ebxoclopzx

We have been banging our heads in the strategic and creative rooms lately in the creation of new names for business and products for our clients.

When I started out in this business all those years ago this was a relatively quick, even fun process. Now however it has become almost painful, you come up with a name that you are sure is a winner and sure enough it
is taken.

These days we are quickly running out of names we can use. Today apart from the established company and product names, there is an explosion of new business’ and products being created that all need to have a distinctive name and more importantly ownership.

Rightly so companies are registering their names for protection and as more and more go international and register their names globally the availability of names that can be registered dwindles. Another major problem is that companies (with good reason) want their company name to be registered as a domain name on the internet and like the pool of registerable names available, the pool of domain names available is only a small puddle
shrinking fast.

To overcome the dilemma of ‘name option shrinkage’ we can utilise a few different techniques to come up with a distinctive name that can be registered.

1: Hybrid. Take two appropriately meaningful words/parts of words and join them to form one word, sounds easy but there are a number of downfalls to watch out for.

Does the new word make sense.

Is it easily pronounced or a real tongue twister, the suggested maximum of number of syllables that can be pronounced easily is 5, the less syllables
the easier.

Does the new word need the parts visually separated for correct meaning or pronunciation, some hybrid words will read incorrectly without some sort of delineation between the two parts.

As the example shows the break between is important. The word fastrack can have two interpretations: fast track or fast rack. The break can be created visually without having to split the word into two. Fastrack FastRack fastrack, colour can be used as well.

2: Acronym

Take appropriate letters that can be used to describe or reflect the product, but ensure the letters don’t have any secondary negative meanings (especially important in todays texting short hand) and as above are
easily pronounced.

3: New Word

Create your own new word. This is will certainly make registration and domain name ownership a lot easier, on the flip side however is the new name will most likely be meaningless to your market and will need a hefty amount of effort to create awareness.

Of course with all of the above there is still the issue that the name may already be registered by someone in Timbuktu, so it’s back to square one and we repeat the process until we have success.