Your business is your baby. And it’s yours to name. For some founders, this is a fun and exciting perk of starting a business: You get to decide what to call this cool company you made! For others, it’s nerve-wracking: What if nobody likes the name you choose?

No matter how fun or fearsome the task is for you, you still need to choose your brand’s name before launching it to the world.

In this guide, we’ll explore what makes a brand name good, different types of brand names, and a simple process you can use to land on a brand name you’re proud of.

Oh, and one more thing: This guide assumes that you (like most founders) don’t have a dedicated budget for vetting, testing, and promoting your brand name. Everything laid out in this piece can be done with a shoestring branding budget.

Does your brand name really matter at first? (Yes and no)

Naming your company too hastily can lead to problems later — you don’t want to go through all the trouble of setting up a company only to have to find a new name and brand identity all over again. But you don’t want to spend so much time choosing the perfect name that it holds up your launch, either.

The trick is to find the sweet spot. And a good way to do that is to remember why your brand name matters and why it’s not all-important.

Why your brand name is a big deal

Whatever name you choose for your company is what the world will use — for better or for worse. It’ll be on your business card, your LinkedIn profile, and your employees’ résumés. It’ll appear in media coverage, online reviews, and industry publications. It’ll be something your customers see every time they interact with you, your company, and your offerings.

We all know that first impressions are important, and your brand’s name is one of the few things that you can guarantee will be part of your offerings’ first impression. Choosing a brand name that resonates with your audience helps your company get every first interaction off on the right foot. On the other hand, an unrecognizable, hard-to-remember, or off-putting brand name puts an additional obstacle between you and the market — and new brands face enough obstacles as it is.

So if you’re going to go to all the trouble of creating a company, you should give it a name that you’ll be proud of. (Or, at the very least, one that won’t come back to bite you.)

Why your brand name isn’t the biggest deal at first

Your brand name is important, but it isn’t the most important component of starting a new venture. The best name in the world won’t fix a bad product or poor customer service. A good name won’t make up for deficiencies in strategy, financial management, hiring practices, marketing, or security. And in most cases, a good name won’t contribute all that much to your bottom line in the first few years of running a business — at least not in any way you can reliably track.

Another important thing to keep in mind is that the name you choose is only one of several brand elements. The logo, the color scheme, the typeface, the customer experience, the overall presentation and positioning — these pieces are just as much part of the brand as the name itself.  Ideally, your brand name is the word that brings all these other elements to mind for your target market. Choosing a strong brand name is important, but it’s only one part of the branding puzzle.

It’s also wise to remember that for most businesses, the branding stakes are rather low. Most conversations around branding focus on enormous, global brands that everyone has heard of, like Apple, Starbucks, Uber, and Jaguar. But these brands are already established. They have millions of customers and fans (and hundreds of millions in ad budgets that keep it that way). If you’re starting from zero, you don’t have to worry about that level of attention or scrutiny.

Plus, the first brand name you choose doesn’t have to be permanent. You can always change your business’s legal name later, or keep your business’s legal name and find a new name to do business under.

Choosing a brand name takes time: Plan accordingly

You want to invest the right amount of time and intention into picking your brand name — not too little and not too much. One way to make sure you give this decision the right amount of attention is simply to build the naming process into your general business launch plan. Set a deadline for choosing a final name and set aside dedicated time for working through the naming process. By planning ahead like this, you do yourself two favors:

Naming a brand is a project that involves a lot of intentionality, and setting aside time to do it right is a great way to start.

The attributes of a good brand name

In order to come up with a good brand name, you first need to have an idea of what “good” even means. There’s no universal objective standard for what makes a brand name good, bad, strong, or weak. The quality of a brand name really comes down to its ability to do two jobs:

Your brand name should resonate with your audience and resonate with you. You can instantly know whether or not a potential name sounds like something you’d want to represent, but it’s harder to know what your audience will think. So let’s unpack some generally accepted signs that a brand name will work with a target audience. Your brand name should be:

• Distinct: Easy for your market to differentiate from the other brands they encounter, especially when it comes to the competition
• Memorable: Easy for people to recall
• Appropriate: Inviting your target audience in, not turning them away
• Flexible: Leaving you and your company with room to grow and evolve (this is especially important if you haven’t found product-market fit yet)
• Representative: Consistent with your company’s values, vision, and the promises it makes to the market
• Plausible: Making sense in context of the offerings you provide

As you can see, this still leaves a ton of room for creativity. But as you come up with brand name ideas, make sure that any serious contenders can meet these criteria.

One last thing to keep in mind: It’s tempting to try to come up with a brand name that’s the most distinct, memorable, flexible, etc. — but don’t dwell on this for too long. Just make sure your brand name doesn’t violate the guidelines above. 

Descriptive vs. abstract brand names

The last factor covered in the previous section might have made you raise an eyebrow. “Plausible? Lots of the famous brand names I know have nothing to do with the products they sell!”

And you’d be right:

• Apple, Inc. doesn’t sell produce
• Jaguar doesn’t sell Amazonian big cats
• Starbucks doesn’t sell morally austere literary whalers

But on the other hand, other strong brand names are all about their offerings:

• General Mills began as a flour miller
• General Motors sells automotives
• General Electric sells … you get it

A strong brand name doesn’t always need to directly describe what the company brings to the market, and neither does yours. In fact, brand names come in various levels of abstraction.

On-the-nose brand names

Like the three “general” brand names listed above, many brand names simply state what they do or sell. This practice is especially common among small, local businesses. Think of your favorite local auto mechanic, bakery, and dentist office: They probably have words like “body shop,” “bakery,” and “dental” in their names, respectively.

The benefits of choosing an on-the-nose brand name are as obvious as the names themselves. This type of brand name makes it clear from the jump what it is that you provide, and it makes it relatively easy for people seeking your offerings to find you in a local Google search or as they stroll past your storefront.

On the other hand, these types of brand names tend to have a genericness to them. The name Craigslist implies listings, but it doesn’t convey all that much in the way of the brand’s personality, values, or target audience. Likewise, the names IBM (which stands for “International Business Machines”) and 3M (for “Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing”) give you a general idea of what these companies offer to the market, but aren’t especially juicy. “Netflix” began as a company that allowed you to rent movies from the internet. There’s nothing wrong with choosing an on-the-nose brand name, but there’s nothing especially interesting about it, either.

Directly related brand names

Many brand names are easily and obviously connected to their offerings, but add a level of abstraction or flair. Sometimes this involves mentioning the offering directly but tying it to a new, more brand-specific concept. For example:

• Lyft is a rideshare app, and their name is a branded respelling of the word “lift,” as in a ride. 
• OpenAI makes artificial intelligence accessible (open) to the masses.
• Buffer began as a tool that let you schedule social media posts, giving you a “buffer” of consistently posted content.
• Plagicure protects your content from plagiarism, “curing” the problem of people and AI copying your work. (Their software is built on Bubble, by the way!)

Directly related brand names still make it relatively clear what your offerings are, but they incorporate a bit more of the brand’s personality and point of view than straightforward, on-the-nose names do.

Another advantage of a directly related brand name is its simplicity: It doesn’t require a lot of work (from you or your market) to make sense of it. When we asked people who built their businesses on Bubble for advice on finding a brand name, Plagicure’s CEO J. Cooper advised:

“Don't overthink it. The more engineered the term, the worse it actually becomes.” — J. Cooper, CEO, Plagicure

Metaphorically related brand names

Some brand names don’t directly reference their offerings at all, instead taking a metaphorical approach. These names still relate to the company’s offerings, but making the connection between the name you read and the things you buy from them requires a bit of lateral thinking. For example:

• Oyster makes it easy to hire team members from other countries — making the world your oyster when it comes to hiring, so to speak.
• Intercom facilitates two-way conversation between companies and their customers.
• HubSpot gives marketers a centralized “hub” for managing digital marketing and sales activities. 

Taking the metaphor approach to naming your brand can be a lot of fun: It gives you the freedom to think beyond your products, capture more of your company vision, and (if you like) express more of your personality. 

However, keep in mind that metaphorical names usually don’t give people an immediate explanation of your offerings the way on-the-nose and directly related names do. You’ll likely find yourself following up the name with a brief explanation or summary of your offerings.

Abstract brand names

Some brand names don’t tell you anything about the offerings at all. These can be successful, too. A truly abstract brand name has a very loose connection to the company’s offerings at best, and some customers may never connect the dots. In fact, some famous abstract brand names (like Kodak and Häagen-Dazs) use made-up words that don’t mean anything at all — they were chosen  to evoke the kind of feelings their companies wanted customers to associate with them!

Abstract names can be a lot of fun: They give you plenty of room to express the attitude and values of your brand, and they can allow you to use concrete imagery that would otherwise be unrelated to your products. (This can be especially nice if you’re creating software tools whose functions don’t readily translate to attractive images!)

However, choosing a truly abstract brand name comes with potential downsides as well. The two biggest risks to consider are:

If you do choose an abstract brand name, be sure to have your other brand elements and your marketing strategy pick up the slack. Remember that a good brand name should be plausible, which means at the very least, your abstract brand name shouldn’t contradict your offerings. With the right messaging and presentation, even a name that has nothing to do with your products can still make sense to your market.

How to choose a brand name: A 5-step process

Now that we’ve looked at different types of approaches to brand names (and what makes them good), let’s walk through the process of choosing a brand name. 

Note: This process assumes that you’re starting from scratch without any potential brand names in mind. If you’ve already narrowed down your name options to a few candidates, skip to Step 4.  

Step 1: Give yourself some brand name parameters

When you don’t have a brand name in mind, start by describing your expectations for your ideal brand name. You don’t have to decide on whether you’re going to choose an abstract or on-the-nose name type yet, but you should be able to set some goalposts. We’ve already discussed the qualities a good brand name has, but this is where you start translating those general attributes into your own brand name criteria. This will help you quickly disqualify brand name ideas that don’t make the cut so you can focus on workshopping the candidates with true potential.

A few key aspects to think about and/or talk through with your team, advisors, and investors during this step include:

Tone

Is your brand voice going to be serious, playful, flippant, or ironic? Think about the way you hope to approach your target audience and what kind of tone works best for this, because in order for your brand name to represent your company, it should be consistent with the voice you’ll be using. 

Phonetics

While people will be reading your brand name a lot, you’re also going to be introducing it in conversation. Generally speaking, it’s smart to choose a brand name that’s easy to Google later. That means it should pass “the bar test” — that is, if you tell your brand name to a stranger at a crowded bar, they should be able to understand what you said and write it down.

Web domain length and budget

You’re likely going to need a website, and your brand name should be the main component of that website’s domain. Unregistered domains are far less expensive than registered ones, and you can buy them with a few clicks. However, most of the short-and-sweet domains made up of real English words are already registered, and purchasing them from existing owners can be so expensive and time-consuming that it’s next to impossible. 

Most founders simply find a work-around, registering domains that include their brand name — so instead of spending $20,000 to purchase “BrandName.com” from its existing owner, they’ll instead register “GetBrandName.com” or “BrandNameApp.com” for a far, far lower price. As you come up with name ideas, it’s smart to check what web domain options are available to you for each name. (A tool like DomainTyper makes this easy!)

Audience languages

If you plan to do business in more than one language, make a list of all the languages you anticipate being at play for your business. This is important because your brand name will likely be used as-is no matter what language your customers are speaking (whether you’re in Cambridge or Kyoto, “Coca-Cola” is still called “Coca-Cola”), so you want to choose a name that’s appropriate to say aloud in each of those languages.

Once you’ve set your expectations for the brand name, it’s time to start generating some candidates.

Step 2: Generate a word bank

Sometimes name ideas emerge in strokes of genius. But you shouldn’t wait for that to happen. Instead, you can come up with a long list of words that you can associate with the business you’re building. These words will be the ingredients you choose from to create your brand name candidates.

(ChatGPT can be a huge help here — but before you start asking artificial intelligence to crank out name ideas for you, start by gathering some words and concepts that are specific to you and your story.)

Start with what you already know. Your offerings, your history, your vision, and your audience. This includes obvious words like the names of your founders, your location, the types of things you sell, the kind of benefits you provide, and the kind of future you want to bring about.

Then, dig into your origin story. What were you doing when you came up with your big idea? What was the drink you ordered before scribbling your thoughts on a bar napkin? What was the name of the professor who inspired you? Add these to your word bank — they can be useful for adding character to whatever names you come up with.

After this, start thinking about the effects you want to have on your audience. What behaviors do you want to help them do better? What chores do you want to make obsolete? How do you want them to feel? What vibes do you want your brand to have? It can be helpful to sit down with your team and make four lists:

• Things you want your audience to do
• Things you want them to think
• Things you want them to feel
• Things you want them to remember

At this point, you’ll have a lot of words related to the brand you want to build. Now it’s time to use outside tools to see what words those words are related to. This is when you can start using these words as generative AI prompts, looking up synonyms in a thesaurus, and using dedicated online name generator tools.

Step 3: Make a list of brand name candidates

If you’ve done everything above, you’ll have a massive word bank of potential ingredients for your new brand name. Start playing with your word bank to come up with name ideas. You can combine words, find creative ways to spell them, create fun acronyms — it’s all up to you.

If you follow these steps, it’s only a matter of time before you’ll have a list of potential brand names. 

Step 4: Vet your potential brand names

Once you have a shortlist, you can begin testing these names with people you know. Bring them up in conversation, paying attention to how people react to the names. Are they easy to understand and spell? Do they elicit looks of curiosity or confusion? 

While you’re soft-testing these name ideas, do your homework and check them against the parameters you set in Step 1. Look up what your brand name ideas mean in other languages to make sure you’re not accidentally giving your company an embarrassing name. Check available web domains to see what website options any potential brand name has. Ask yourself, “Given the way I’d pitch my company or sell my product, does this name make sense?”

And of course, check every potential brand name against government IP databases to make sure you’re not using someone else’s trademark! 

As you eliminate brand names during this process, be sure to do a gut check on each candidate. Remember, you’re the one founding the company — you may as well give it a name you like. 

Step 5: Make the final call and roll it out!

You’ve explored your options. You’ve stretched your imagination. You’ve analyzed and tested and tweaked and rejected candidates. Now it’s time to pick one.

And once you do that, you’re done.

(Well, you’re done with the naming  part. Now you get to design and test complementing logos, colors, typefaces, slogans, positioning statements, and the like.)

Build your brand with Bubble

As you think about what to name your company, it’s also smart to think about how you’ll build the technology you sell and use. Nearly 5 million apps have been built on Bubble’s no-code development platform — could yours be next? 

The possibilities of brand names you could use are endless, and so are the possibilities of what you can build on Bubble. Founders use Bubble to create, launch, and continuously improve the tools they imagine, and dozens of new founders start using Bubble every day. 

You and your brand could be next! Start building your tech product with Bubble today (it’s completely free until your product goes live) and bring your ideas — and brand — to life.