How do you find a name for your projects?
Xavier Coiffard
30 replies
Naming is always a pain (even while coding). How do you proceed when you have a new product but can't find the right name? I've used Namelix but that doesn't really help… For my previous startup we spent literally several weeks on this.
What're your tips to get a good name?
Replies
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Helene Auramo@helene_auramo
My newest startup is named Prönö.
It comes from the word "entrepreneur". Because we Finns find it very difficult to pronounce "antreprönöyr". So it became Prönö. www.prono.fi
I had many alternative name ideas but after sparring with my friend a while she told me that all the names I had mentioned were booooring and didn't sound like me. Then she asked: "Don't you really have anything else?". I said that "I have had this Prönö name in my head for a while already, but wasn't sure about it". She told me that it is different, it looks like me and is perfect. So I took that name and haven't regretted it once.
So my advice is this: talk with people. :)
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I built surveysays.app for this very reason -- so you can answers these kinds of questions using feedback from real-world consumers. Actually just launched it on Product Hunt yesterday: SurveySays.
We name our company and internal projects by its key value.
For example, Akurateco is accuracy from Esperanto - a very precise name for Payments Management Software I think =)
@yulia_mamonova @angezanetti i am solving the same thing now. i have tried namesnack, but it suggests only very long names... or is it just me not knowing how to use it?
Mine didn't find hard time to name mine. It's a Start-Ups discovery platform and newsletter and I had this domain name registered since longer than I can remember hence Start-Ups.net (btw the original Start-Ups word is hyphenated)
Make t-shirts with names and logos. Go in public. See how many people ask what it is.
When naming my games, I heavily focus on capturing the main themes from those games. In the case of Unscripted, I wanted to capture the fact that the experience of submitting a game to a prestigious arcade and hoping it will get accepted isn't really scriptable; personal experiences may vary. For The Costumemaster, I wanted to capture the main mechanic in the game: switching between costumes.
You may want to first get a list of the main themes and points of your project, and then see where you can go that captures these ideas.
Not gonna lie it took me months to get a name, and it was a lot of bouncing it off people. My product end up being called Wachdit because it was available and related to core aspect of the product Television and Reddit.
For me, it ihas always been about a random inspiration :)
I finally asked Twitter to name my next project → https://twitter.com/AngeZanetti/...
Don't think about it too much. Deep down you already know what the name should be. It's probably been floating around in your mind for some time. Even if you don't immediately like the names in your mind, write them down for later. Brainstorm as many new names as possible using all the other strategies mentioned here. Once you've gone through that exercise, come back to those first names and see how they feel.
Ah I love a good Brainstorm! To me it comes to slowing down and shifting from Thinking to Listening. In a metaphorical and energetic sense you tune into the “entity” of the product and on a higher level the pure Vision itself. There’s the whole world that expands of what influence/feelings the users will have. The experience. The vibe. The impact. From that visionary space of no limits (and no bad ideas) you flow what comes through. You get out of the way and listen to “it” versus trying to think, think, think. Then you’re finding the excitement and the best ideas flow through.
I get the name from a movie I like.
Names are important, but not as important as we think they're. Naming a project is hard, because once you find the right name for it, then you have to find a domain name, social media user names and that's not easy task, it changes all you had been creating all these time
Coming up with a good name is so hard ... I write down every potentially good name that ever makes its way into my mind and put it in a drawer. Be it in the shower, during a run, while I'm sleeping or during a coding session. I revisit it from time to time to check if the name I loved a week ago still hasn't lost its charm.
That way, if I ever need a name for something, I can just open that drawer and pick one of the names and know I will be happy with it (if it's not taken yet ;) )
why not start with searching for available com domain? i try https://leandomainsearch.com/ for that, i would be glad if you can suggest more similar tools.
@vladojsem Hey Vladimir, I use namemesh.com for that! It shows you the free domain names and make some suggestions based on your keywords.
(For the social media accounts you can use namechk.com)
I've used namelix. It generates a lot of nonsense but also provides many ideas that I wouldn't think of on my own.
https://namelix.com/