How to choose a good name for your product or project
February 11, 2011
Recently, at work, we spent a decent chunk of time trying to come up with a good name for a project. It's tough. As part of the process I came up with a list of things to take into account. I am posting it here as a way of remembering it, and hopefully it will be useful to others.
A good name should be:
- Interesting
- Meaningful
- One word, short and memorable
- Not a trademark (registered or not)
- Not already in use for something else very popular
- Search produces few results
- The .com domain name available
- Easy to pronounce and spell; difficult to misspell
- Sounds good
- Unique (because you want to build a brand around the name)
- Not generic (cannot be trademarked; difficult to find on a search engine)
- People would wear it on a t-shirt
- Can be paired with a good symbol or mascot
- Does not have negative connotations (in any major languages, including slang)
