What makes a great business name? The Name Inspector knows…
Trying to define a great business name is a little bit like the task Supreme Count Justice Potter Stewart faced when, in a 1964 attempt to define pornography, he settled for “I know it when I see it.” Coming up with a great name for your business can be an equally daunting task.
So I was delighted to discover that Biznik member Christopher Johnson has embraced this task with gusto in a new blog called The Name Inspector. In essence, his new blog is all about the secret life of business names. From his first post:
We all eat and breathe company names and brand names. They occupy an ever-expanding space in our cultural environment. As the most carefully designed additions to the popular vocabulary, they are literary miniatures: nanopoems. They influence us, annoy us, and make us laugh, but mostly for reasons that elude our conscious minds.
The Name Inspector takes a close look at names and tells you what makes them click (or clunk) from a linguistic point of view. He does not offer marketing treatises on branding strategy or analyses of corporate nomenclature systems. He is concerned with the linguistic essence of names: how they feel and sound when spoken, what they look like when written, and the meanings and moods they evoke in their contexts.
With a PhD in linguistics, Christopher brings years of experience and a sharp eye for detail to the task of understanding what’s in a name. He’s already tackled some well-recognized names like Apple, YouTube, and Zillow. And look for him to have a lot to say about smaller startup company names in the days to come. So, if you’re brainstorming a great name for your business, make your fist stop a visit to The Name Inspector.
Note from Christopher: “If any of you have such stories to share, I’d love to hear them. I’m not yet sure how I might use them–I just want to
get a sense of how people have approached the naming challenge. But if you send a story you should understand it might end up in
a post.”
on February 1st, 2007 at 6:36 pm
dude, i’d love to hear what he thinks about the name “BiZi Bee Floral” Get BiZi Bee Happy!
on February 1st, 2007 at 10:04 pm
I like some of what Seth Godin says… but then there are things I couldn’t disagree with more. A section of what some people in the naming community focus on is focusing this statement-
“So I finally e-mailed asking how to name my company, and he told me: whatever name you choose, it must yield 0 results when typed in Google search.”
You could potentially want ZERO results in Google if you are planning on completely creating a brand that identifies itself… but that goes against every aspect of “free advertising” you can get via Google. There are a huge number of names that identify exactly what you do, drive amazing results via Google, and bring in clients.
While I love Biznik as a name, you could also go with “Indie Professional Networks”. Sure it isn’t sexy, but if you use the right words and the right press, every time someone types in “indie professional” you’ll get 100% free advertising from the search engines.
There is a fine line between brand, market, advertising, and BUDGET. Without considering all the proper elements, telling someone to focus on a name with zero Google results may be akin to business suicide.
on February 2nd, 2007 at 8:31 am
It’s interesting you picked that line out, Barry - I left a comment in Christopher’s blog yesterday (which as of this morning hasn’t been approved yet), making a similar point:
on February 2nd, 2007 at 10:21 am
That is all too ironic (great minds think alike?)
~B