How to Come Up with the Right Brand Name

If you are dead set with the name of your business, company, or personal brand, then you can skip this post and go follow me on instagram.

However, if you are still unsure or if you wish to solidify your name, then do the following exercise.

By now you should know your why you are doing business and to who you are talking to, we can now do some further brainstorming and figure out the right name that speaks to your audience. This exercise does not guarantee the perfect name, but it will allow you to dive into creativity.

Remember, creativity is just connecting things. And because you have already brainstormed in your why and who, you will be able to draw terms and inspiration from those sessions.

Write down as many names as possible. Keep in mind the different categories of brand names:

Founder - Warby Parker

Descriptive - Describes what you do like General Motors. Can also describe an experience or image like Sprint.

Fabricated - Completely made-up like Kodak.

Metaphor - Mythical, foreign, or imagery-heavy things, places, people, animals, or processes, such as Nike.

Acronym - Initials or an abbreviation like DKNY.

Magic Spell - A portmanteau (a word blending the sounds and combining the meanings of two others) like Facebook.

Now take a step back and start to connect these different words together, maybe even combining words to make new ones. This is the creative part! Maybe you can come up with an acronym of some sort. How about translating some key terms into a foreign language?

Something to keep in mind is to keep your brand name short. It has to be easy to remember, and not complicated to spell. It has to be unique! The more unique the better. This will prove worthy for future research efforts. It also has to appeal to your target audience. That's why you did all of the brainstorming beforehand, so you can speak to them clearly.

You may get something right away, you may not. It’s okay to have written all of this down, sleep on it, and then probably come up with the right name in the shower a week later.

Did you find this exercise helpful? Let me know in the comments below!

Figuring out the right brand name is definitely one of the items I have on my Before Re/Branding Your Business Checklist. You can grab it for free by subscribing to my site below.

Thanks and love!