8 Rules For Choosing A Company Name
What’s in a name?
Amid the excitement of creating a new business, it’s easy to overlook the significance of choosing an effective brand name. Many will simply pick a loved one’s name or choose a generic term – such as Astra – rather than considering how a well-chosen brand can distinguish a company and help it to stand out in a congested marketplace.
These are some of the golden rules to follow when selecting a company name:
- Keep it short. Think about the brands that dominate today’s society – Google, Netflix, Ford, Dyson. Their names rarely contain more than two syllables or eight letters, because brevity is easier to remember and pronounce. It’s a lesson that the co-founders of American law firm Ziffren, Brittenham, Branca, Fischer, Gilbert-Lurie, Stiffelman, Cook, Johnson, Lande & Wolf would have done well to consider.
- Choose something descriptive. Many company names incorporate a reference to their location, industry or services. This identifies the brand as local, or appealing to a particular audience – both useful marketing techniques. A Yorkshire-based client would probably visit the website of Web Design Bradford before WDB Dynamics, for instance. Self-titled enterprises promise a personal touch more than generic names, but the implication that a company is a sole-trader enterprise may deter larger corporate clients.
- Favour simplicity. People will always struggle with names that are difficult to pronounce when written down (food giant Dr Oetker) or tricky to write down when pronounced (US ad agency 72andSunny). However, don’t go too far in the opposite direction by choosing initials, which are easily forgotten and jumbled up.
- Choose puns with care. While Curl Up & Dye is a great name for a suburban hairdresser, such witticisms are best avoided in more serious sectors like IT or healthcare. It’s hard to imagine Dead Good Funerals becoming a trusted brand, for example. The only industries where punning titles really work are non-essential service providers, like beauty salons or ironing services.
- Avoid symbols. When B&Q launched their website, their company name posed a problem because web browsers don’t recognise the ‘&’ symbol. Their (admittedly ingenious) workaround was to register the diy.com domain, but even this lacks recall compared to homebase.co.uk. Other brand-name-to-website-domain fails include Sainsbury’s, YO! Sushi and What Car? magazine.
- Make sure the web domain name is still available. It’s inadvisable to call your new venture Smiths, for example, if all the available web domain suffixes (.com, .co.uk, .uk, etc) are already in use. Many businesses are online-only enterprises nowadays, and even high street stores need websites to thrive. It’s absolutely essential that the new company name can easily be transposed into an available web domain, so investigate this before registering a title with Companies House.
- Keep the domain name simple. Even if a particular domain name remains unclaimed, a lengthy company name can make its corresponding web address clumsy. The Isle of Skye Candle Company opted for skyecandles.co.uk, which a first-time visitor might not instinctively associate with their brand, but it’s far easier to type than www.theisleofskyecandlecompany.co.uk. There is evidence that web addresses with six letters or less between the dots are more likely to receive visits than longer domains, which is a problem for the free email service hosted at http://www.abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com.
- Finally, seek public opinion. Once you have a preferred name (or a shortlist), ask friends and family for their feedback. They might identify problems you hadn’t thought of – such as the difficulty of pronouncing Sophisticated Software Solutions with a lisp, or the inadvisability of calling a new pet accessories shop Doggy Style.
Check that your new company domain name is available and register it today on the UK2 domain name search and registration page.