How do you find the perfect name for your product?

Yann Bigor
12 replies
As I'm looking on Product Hunt, I found out that many of you built not only great products but also found really cool names for them. How did you do that? If you have any advice about your creation process, I'd be glad to hear back from you guys. Thank you for your feedback 😉

Replies

Catherine Crandall
Started out with a name I liked a lot, it was upbeat and implied wellness. It seems like the trademark name was available, but someone was parking on the domain - they wanted $250k, so I moved on. It looked as if the next name I wanted was being used in another country, and that the trademark was available for use by a US software company. I filed, but the trademark had been taken - still not sure how this works, as the company it is registered to was sold is no longer seems to operating with the name. The name does not relate to their business, but nonetheless this meant I had to start over. I tried to create a nonsense word related to health, wellness, vitality, supplements, vitamins. I twisted words around in my mind constantly. Everything I dreamed up sounded ugly, was either being used or the domain was parked by someone hoping to sell it. One day, I thought about using a word associated to a completely natural place. I didn’t want it to sound like a vacation spot. I began looking up names of remote islands, and then I realized I should look at places in Alaska’s Aleutian archipelago. I had recently read the book “Where the Sea Breaks It’s Back,” about early naturalist Georg Stellar and and the grueling Bering expedition. I highly recommend this book! Many of the Aleutian Islands carry difficult to pronounce indigenous or Russian names like “Umnak” or “Amaknak,” the islands were originally colonized by Russia. The name “Amlia” jumped out at me. It begins with an A, so will show up first in any alphabetical list, it’s short, and not commonly used. All variations of most-used domain suffixes were available, and I was able to trademark name. It says nothing about what my business does, which makes it less than perfect, but it’s mine and I’m glad to have it! Amlia is uninhabited, truly wild - I hope to travel there one day.
Yann Bigor
@amliawellness Thank you for sharing your story! 😉 I see that finding the right name has been quite a long process for you and, in my opinion, the one you got now is really good (you keep it short and clear) even if it doesn't specify what your business does. Also, I love the fact that you used a book to find your business name.
Abhishek
Generally I like the idea of using the most common term around that product and attaching a noun around it. For example OgHero (my latest product) is social media (auto)image generation tool. Those who work in this field will know what "og" stands for. So played with that plus a noun I named it "OgHero".
Yann Bigor
@themkmaker that's a cool way to find it but don't you think there is a lot of unavailable names using this process? Thanks for sharing 😊
Abhishek
@yannbigor1 I agree but you know what in there can be virtually millions of words so I rarely felt I am short of names. If you have a business in mind and searching for name in this way let me know, I will be happy to help :)
Yann Bigor
@themkmaker thank you, I'll not hesitate ;)
fotspot
Hi @yannbigor1 , we spent an evening writing down every word / name we could imagine that fitted the key element of our app and then triaged each against the web and social media. If the word / name was already in use we put a line through it. We also checked the name wasn't offensive in a different language. Name by name we went through the list until we ended up with 'fotspot'. Our approach was shaped by having no budget to buy our first choice name (though we did then trademarked the name and logo). One thing we didn't realise, but found out later, was that if the name is similar to a popular one many search results come back with the well known one (in our case 'hotspot') :(
Yann Bigor
Hey @northstarisland thank you for sharing your experience! I really like your approach, the fact that you checked on social media if the name was available, etc. I didn't think that having a similar name would interact this way on the web researches. I thought it would be the case only when the name of the product is the same as a famous one, so it's good to know. What are you going to do? Change your product name?
fotspot
@yannbigor1 We're going to keep the name. We did a test campaign and found that as the number of downloads increased a search on Google Play showed fotspot at the top of the search result. Now we've stopped the test 'hotspot' appears as the suggested search. Also, our app is location based. We're marketing it on a university campus, doing events etc to build awareness and understanding, then using social media to promote the fun people had at the event.
Donald Ng
I wanted something short and catchy, the initial idea was just a feedback service and to always be there asking "How are you?" and that is how we come up with the name Howu.io. After a while, I started hating the fact that I was not able to get Howu.com without spending tens of thousand dollars. So, I changed it before I completely settle into the name Howu.io. Thinking it would wise to just change the name and save up a lot of money. Try to play around the word "Howu" for a bit and finally settle down on Howuku.com just because it sounded good and short and available while keeping the "Howu" in it. Since then we have been expanding our feedback service into all-in-one conversion tool but the core idea will always be customer experience first and how are you.
Yann Bigor
@donaldyann thank you for sharing this! Love the name you chose btw 🔥