What Exactly Is In A Name?

Finding the right name for a new concept or company can be a challenge. It is also important to remember that a word might not necessarily have the same meaning for everyone.

- Lloyd Gedye

Selecting the perfect name for a new business, start-up or product is a key decision. General consensus is that the short, easy-to-pronounce and memorable are the way to go. In 2006, researchers investigating the performance of hundreds of stocks immediately after they were listed on the financial markets discovered that companies with simpler names that were easier to pronounce received a greater post-listing take-up than did companies with complex names.

But it’s not as simple as just coming up with the perfect name, especially if you plan to expand internationally. Each potential name has to be checked to make sure that someone else is not already using it to do business. This can make the quest for a name even more arduous and expensive.

Some start-ups consider between 50 and 100 names before they settle on one. If we consider that there are 5m trademarks registered worldwide each year, this means companies are researching something like 500m names a year. Naming is such a big deal that there are even naming consultancies, which assist businesses with finding the perfect name.

What got me thinking about names recently was an article on TechCrunch by Joana Glassner that looked at trends in the names chosen by start-ups. TechCrunch analysed over 1 000 start-ups founded in the past two years and a number of interesting patterns emerged.

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