Brand Naming: What Goes into Naming a Company?

A company name can feel right and still be completely wrong. 

Maybe it sounds great, then turns out to be impossible to trademark. Or it might need spelling out every time someone hears it. Or maybe it fits the business perfectly, until the business grows into something else.

Good brand naming is a strategy exercise before it’s a creative one. Before the brainstorm and Post-its, you need to know what your business stands for, who it’s speaking to, and where it intends to go.

So, what makes a name worth keeping? We’re looking at what goes into brand naming and creation, how to approach the process, and the decisions that can save you a lot of regret later.

What is brand naming?

Brand naming is giving a business a new brand identity in words. It’s a pivotal point where a business stops being “the project” and becomes something people can recognise, refer to, and remember.

A name has a slightly different job from the rest of a brand identity. Logos can be redesigned, colour palettes can change, and campaigns come and go. The name tends to stick. 

That’s why naming can feel so intimidating—it’s a handful of letters that could represent your business for decades. It needs to work now, but not be so tied to the present that it becomes irrelevant later. 

How to name your business

Unfortunately, there’s no single answer to how to name a company.

Nike took its name from the Greek goddess of victory, Patagonia borrowed the name of a region, and Uber gave a German word a new context. None of those names explained the product, but they all gave the brand a world to inhabit.

Other names work by making the unfamiliar feel familiar. Apple stood apart from the technical language of early computing because it was such an ordinary word, while Slack gave workplace software a name that felt very unlike workplace software.

Then there are names that create their own language. Kodak was invented to be short, distinctive and easy to spell. More than a century later, that logic still holds. 

Brand naming isn’t about finding the universally “best” name. Descriptive, evocative, invented, and unexpected names can all work. The question is whether the approach fits what you want to communicate.

What goes into a brand naming strategy?

Brand naming starts well before anyone starts suggesting names. The first step is getting clear on the brand’s positioning, promise, audience and personality. Without that foundation, there’s nothing to judge a name against except for personal taste.

From there, a brand naming strategy moves through a few stages. First, we review competitor names to understand the conventions of the category. Then we define naming territories, which are different creative directions rooted in the strategy, rather than one enormous brainstorm with no boundaries.

Next comes volume. A long list gives ideas room to develop before names are whittled down against the criteria. Then the shortlist goes through initial name checking, including trademark conflicts, domains and linguistic considerations. 

While the creative part is important, so is the structure around it. Working with a company naming agency isn’t just about generating more options; it’s about developing a sound framework for judging them. 

3 Brand creation mistakes to avoid

There are a few ways a name can go wrong. Most come down to looking at it from one angle without considering the category, strategy, practical checks, or where the business might go next.

Naming in a vacuum

Your brand name will sit on a search results page, a high street, or an app store alongside your competitors. 

That’s why category review is such an important part of the process. The obvious purpose is to make sure you don’t land too close to an existing business, but it’s also to see where everyone has already landed.  

A competitor name list makes those patterns visible. We can see which trends keep appearing, which metaphors have been exhausted, and which naming territories are overcrowded already. Sometimes the most useful outcome of the exercise is knowing where not to look.

Naming by committee

Naming by committee starts innocently enough. Everyone is asked to pick their favourite and votes are counted. The problem is, the name that survives isn’t necessarily the strongest one. It’s often just the one nobody passionately objects to.

Personal preference tells us very little about whether a name is right for the business. A strategy-led process always comes back to the criteria established at the beginning:

• Does the name reflect the positioning?
• Does it occupy the right territory? 
• Is it distinct from competitors? 
• Can it stretch as the business changes?

Stakeholders should absolutely be the final decision-makers, but the strategy needs to remain the referee to guide their thinking. 

Getting attached too early

One of the less glamorous parts of naming is finding out whether you can actually use it.

Initial checks should happen before a name becomes the name. That means looking for trademark conflicts, competitor names, search results and linguistic issues in the markets where the brand will operate.

Domain availability matters too, but it shouldn’t dictate the decision. A perfect exact-match domain can be valuable, but not having one doesn’t automatically make a strong name unusable.

Trademark conflicts are a different matter. For example, Apple and The Beatles’ Apple Corps spent decades in disputes over their shared name, eventually reaching an agreement in 2007. It’s an extreme example, but the underlying lesson applies to businesses of any size: a name can be brilliant and still be commercially unusable.

Naming the business you have today

A highly descriptive name can be useful when a company is starting out because people immediately understand what it does. The difficulty comes when the business starts doing something else.

Zoom Video Communications is a good example. In 2024, the company changed its legal name to Zoom Communications as its offer expanded beyond video meetings. 

A good name needs to belong to the business today without trapping it there. Maybe you’ll be lucky, like Zoom, and simply lose the limiting word. Or maybe you’ll end up with something like Weight Watchers, a name so closely tied to weight loss that it became increasingly awkward as the business tried to position itself around broader ideas of wellness.

This doesn’t mean every company needs an abstract name with no obvious meaning, but it does mean considering where your business could reasonably go next. 

Unfortunately, there’s no test that can guarantee you’ll love your company name forever. Businesses change, language changes, and words acquire associations nobody could have predicted. But most naming regret is avoidable.

At Immo Studio, our brand naming services bring strategy, naming and identity into one process. We find the territory worth occupying, develop and test the names that could live there, and build the brand creation around the one that sticks.

If you’re naming a new business, rethinking an existing one, or building a new brand identity, we can help you make the right decision with more certainty. Get in touch to set up a chat.

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