Of course, a brand is made of the company, its product and services, the advertisements and the promos. But all that happens after you have already decided a name. The question is how to come up with a good name in the first place?

First your have a business in mind, then you choose a name for it. What type of name do you choose?

Depending on the market you are in, the significance of a name varies. In niche and b2b markets, names don’t matter as much as they do in consumer markets. Consumer markets are made of masses. A name which makes sense to space organisations won’t have the same appeal with general public. That is why a satellite launching company can be named Antrix, but ask the average person on the road, he is more likely to say its the name of some medicinal capsule. Consumer brands have to appeal to a much wider audience.

So what makes a good candidate for a public brand? I think the name should be -
1. Easy to pronounceMonosyllables are best, two is ok, and three just about qualifies. Not more than that. Sony is the best on this one – monosyllable and ends in ‘y’. BlackBerry – 2 syllables, plus ends in ‘y’.

2. Easy to read and hard to mispell.
You don’t want people confused when their browser shows them Tricon.com (when they really meant Trikon.com). You don’t want them waiting on the keyboard and recalling wether to type Jhoomla or Joomla or Zoomla or Jomlaa.

3. Signify something about the line of business.
Not really necessary, but such names are better candidates. Think Microsoft in its early days.

Of course there are exceptions to these ‘rules’. Sony is monosyllable, but Microsoft has three and the world’s biggest brand Coca-Cola has four. Apple is easy to pronounce but its name (apple is a fruit) has got nothing to do with its business. Yahoo confuses you about the number of ‘o’s you need to put. It could be Yaho, Yaaho or Yaahoo.

Exception, right. But you want to place your best bet.

Now what makes a good brand name in mobile space? I really like Orange and AirTel. And I was looking for a similar name.

After some juggling I came up with FireFly. It instantly struck a chord with me.
FireFly – Its energetic, its catchy and is 2 syllables. Plus it ends in ‘y’ :) Just like Sony, BlackBerry.
FireFly – Its clear sounding. Tell your dad over a long distance phone, or shout to your coworker across a noisy room – it will reach the recipent without any signal distortion. He will hear it right.

FireFly – is just plain simple FireFly. When you type in your browser, you simply type F-i-r-e-F-l-y. You have to be very bad at English to be able to mispell that.
FireFly – Fly, roam freely across the sky, freedom and mobility.

So there was this name, with everything I needed – a catchy sound, easy to remember, hard to mispell and signifying something about the line of business. I was so excited at having found such a perfect name, that I instantly called up Alok. And he instantly told me that the domain FireFly.com is taken, the brand FireFly is trademarked and worse its a mobile company! In short, I was so bang on target that it didn’t help. The bomb I had choosen was someone else’s.

Came up with BlueBird. Instantly liked it. Same thing, easy to pronouce, easy to remember, hard to mispell, catchy and all.. but guess what, BlueBird was taken.

Since the day this exercise has started, I have pushed myself into coining numerous words – good and bad.

Mobilocity (Liked this one very much, but not as short and easy as FireFly. FortuneCity, Tripod etc in early days.)
GoMobile
MobiMax
MobiNation
MobiSoft

and so on… (No no, its a long long long… long list. Cant put it all here.)
But unfortunately they are all taken. As time passes by, it is becoming more difficult for me to come up with a name. Human mind has an uncanny habit of sticking to its past, so I am generating names closer to what I have already thought – none new or radically different.

Its not difficult to coin a potentially good consumer brand name. But the really remote possibility of getting the matching domain name, thanks to domain kiting, makes turn it all upside down . I think ICANN must do something about it really fast.

Now you know what keeps me awake at nights. I am still looking. If you have any suggestions for a whacky cracky name, do drop me a line. Even if you don’t have a name, do come up with one – I need it.
What’s in a name, That which we call a rose by any name would smell as sweet. When Shakespeare’s wrote ‘Romeo and Juliet’, domain names were a long time in future.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)