Transcription
How to Name a Company or App
Coming up with a good catchy name for your business and company, or even for an app could be really, really frustrating, have gone through this multiple different times, even naming a YouTube channel, for example. So I've put together a complete step-by-step guide and I wanted to share that with you in this video on how to name any company or application.
Now, the process is pretty straightforward if you follow this, but he still could take a little bit of time. Cause we want to find a name that you love. But we also wanted to find a name that has a domain name available, right? Either a.com or one of the bigger.co or.io is available without the.com being the competitor and you also want to check the trademark to make sure that name is not trademark by another large company. I'll show you all that in this video. The very first step I recommend everyone do to create a name for their company or their app is actually come up with the name style. I mean that if you look at lots of different companies in the world, they all have different name styles, and I'll share some of them with you.
So first you have brandable names like Google, it's kind of a made-up word, but it's very brandable, very memorable, right. But when they first started with Google, it was kind of hard to get people to spell it correctly. So it can hold you back. If you have a startup, but in the long run, it could be very beneficial.
Then my favorite is multiple words like Facebook or Bitcoin and I always like to go with two syllables for the name. So Facebook, each is one syllable together as two-syllable, same as Bitcoin and if you're coming up with an app, for example, and this could be for company names, but if I go to the app store here, the top apps, TikTok, two syllables, two words, YouTube, two syllables towards Facebook, two syllables towards Snapchat.
So you get the idea. These are the top apps. Then you'll have the type of apps where you blend towards like Instagram right now, the fifth-biggest app on the app store. Let me show you those. So those are compound words, right? Instagram, FedEx, compound words. Now, with Howfinity desk to channel and my website, that's a compound word is how-to, Howfinity together to make one of these.
Now, I'm not a big fan of this. So for my new app, I'm actually going with this multiple words two or three-syllable kind of thing. Then you have misspellings. I always recommend people to stay away from this on startups are apps because. If you want to spread through word of mouth, this could be really, really hard for you to get started, right. So if you told someone your website is flicker and then they go to flicker with an E they'll never find you, right? So you have to spend more money on ads. So I always stay away from these. And then you have rewards. These are typically one word like Apple or Amazon, but they could be really, really expensive, especially if you don't have enough money to buy the.com or even some of these, co or.io are taken too.
So these are really, really hard and the rhythmic words are probably one of my favorites. It's like the multiple. Wards where two words are each one syllable, but they also rhyme. Like FireWire, that's really catchy, really easy to say, really easy to spell. So my recommendation is to go with the multiple wards, with the two-word option and try to make it two or three syllables maximum here and make it really, really easy to spell and to say, right, my channel, Howfinity actually holds me back because a lot of people think is how to infinity or.
Basically, the word is spelled out with too many syllables. So for my current app, I'm going with this option. So that's the name style? That's step one. Okay, once you've decided that we're going to kind of put together a document with a bunch of words that describe our app or company. Okay, so you have to think about that for a little bit, then I'm just going to open a Google sheet to show you what I mean by this.
So this is just a blank Google sheet here, and it's pretty straightforward. What defines my app. What are some words I could use to describe it to someone else? Let's say I have an app. That is how-to questions answered, right? Like my website, Howfinity.com. So what are some words that describe that?
Well, how to is one video, right? I make videos. That's one answer. That's one, the type of content I cover. So technology is one, maybe social media is one and what are some of the benefits of it, right? Quick, useful. Time-saver so makes yourself a list like this. Okay. Just a bunch of words, at least two or three.
That really defines and gives a description of what your app or company does or it's about, then what I want to do is underneath each one of these, right? These are the main words that describe my company, but underneath each one, I want to come up with other words that are the same as this word, right or similar to this word.
So for that, I just look up synonyms, right. So if I. Take a word like the video I'll type that out here. And the synonyms for video could be TV or could be recorded programs, right. So I could get some ideas here and let's look down here. The box is good, right. To vid video tele, right? So some of these obviously don't make sense like babysitters, but you get the idea.
You could write some of these. So then I go back here and then I type in tele or tube or TV. So these are all the different words that would come up with underneath data related to video and the same thing, I will come back to this website and then I would type answers and let's see what we get for answers, right. We get all kinds of words, like response return solution and then I will write those on the next page as well. Right. I will come back here and write all those. Once I finish this up, what I end up doing? Am I just blend, I just take time and blend these words, right? Let's say this answer will reply was one.
So if my application showed you video replies, the right video answers to your, how-to questions, I would just come up with names, names. I like, I would type that out here and then that will be names I blend. So telly reply or reply TV, write reply TV and at this point, I'm not worried if they're taken or not taken.
I mean, the.com or the trademark or the company name, I just want to come up with a bunch of different names, right and it doesn't matter if they're available or not. So to reply. That's one, right? So this is just me coming up with four different words and I already have this many options, right or how to reply to something that uses any one of these words, and since I do want to come up with just a two-word option, that's how I came up with that. But if I want it to come up with like the compound option, like Instagram or Howfinity. I would do how quick or something like that, where I'm just blending and dropping some of these wards and trying to blend them.
Now, this part could take a while. Okay, so I spend a few hours actually on this to make sure I have all the options exhausted, and then if I'm still stuck, let me show you this option. That really helped me unlock everything. I came to this website, brand new name.com, and basically up here. You could search by some of those keywords that you came up with, right. So let's say reply or how was one of mine? And then I could choose an industry here, right? Catchy name, short name, clever name, or specific industry. No, you don't have to pick any of these, but this will give you some more ideas, right? So I spend a lot of time, a couple of hours even. Going through all these names, just to see if there's something that really sparks my imagination here to come up with something new, right.
That starts with how, how Maven is pretty good. Maven actually describes someone as an expert. So maybe how maven.com is pretty good. Let me look at that and I could see this is one of the premium options. So this company basically makes money by giving you options that actually cost money for the.com.
But if you're a startup, you don't have to start with the.com. If you're an app, you don't have to have the.com at all. You could be.app or. co. Those are some good ideas. Nowadays, back in the day.com was essential it's not anymore. So this is really one of my favorites and let's say you do this and everything else I said, and you're still stuck.
Let me show you this other option. You could use this other website, call name licks, and this is a name generator. So all you do is you go to the brand keyboard. Let's change this to, how and named length, you could choose short or medium here and named style. Again, I like the multiple words and then I'll press generate and this basically generates a bunch of different ideas, just like the other website I showed you, but specific to what you chose. So how there that's pretty good. The.com is $3,000 though, right? So that's not what I wanted to start with about how it is so easy to say and type out and get the idea.
You can just scroll here at times. I have them, like, if I wanted to get, let's say this one, great. How I could press register and this one let's see how much this one is. Looks like the.com is taken where I can make an offer, or I could just start with something else, like.net, right? For 10 bucks and let's say after all that, you still don't have a name that you really love.
Okay, so what do you do? Well, some people come up with names for a living. So let me give you this resource where you could run a competition and people could give you ideas for a name. Okay, so this is what I'm actually doing right now. Just to make sure someone doesn't have something better than the name I came up with and this one is on that same website, brand new name and, I'll put a link to all the resources in the description, all these websites I mentioned, and here you could run a contest for a name or a tagline right now it's two 50, at least what I paid and 150 of it goes to the creator. The rest goes to the website.
You could also use this for tagline and logo too, but typically this is what I'm recommending to do and you just press next and then you also fill out everything you could think of. But since we did the homework already, we already know what we should describe for our target here and lots of different options, too, like names we like, and we don't like, based on the sheet we put together the Google Sheet, right?
So this is going to be really easy. I filled it out in just a couple of minutes here and so far I got over 150 different names and there are five. I really liked that list and the last step is once you have multiple different names, right? Don't just stick with one name here because there's a good chance that someone else may already have this name, especially if it's really easy to spell a two-word name or a one-word name.
Okay, so what I recommend here now is you go to godaddy.com and look up the domain to see what's available. A lot of times the doc times are available, but they're a premium. the.com might be three, $5,000 sometimes even more. So if you're a startup or if you're an app, just kind of making a minimum viable product, you want to just start with a.core.app and just to test out your idea before spending thousands of dollars on the domain here, then I recommend going to USP, pto.gov and check for a trademark. Now, if the.com is available, Most likely to trademark is available too, but a lot of times you want to check that first, the.com first, and then check, for the trademark.
Those are the last steps I always recommend. That's why I recommend it coming up with a couple of names. You like 3, 4, 5, even. So if one of them is taking, you're not disappointed, and just remember if the.com is taken by another company, don't get the. co or another website where if the.com is available, let's say the.com is $50,000, but the. co is $8.
Start with that, build out your company a little bit, prove the concept. And then when you could raise funds or have enough money to make an offer, you didn't get the.com. A lot of companies start this way. They don't always start with the one-word or two-word name that you see that you're using right now, especially with apps.
So that's my workflow of coming up with app names or business names, company names and I use this all the time and I've used it at least a dozen times to come up with all kinds of different names, for different ideas that I've had. So I hope this was useful to you. The next step after this is once you lock in your company name.
Obviously buy the domain name, do the trademark. If you need to, and then move on to creating a logo. So watch my video next on creating a logo for your business. Please give this one a thumbs-up, and I'll see you next time.