How To Choose A Formidable Brand Name In 1 Day

Choosing your brand name is a very important decision. Beyond how it sounds, your brand name will play a part in determining the growth of your business.

This is however a decision you can make as quickly as possible. Deciding on your brand name in a day will give you room to move on to make other decisions that will bring in the money you’re after.

With some guidance, you can decide on a great brand name in 1 day.

Don’t Waste Time Deciding On A Brand Name

Let’s start from here. There’s no reason to overthink a brand name after you have gotten a few proven guidance on creating it. Here’s why:

1. You can always change it. Yahoo was formerly Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web. Google’s former name was BackRub. To me, “BackRub" evokes images of a spa parlour.
2. Overthinking will make you arrive at a terrible choice.
3. In the long run, your customers don’t care about the name. They will only care about what your business gets for them.
4. You can pick any common word and make your brand another meaning of the name over time. Think Google, Amazon, Apple, and Dropbox. Google is now a verb for searching the internet through any search engine.

A Brand Name is Not A Company Name

Your government registered company name is different from your brand name. 
In this article, where I mention "business name", I’ll be referring to your brand name, the one people would get to know. This is different from company names.

For instance, "Google" is the business’s brand name, while the business' company name is "Alphabet". Let me explain using a human analogy. Your registered birth name can be likened to a company name, while my nickname can be likened to a brand name. In business, your company name and your brand name can be different or the same.

This blog post is about brand names.

Qualities of a Powerful Brand Name

1. Easy on the Mouth

A business name should be easy to pronounce. 2 syllable words are best sellers. Let it sit between 2-5 syllables or 12 letters.

Your business name should also be hard to mispronounce. Jeff Bezos changed the business name from "Cadabra" to "Amazon" when he saw his lawyer mistook it for "Cadaver".

If people struggle to get the name right, change it.

2. Memorable

Your business name must be easy to remember and associate with your business.

If it's your personal brand, don't make the mistake of using a name others already share with you. If you want tips on choosing a name for your personal brand, tell me in the comment section.

The name should be easy to pick up and use in everyday language. Eg. "Candy Crush", "Let's get on Zoom", "Google it", "Tweet it", "Are you on Shopify?", "Do you know Chris Do?"

3. Not Restrictive

A great business name should not contain instant pointers to the type of business you're into. This could limit you from growing your business and taking investments later on.

Examples of restrictive names are “Joey Jewelries", “Adebola Recharge Cards", “Rory Communications". “Joey” and “Rory” from these examples can be business names if they are not already taken.

Examples of non-restrictive names are Strategy Cartel, Louis Vuitton, Coinsem, Globacom, Shoprite, Amazon, and Google.

If you insist on your business name being restrictive, you’re not wrong.

• Bella Naija, Country Kitchen and United Bank of Africa are restrictive names. These names tell their target audience and primary business base respectively BUT still allow them to expand offers to this target market.
• Restrictive names also work if the name covers the problem your business seeks to solve or the people your business seeks to serve. Ensure your business name can accommodate a wide range of related products later on.

Note: It is hard for restrictive names to get ingrained into a culture. If global cultural acceptance is your goal, then you want your business name to be as generic as possible.

4. Globally-inclusive

A business name can limit international expansion and operations. You need to consider this too.

You want to ensure your name can be accepted in any target market. Zoom is a great example of a globally inclusive brand name.

• Depending on the name you choose, you may need to get a new name for a different target market because of the language barrier. In China, there’s a high chance you will have to change your business name to carry operations there. It happens to the best of brands. This happened to Coca-Cola.

When Coca-Cola first appeared in China in 1927, they used the name “Ke Ke Ken La”, which translates as “Tadpoles gnawing at wax”. The taste was also new for the Chinese. As expected, Coca Cola had to look for a solution to their problems. They needed a good name and acceptance.

The company then decided to offer a 350-dollar reward for a good Chinese name, and the winner “可口可乐 Ke Kou Ke Le” revealed itself and has become the most successful example of Chinese rebranding of international companies. Meaning “Tasty and Pleasant”, while having similar pronunciation as the original name, “Ke Kou Ke Le” is regarded by some people to be even better than “Coca Cola”.

• Also, the business name you decide on may be registered in another country by a different company. In the past, where this happened, companies have had to get new names to carry out business in the particular country.

Creating A Business Name

There is no cast in the stone formula to creating a business name. I will provide you with a few formulas and real-life stories to back them up.

Finding out how a few popular business names were formed will help you get your creative juice flowing, and decide faster:

1. After a place. Adobe was named after a creek that ran behind the founder’s house.
2. A combination of your name and things you care about. IKEA was derived from the first two letters of the Ingvar Kamprad (the founder's name) and the names of the property and the village where he grew up (Elmtaryd, Agunnaryd).
3. The name of your pet. Zynga was named after Mark Pincus’ bulldog.
4. The acronyms of descriptive names. IBM combined "International Business Machines", Yahoo is coined from "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle", Intel combined “Integrated Electronics’, and Groupon combined “Group Coupon.” You get the gist now.
5. Using industry terms. WP Curve from WordPress.
6. Outsourcing it. You can hire a freelance, or an agency to get it done for you.

These formulas are enough to get you to decide on your business name in a day. I got the name for the new business I plan to launch, in 30 minutes using the second method.

Evaluate Your Business Name

After deciding on some names, test them. You want to

• Like it,
• Ensure it is not taken and
• Check that it ticks off against all 4 qualities of a great business name I mentioned earlier.

This checklist I created will be helpful and fun to use in carrying out your test.

Protect Your Business Name

To protect your brand name, you can register it on CAC for the sum of N10,000.00 (this is the price at the time of writing this), if you are in Nigeria, open social media accounts with it, and/or buy the domain name.

In registering the business name, it automatically becomes your legal/company name too.

That will be all on getting a powerful business name.

If you decided on a new business name while reading this article, let me know in the comment section.

You can share the formula you followed with me on WhatsApp. I would love to hear your gist.

Don’t forget your checklist.

Cheers to your generational wealth, friend.