If not, it’s unsuitable for use in real life.

Additionally, consider how the word looks on the written page. Can you see these letters connecting to form a logo? Are there luxuriously swooping g’s, h’s, and m’s, or the clean angles of an x, t, or k to lean on for sharp, minimalistic design? Which of these aligns with your brand tone?

Imagining your name being used in different, daily contexts is a great thought experiment that lets you see the benefits or faults in your shortlisted names. Is it easy for your customers to reach for in conversation? Will it look equally attractive on an iPhone screen as a giant billboard?

For your business to be a success, your name should be used thousands of times a day, in board rooms, by news anchors, and by customers: it should fit every one of these contexts.

Expert Tip – Become A Verb, Change The World

If you have designs on becoming an industry giant, perform the ‘verb check’ to see if your shortlisted business names will help you shape the marketplace and change the world.

It’s commonplace to hear consumers describe taking a taxi as Ubering or searching online as Googling, and these brands benefit every day from the ultimate association they’ve created between their name and their product.

While many small businesses don’t need to become a verb, brands positioned as industry disruptors should certainly set their sights this high. Try to use your name in a sentence, and ask if you imagine your name being verbified to become an action your customers perform, like Skyping, hoovering, or getting velcroed? 

6. Understand Costs and Budget for a Domain Name

While selecting your business name, you should be thinking about choosing and acquiring a domain name. Whether your business will be totally online or has a brick-and-mortar store, a website is essential for branding, marketing, and selling.

These days, no business can survive without a strong domain name. Short, sharp, memorable, and professional domain names reinforce brand loyalty, ensure customers trust you to deliver and enable new customers to find you with ease.

Of course, premium domains aren’t cheap, so we’ll explore some other options to help you determine what budget is right for your business. But when it comes to return on investment, purchasing a high-quality domain name gives you a platform for growth and can maximize returns in the long term.

Domain Pricing

A strong, brandable name can cost anywhere from a few thousand dollars to six figures. Creatively spelled names, compound names, made-up words, and transmutations can often come in at the lower end of this scale. So, creativity is essential in the naming process if this is your budget. For example, domains like ChocolateCheer.com, YesChoco.com, or Chocolant.com would fit into this price range. 

Ultra-premium, single English-language words or category-defining names like Hotels.com are highly coveted and tend to be at the other end of the scale in terms of price. If you plan on becoming a household name with a streamlined brand identity that tells your customers exactly who you are, then your domain is a huge investment with huge potential.

Despite the large initial outgoing, these elite domains are worth every cent if you’re launching a business you believe in. Industry rumors suggest that Slack paid $60,000 for their gold-standard domain, and we think that was a steal. At the other end of the spectrum, Tesla paid a whopping 11 million USD for Tesla.com after using Teslamotors for many years. This illustrates the issues, and expenses, that can crop up when you think “We’ll upgrade the domain later” rather than choosing a name with a great, available domain in mind and building the cost into your initial plan. 

It’s important to remember that buying a domain isn’t like buying a car – it doesn’t lose value when you drive it off the lot – in fact, it’s more like buying land or property. Over time, domains tend to go up in value. 

The ROI Of A Premium Domain

A premium domain is a big investment at the outset, but these domains offer a substantial return on investment that few businesses can afford to ignore.

When it comes to compromising on the top-level domain, consider how many customers will navigate to ChocolateShop.com instead of ChocolateShop.co. A well-funded competitor could purchase the .com extension and have it redirect to their own website, or customers could encounter a 404 page that leads them to think you’re out of business.


Either way, you’re losing out. Your competitors are taking your customers, or your business is stuck in obscurity. And the alternative is compromising on an ineffectual business name that, while affordable as a domain, won’t enhance your brand.

Given that a strong brand could lead to 23% more in revenue, choosing a weak domain, or worse, a weak name, could wipe the same amount from your returns.

Final Tips for Choosing a Business Name With Confidence

How to name a business

Choosing a name for your business can be an anxiety-ridden process. Regardless of the strength of your idea, your business plan, and your assembled team, your venture could live and die on the strength of your name.

So, for your own sake as well as that of your business, it’s important to step forward with confidence. Here are some final tips to make sure there’s no second-guessing once you’ve landed on the perfect name.

If your initial long list of brainstormed names contains 5 just 10 ideas, you can be pretty sure that you’ve missed out on some important concepts that could provide valuable avenues of investigation.

Our AI-powered business name generator provides an instant source of hundreds of names, created through structured modeling of the best name types and matched to your brief. 

Before shortlisting, you should have reviewed hundreds of names, preferably those created by experts who have worked on naming projects in the past. At Squadhelp, we have thousands of creatives on hand to help. Leveraging one of our crowdsourced naming contests is invaluable in generating a list of strong business names.

Discovering pre-curated name ideas can be a source of inspiration for your own brainstorming and it can save you substantial time and effort when it comes to pairing a name with a strong and relevant domain.

Our premium domain marketplace has been expertly curated to provide the best return-on-investment domain names out there. You’ll find strong, brandable business names and gold-standard extensions at the ready.

As every business leader knows, your customers will always find a way to surprise you. Whether it’s an obscure cultural connotation or the inability of your average user to pronounce a (seemingly innocuous) phrase, without accurate audience insights there will always be doubts surrounding your name.

Asking your friends, family, and barista to try roasting your chosen name is one thing, but for genuinely actionable insights you need targeted testing presented in a legible format.

Our leading human insights platform can provide you with the raw data to back up your chosen name and take your business into the world with confidence.

Expert Tip – Ask Specific Questions For Deeper Insights

While asking a broad panel of your target audience questions about the objective sound, pronunciation, and memorability of your name will provide you with valuable insight, it’s possible to dig deeper.

Craft the right questions for your audience with your value proposition and brand identity in mind. Ask them which of two names has the strongest association with prestige or whether a possible name aligns with the values on which you’re centering your brand. 

Using your understanding of your business’s identity to guide the questions you ask in audience testing helps you land on a name that instantly resonates with your target market. This strengthens your brand and its connection to customers, from launch to global domination.

Naming a business can be an emotional process, and every member of the team brings their own assumptions and experience into the creation of, and reflection on, a name. While folding team members or other founders into the naming process can be a source of valuable creative energy, it can also pose new challenges.

To mitigate this, if you’re choosing a name as a group, it’s important to preface any naming discussion by getting everyone on the same page with an agreed value proposition and brand identity.

Create and share a naming brief outlining your brand identity and value proposition, and take time to explore your team’s assumptions about who you are and what you do before stepping into the naming process.

Lastly, remember that no brand name is perfect. No name can be equally prestigious, disruptive, playful, and intriguing, for example. In fact, some of the characteristics of a name, and brand, are mutually exclusive and naming is inevitably a trade-off between these qualities. But it’s a strategized trade-off optimized to appeal to your target audience and brand identity.

Nobody pronounces Adidas correctly, while eCommerce giant Amazon’s name has the potential to call to mind deforestation and climate change. But these brands chose strong names based on the right criteria and, despite seeming weaknesses, grew into industry giants.

If you’ve followed the principles of how to come up with a business name outlined in this guide, you can put full faith in the power of your business name. It will be aligned with your value proposition; it will enhance your brand identity; it will connect with your customers’ values and stick in their minds; it will be attached to a relevant, premium domain. And most of all, it will be you.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Long Should The Business Name Be?

Four syllables or ten characters make a good rule of thumb for your business name, the concept of cognitive fluency is more important than length. Cognitive fluency determines how easy it is for potential customers to process your name. Clumsy combinations of letters, special characters, and foreign-language words often detract from the cognitive fluency of your name and make it harder to remember.

For example, the name Cxz is very short, but it’s very hard for your customers to read. While longer, a name like ChicagoChoc has a higher cognitive fluency and will be more memorable for your customers.

How Important Is The Domain Name When Choosing A Business Name?

There is no business flourishing in the 2020s without a digital presence and this makes your domain an incredibly important consideration when choosing a business name. In fact, your domain name is just as important as your business name. 

Every business name you consider should be appraised for a closely linked premium domain. Shorter names and those consisting of single English language words may not be appropriate for the majority of small businesses without substantial budgets.

What If The Perfect Domain Name Is Not Available?

If the perfect domain is not available, you don’t have to start from scratch. While a premium top-level domain extension like .com may be the optimal choice for establishing your reputation, less common extensions such as .io, and .co may be affordable alternatives while industry-specific options like .app, .agency, or .fashion can also work and save you pennies.

Alternatively, you can extend your brand by adding a relevant noun to the end of your name (for example, taking Indulgence to IndulgenceChocolates.com) or adding a relevant verb to the start of the URL (like getIndulgence.com).

While these names are harder for customers to remember, the addition of a short or relevant word can get you closer to the right domain without impacting your brand, or requiring the naming process to start over.

However, a practical business naming process incorporates domain choice into the criteria. That means you won’t find yourself in the position of possessing a great name that doesn’t fit an available domain.

Is It Worth Using A Premium Domain Marketplace?

Absolutely. A premium domain marketplace consists of expertly curated domain names that are available, affordable, and contain business names that align with your brand and will inspire your customers. If you’re asking how to come up with a business name, the answer could just lie in a premium domain marketplace!

Choosing a business name from our premium domain marketplace ensures that you’ll be easy to find online and streamlines the naming process. You can filter by industry, name type, and length to land on the perfect name in seconds.

How Can I Ensure My Business Name Is Memorable?

Memorability is essential in returning repeat customers and ensuring those who love your business can recommend you to a friend. There are many ways to make your business name memorable, from using sound (like alliteration or assonance) or imagery and metaphor to stick in the minds of your customers.

Should I Consider Using My Own Name As The Business Name?

There are pros and cons to using your own name as your business name. Historied and trusted brands are often named after founders, while there was a recent trend of modern and innovative brands using first names only. However, aside from a single personal connection, neither tells your customers anything about your brand.

Additionally, your own name may be hard for customers in different markets to pronounce or spell. Even a relatively common surname like Reford has multiple potential pronunciations for your customers to trip up on.

What If My Target Market Is International? How Should I Approach Naming?

When targeting an international market aim for a name that speaks to your global reach and universal appeal. Often, a simple and sophisticated name is better for anyone aiming to be a global brand.

Additionally, while audience testing is essential in any naming process, it’s particularly important for brands trying to appeal to an international audience. Your own cultural and geographical position leaves you with significant blindspots when choosing a name based on your personal preferences.

Should I Use A Business Name Generator?

Yes. To truly hone in on the perfect business name, you should start with a long list of hundreds of names, of every name type and creative process. This is a challenge for any creative team, but using a business name generator like our AI-powered naming tool can provide you with inspirational name ideas to tweak or shortlist. The tool can also match relevant domains, auto-proofing your naming options when it comes time to match your business name to your online hub.

Is It Worth Hiring A Professional Naming Agency?

Hiring a professional naming agency can be extremely expensive, with costs spiraling into five or even six figures. And most agencies don’t name more than a handful of businesses a year! That’s why we launched Squadhelp. We offer real naming experts and collaborative naming competitions so you get a name you can be confident in. One that’s user-tested and guaranteed to appeal to new customers and stick in the minds of your existing users.

How Do I Ensure My Business Name Is Legally Protected?

The process of legally protecting your business name is called trademarking. Trademarks prevent confusion from customers encountering multiple, similar business names, and prevent competitors from leveraging the hard work you’ve done to establish your brand. The first step to getting a trademark is checking that the name you want to use isn’t already taken with a free trademark checker.

While it’s possible to apply for a trademark with the USPTO directly, using a Trademark Filing Service that engages a trademark attorney gives you the highest chance of your trademark being accepted. Trademark attorneys can help you obtain the meticulous documentation needed to acquire a trademark, track deadlines, and assist with enforcing your trademark once it has been granted.

Should I Trademark My Business Name Right Away?

Trademarking should be considered throughout the naming process. A trademark check service can be used to identify any potential conflicts with shortlisted names. 

If you want to trademark your business name immediately, you can ask a trademark attorney to file an application based on “intent to use”. Applying at this stage protects your name before you start using it, and means there is no risk of a competitor or other business assuming your name before you launch.

What If My Business Name Is Similar To An Existing One?

If you find your favored business name overlaps with another, then it’s vital to seek the assurance of an attorney. Trademark attorneys can assist with identifying names that are likely to secure protection, as well as perform the work that gives you the sole legal right to use the name.

How Can I Test The Appeal Of My Shortlisted Names?


No matter how much you love the business names you shortlist, it’s essential to take an objective approach and test their appeal in your target market. Audience testing services can produce deep insights into the memorability and tonal associations of your name.

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About the author

Grant Polachek

Grant Polachek is the Director of Marketing at Squadhelp–transforming the way names are developed by combining an affordable agency-level brainstorming process with the unmatched creativity of “the crowd.”

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