Brand Naming
Generating names is the easy part; clearing one is the actual project
A room full of people can produce two hundred candidates in an afternoon. Getting from that list to a name you can register, own the domain for, hold the handles on and say safely in every market you sell in is where the months go.
The funnel
Six stages, and most candidates die in the middle three
The order matters more than the volume. Screening late is how businesses end up in love with a name that was never going to be available.
Write the brief and the constraints
What the name has to do, what it must not imply, which markets and languages it has to survive, which classes it will need to be registered in, and whether it sits under an existing parent brand. Most of these are constraints, and constraints are what make generation productive.
You get: Naming brief with named territories and markets
Generate broadly across named routes
Descriptive, associative, invented, founder-derived, borrowed and abstract are different territories with different risk profiles. Working several deliberately produces a list you can compare rather than a hundred variations on one idea.
You get: Long list organised by naming territory
Knock out against the brief
Remove candidates that fail on strategy, on category conventions, on pronunciation, or on being impossible to spell after hearing once. This is the only stage where taste is a legitimate criterion.
You get: Reduced list with reasons recorded
Screen for conflicts, preliminarily
Search public trademark registers, company registries and live commercial usage in the relevant markets and classes. This is not legal clearance and we say so every time. It exists to stop obvious collisions reaching your lawyers with an invoice attached.
You get: Preliminary conflict notes per candidate
Check availability and language
Domains including likely misspellings, social and app store handles, and a linguistic and cultural review in every market in scope. A name that is fine in one language and a joke in another is not a shortlist candidate for a business selling in both.
You get: Availability and linguistic screening report
Hand a ranked shortlist to counsel
Three to five survivors, ranked, with the rationale and known risks for each. Your trademark attorney clears them properly, and nothing else begins until they do.
You get: Shortlist pack prepared for legal clearance
What you receive
What comes out of a naming engagement
The deliverable is not a word. It is a shortlist with evidence attached, so the decision can be made by people who can see what they are choosing between.
- A written naming brief that the shortlist can be argued against later
- A long list organised by naming territory, so the choice is between approaches rather than between random words
- Preliminary conflict findings for each shortlisted candidate, clearly marked as commercial screening rather than legal opinion
- Domain, misspelling and handle availability for each survivor, with what is obtainable and at roughly what difficulty
- Linguistic and cultural notes for every market in scope, including pronunciation problems
- A searchability assessment describing what it will cost to be findable under each name
- A ranked shortlist prepared in the form your trademark counsel can act on
- Pronunciation, capitalisation and usage rules for the name that is chosen
Where our role ends
What we do, and the line we do not cross
We will
- Say plainly, in writing and repeatedly, that our screening is commercial and not legal clearance
- Run preliminary conflict searches so your counsel receives a short list rather than a long one
- Check domains, likely misspellings and social handles before a name reaches the shortlist
- Review every candidate for meaning, pronunciation and unfortunate associations in each market in scope
- Present a ranked shortlist with known risks attached, so you are choosing with the problems visible
We will not
- Provide legal advice, a clearance opinion, or anything that could be mistaken for one
- File trademark applications or act as your agent with any registry
- Tell you a name is safe to adopt, because only a qualified trademark attorney can assess that
- Recommend a candidate we have not screened, however much anyone in the room likes it
- Present a name as available when the handle on your main channel is held by someone else
- Start identity or packaging design on a name that has not been cleared by counsel
Common failures
Four ways naming projects lose months
- The decision was made before the screening.
- Someone senior says a name out loud, likes how it sounds, and the project quietly changes from an evaluation to a search for justification. Every later finding is then argued with rather than acted on. Screening before anyone is allowed a favourite is the only reliable protection, and it is a process rule rather than a matter of discipline.
- Design started before clearance came back.
- Logo, packaging, signage and site design are commissioned to save time while the lawyers work. When a conflict appears, the sunk cost becomes an argument for accepting a risk nobody would have accepted at the start. Waiting is cheaper than it feels.
- The name only works in one language.
- A business that intends to sell in several markets needs the name checked in all of them at shortlist stage, not after launch in the first. The problems are rarely dramatic mistranslations; more often it is a pronunciation nobody can manage, an existing common word, or an association that makes the brand slightly ridiculous.
- Nobody asked what the name will cost to be found under.
- A name that collides with a large company, a common noun or a competitor in an adjacent category means competing for your own brand searches indefinitely. That is a permanent cost in content and advertising, and it is entirely knowable before you commit.
Questions
What people ask before starting a naming project
Do you provide trademark clearance?
No. We are not lawyers and we do not give legal advice. Our screening is preliminary and commercial: it removes candidates that obviously will not survive, so your counsel is not billing you to review a hundred names.
A name should never be adopted, filed against or built into artwork until a qualified trademark attorney has cleared it in the classes and territories you actually need. We build our shortlist specifically to make that instruction efficient.
How many names do we need to start with?
Many more than you expect to end with. Most candidates are eliminated for reasons that have nothing to do with quality: an existing registration in the relevant class, a company already trading under something similar, an unobtainable domain, or a meaning that does not travel.
A process that produces a small list and clears most of it has usually not screened seriously. The attrition is the point.
How important is the exact dot-com?
Less absolute than it used to be, and still worth a lot. What matters more is that the domain you use is unambiguous when someone hears the name once and types it later, and that the version you do not own is not held by a competitor or something embarrassing.
We check domains, common misspellings and the social handles at the same time, because a name with a perfect domain and a squatted handle on the platform your audience actually uses is only half available.
What do you mean by searchability?
Whether a person who hears your name once can find you, and what it will cost you to be findable. A name that is also a common word, a large company in another category, or a near-match for an established competitor means competing for attention under your own name indefinitely.
That is a permanent operating cost paid in content and advertising, so we treat it as a commercial property of the candidate rather than an afterthought once the name is chosen.
Can we run this as an internal workshop instead?
You can generate candidates internally and often should, because people inside the business know the category. What internal processes rarely do well is eliminate.
The difficulty is not creative, it is that the room becomes attached to a name before anyone has checked it, and the process turns into an argument about a candidate that was never available. An outside process is mostly valuable for holding the screening sequence in place.
What if our lawyers reject the name we picked?
That is why the shortlist has more than one name on it, and why we ask for a ranked shortlist rather than a single recommendation.
It is also why no design work, packaging, domain purchase or announcement should be committed until clearance comes back. The cost of waiting a few weeks is small; the cost of rebuilding an identity around a second choice is not.
Start with the constraints rather than the brainstorm
Tell us the markets, the classes, the parent brand if there is one, and what the name has to survive. That conversation usually reveals whether you need a naming project at all, and how wide it has to be.
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Last updated · Reviewed by Zubair Afzal