Choosing a name for your business? Here’s how to get feedback on it that’s actually useful
You’ve come up with a potential name for your business — or a hired someone like Broom & Moon to do it for you.
You’re pretty pleased with the name, but you need buy-in from colleagues.
Or you want to run it by your spouse/bestie/other trusted person, just to be sure.
Here’s where things can get tricky.
Everyone has an opinion. Not everyone’s opinion is helpful.
And the more people you invite to pitch in on your new name, the greater the chances you’ll default to something bland, not brave.
Imagine, for example, if Steve Jobs had run Apple by a committee. Or the team behind Bluetooth had put their new name to a wider vote.
To avoid ending up with your own equivalent of RadioWire (the other pick for Bluetooth), here’s our number-one tip for getting feedback on your proposed name:
Never, ever ask: Do you like it? Or, even, What do you think?
You’ll just get a series of subjective (and, possibly, contradictory) responses that’ll create a niggle of self-doubt, foster indecision and delay the launch of your brand.
Here are some helpful questions to ask instead.
Question 1: How would you say this name?
Of all the words you use to describe what you do, your name will be the one people repeat most often — more often than your tagline, elevator pitch, or any other element of your brand language.
When a member of your team picks up the phone, they’ll be saying your name.
When a customer recommends you to a friend, they’ll be saying your name.
When an associate at that VC firm brings you up at their investor committee, they’ll be saying your name.
So the less doubt there is about how to actually, er, say your name, the better.
Not every brand got the memo on this. For example, would you know how to pronounce the names of these start-ups:
Yhangry (why hangry?, ee-hangry? yuh-hangry?)
Vastrm (vast-um? vast-rum? vast-erm?)
Mth Sense (emth? umth? muth?)
vly.ai (vlai? vlee? uhvly? V-L-Y?)
Even big brands (with, presumably, biggish budgets) aren’t immune to pronunciation blindness, it seems.
Whenever I see the name abrdn (formerly Standard Life Aberdeen), I can’t help reading it as “A burden”. Anyone else?
A billion-dollar brand like Nike can get away with having a sightly ambiguous name (naik or naikee?) But unless you’ve got a hefty budget to invest in building your brand, you’re best off ruling out pronunciation issues from the outset.
How to avoid pronunciation pitfalls
Write your proposed name down on a piece of paper and then show it to people. Don’t ask them if they like the name, ask them to read it out aloud.
Don’t be surprised if you’re surprised by what you hear — as the naming pro in this podcast interview was when she landed on what she thought was the perfect name for a teenage clothing brand: Debut.
At least, she thought it was perfect until she ran it by a few people and found that not everyone sees the word Debut and hears the same thing…
Question 2: How would you spell this name?
Just as people will be saying your name repeatedly, they’ll also often be writing it down or typing it out. Or they’ll be asking others to write it down or type it out.
So think about how easy that will be for all concerned.
Example? I named my first company Doris and Bertie. The name had a great origin story that clients loved.
And it achieved the enviable status of becoming, like Google, verbified — with clients often saying they needed to “get something Doris-and-Bertied”.
I still love that name and would choose it again, simply because of its powerfully memorable story.
But here’s one thing I won’t miss about using Doris and Bertie every day: repeatedly having to say to people:
Doris with one r.
And all spelled out.
Bertie with an i-e, not a y.
A less obvious case for living with a name you’ll need to spell out, is when that name has been deliberately misspelt simply to secure a URL for an unimaginative name.
Here’s some startups where we think that might have happened:
Priime
Piinpoint
Svbtle
Vespper
Lighthouz AI
Sqreen
How to swerve the spelling trap
Find someone else to run your name by. This time do the reverse of the exercise above: read your proposed name out and ask them to write it down.
If you need to give them hints on how to spell it, ask yourself if having to do so is worth it.
If, like me and my Doris and Bertie, you have reasons you can live with uncertain spelling, stick with it. If not, consider going back to the drawing board.
And don’t get too hung up on your URL. As every namer will tell you, looking for a URL that’s a single natural English word will send you into unicorn-hunting territory. It doesn’t exist.
So start from the assumption that it’s been taken. And that, if you can’t (or can’t afford to) buy it, that’s OK.
People are more likely to Google your name than type your URL in to their browser directly, so you have options, like.
weare<name>
<name>people
<name>comms/logistics/health/bank etc
<name>international
Better still, consider a less obvious name. Search for priime, for example and Google just assumes it’s spelling error and lists Amazon Prime pages first. A great example of how prioritising your URL can be self-defeating.
Question 3: What’s the first thing this name makes you think of?
This is a great question for getting more nuanced feedback than the previous two, while still avoiding an overly subjective view.
Framing the question this way can allow you to see:
how well the name communicates what you want to communicate
negative connotations you’d missed
positive connotations you hadn’t thought of (bonus!)
how memorable the name is likely to be (compare “nothing springs to mind” with “it makes me picture someone rolling up their sleeves and ready for action”)
if it sounds similar to something else (when I first got my job at the bank UBS, I repeatedly had to correct friends I wasn’t delivering parcels for a living)
You don’t necessarily need to be put off if some of the answers you get are unexpected — provided you can follow up with a memorable explanation of the name’s origin.
When we first ran Broom & Moon by people, some said it made them think of witches. Not a totally bad thing for a female-founded business, but not really what we were looking for.
But once we’ve told people the story behind our name, all images of pointy-hatted ladies on broomsticks are banished.
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How to come up with a memorable name for your product
Need a name for your business or product? Get in touch.
