Tips for choosing a name for your new business 🤔

As the years go by, business names, especially startup names, have become more and more unusual. Obviously this is not a proven scientific fact, but it is increasingly hard to miss.

Deliberate, creative misspellings, animal names, first names, made-up words, adverbs and letter combinations. Anything seems to go and, by now, all of it feels strangely ordinary.

Think of names such as Google, Airbnb and even WhatsApp, which sounded odd at first but are now a normal part of our everyday vocabulary.

On the other hand, there is a growing trend in exactly the opposite direction: giving new businesses so-called normal or conventional names.

The website DomainScope collected the most registered names over the last three months. It shows that shop and home top the trends. This points to a preference for English names, which may be explained by Portuguese businesses' need to export, or by online shops targeting an increasingly global audience.

Alongside these words, other simple ones usually appear, telling people straight away what they can find on the brand's website, in its physical premises or on its social media.

If you are looking for the perfect name for your cake business, your artisan burger place or even a florist's, take a look at the tips we have put together for you.

Deliberate mistakes

For a long time, we have seen widespread use of deliberately misspelt names. This is most common among startups, especially international ones. Tumblr and Flickr are good examples.

Here in Portugal, though, it is not that unusual either. Whether out of creativity or because the domain they wanted was taken, many business owners drop vowels or swap letters for others that sound the same when they name their brand.

Look at what Clin, a cleaning company from Paços de Ferreira, did: by turning the word "clean" into something that sounds similar, replacing two vowels with one, it got a unique and even simpler name.

Sense of humour

Playing with words, whether with their meaning or their sound, can be one way to arrive at a good name.

BarTolo, in Foz do Douro, kept this in mind. It needed to show that it is a pub, so it combined the words "bar" and "tolo" (Portuguese for "silly"). The result can be read two ways: the silly bar, or Bartolo, a man's name.

TGB, a newcomer to Porto, also uses this tip. It works very well because this is a part of the country where people swap their "v"s for "b"s. It is a franchise, and the name is an acronym for The Good Burguer.

From abroad, Brazil to be precise, comes another great example of this trick. Gabriel Lima is a chef and has Down syndrome. When it came to naming his brigadeiro business (brigadeiros are Brazilian chocolate sweets), creativity won the day: today, the 22-year-old owns Downlicia, a play on "delícia" (Portuguese for "delight").

Made-up words that sound real

According to the Oxford dictionary, English has more than 170,000 words still in current use. Startups, however, seem to want more.

One trend we have been seeing is names built from words that do not exist but still sound real.

In Portugal, names like these are easy to find in the database of Empresa na Hora (the government's on-the-spot company registration service), where we stumble across an Esboçopódio, a Recentídolo and even an Elegantefolia.

According to experts, one advantage of choosing names like these is that it is easier to get them to rank higher on Google.

Simplicity

Leaving risky and rebellious names aside, there are also businesses that have chosen simple names that say it all, or that say nothing about what the business does but at least stick in your head.

It is the equivalent of calling a café "Café", or a garage "Garage".

This can often seem basic, but it works to grab people's attention. We see examples abroad too: Decent is a health insurance startup, Chief is a networking group for women and Journal is a note-taking tool.

When choosing their website address, businesses with names like these often add a prefix (joinchief.com and usejournal.com).

Use helper tools

Several websites can help you decide what to call your business. Oberlo, Shopify and Wordlab are some of the sites that offer this service. Just enter a word you definitely want to use and they will give you a list of options.

A quick Google search for name generator sites will be enough to find the perfect name.

Where are we heading?

What we can say is that trends come and go. What you should definitely avoid is combining your partners' names (so you do not have to change everything if you split up), adding a date or naming a location. If you do, you may limit your reach with the public.

Names in other languages also need careful thought. Foreign words are accepted, and we know many people already understand English, but what really matters is putting yourself in your target audience's shoes: will these potential customers understand what my brand means?