Ask HN: How do you come up with a Brand or Project Name?

12 points by dvcoolster 9 years ago | 16 comments

I believe large number of domains are taken, so even if you think of a creative name like 'shgdf.com' I randomly typed it, but even that's unavailable. My point is, in today's time thinking of a brand name, comes along with the task of finding available domain. So, inevitably I end up at instandomainsearch.com playing around with different combinations.

Is there a better place where we can buy domains easily for $200 odd bucks if someone's been holding good brandable domain names. Brandbucket etc. seem too pricy and are good for maybe companies, but let's say for my small project, web game, or a blog, what's the ideal place? Aren't a lot of good use case domains just parked with bullshit ads? Is this even a problem, has anyone else struggled with this ever?

Thank you

panorama 9 years ago |

I have the same wish: A service that provides a large list of available, short, human-esque .com domain names. I wouldn't mind paying and spending hours combing over it to find ones I liked. Someone did this a few years ago and I snagged a couple neat ones including a 5 letter .com.

Anyway as for actual advice, I've built more than a handful of projects and startups at this point. The recurring theme in every project was that I'd start with something completely nonsensical to use as the name. If your cofounder likes grilled cheese sandwiches, call your project GCS or grilled cheese or whatever, including your github repo. Getting the domain has never been step 1 in anything I've ever built including my current business.

There's weeks worth of work to do before the .com is needed. In the meantime what I do is keep an Evernote of words and phrases that pertain to the industry or what my service will likely do. While we had several product hypotheses, our business model was 95% likely to end up doing some form of data sifting on behalf of customers. So I would think about words that have to do with searching or finding things and kept a log of them:

- Hound (as in the dog)

- Seek/Seeker

- Scout

- Scope

- Vision

Along with general words I liked from a linguistic standpoint: "Labs", "IQ", "Mighty", etc.

When I looked for an available .com, I mixed combinations in my word list: "ScoutIQ", "MightyScope", "HoundLabs", etc. until I found one that I liked and was available: MightyScout - and I reserved it immediately.

But to this day our Slack channel, Github repo, etc. still use the original, nonsense name :)

jjoe 9 years ago |

Here's how I came up with mine. I was building a Varnish-as-a-Service platform then. But I didn't want to use the word Varnish in my fqdn because it's a trademark. But also because the sum of its parts is more than Varnish (you've got scaling, security, etc).

So I focused on the essence of the thing I was building, which is caching. I couldn't find any concise domain with the word "caching" in it. So I played around with syllables and settled on Cachoid.com. I'm happy with the outcome so far https://www.cachoid.com/

dvcoolster 9 years ago | |

That's a great name for the service. That's precisely what I have been thinking, the more I think about it, I feel it can be a community driven solution. Say, in my spare time I challenge myself for a garage sale community and come up with domains which are available, buy and submit one on the platform. People can come vote, comment, and if anyone likes to use it can buy it for a flat fee, say $200. Doesn't hurt anyone, a good creative exercise for neurons to come up with a name, even budding designers can submit their design for a small share of the sale. But, it has to be much more altruistic from community perspective. Not sure, if it would work on scale to be a sustainable solution against the biggies out there ;)

telebone_man 9 years ago |

FWIW, you can take parties to a sort of court (I use that word lightly) that can assist you in obtaining a domain taken by a squatter.

It's been a few years, but google ICANN and I'm sure you'll find something.

If I remember correctly, you submit a petition suggesting things like.. you either have a trademark or that you're a recognised business and then a committee make a decision based on that.

shaftway 9 years ago |

I use acronyms, portmanteaus, and other plays on words to name things. Sometimes backronyms. I can't point to some of my recent ones, as they're still in progress.

While I was at NYMEX I built a system called NEON (Nymex Electronic Order Network). Followup projects followed the noble elements theme, sometimes with a forced backronym.

One project involved multi-lingual communication, so I tooke "chat", which is "cat" in french, then translated that to Japanese (Neko).

Basically just have fun with it, and don't stress.

chaz 9 years ago |

I found a good name for <$200 on Namejet. Also check out Flippa.com for good names from people willing to sell.

A piece of advice that worked for me: don't get stuck on the name. It's hard and it takes time (and sometimes money). Pick any temporary name for $10 and keep building instead. You can always change it later. Many companies and projects have changed their name as they became successful. It feels like it's important in the beginning but it usually isn't.

jcahill84 9 years ago |

My first stop is almost always the thesaurus, from there I usually move on to combinations of two words or two synonyms of what I'm trying to build. My current project is a scheduled API monitoring tool, and I came up with the word "Schezzle" to represent what it is. A 90s rap influenced spin on the word "schedule." I think the trick is to find something that's easy to say and that can be communicated to other by word-of-mouth without having to spell it.

ThomPete 9 years ago |

Great names are built not found. Don't worry too much about getting the right name.

Don't be afraid to call your company one thing but have a slightly different URL.

A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that domain names needs to be easy to type but the reality is that most of us click on links to get to a company url we don't actually type it in (and even if you do Google is perfectly fine helping you find the right url)

codegeek 9 years ago |

Don't sweat it. Domain squatting is a business and a big one. There are plenty of people who are squatting on domains thinking it will make them a millionaire. They won't budge for"cheap" $200.

However, if you find a domain you like, it doesn't hurt to try and ask the owner. But don't hold your breath.

dvcoolster 9 years ago | |

Don't you think this is massively inefficient. Nobody can buy all the brandable domains, and there would always be more coming up. A $100-200 profit on your $10 domain for someone who will build stuff over it, seems good for the formation of a sustainable community driven solution. Its just stupid to think that your domain will fetch you millions unless its a dictionary word with searches present. Any thoughts?

abc8901234 9 years ago | | |

What you think and the reality of it are two different things. Any intelligent person could see that cybersquatting is not a viable business model. These are not intelligent people you are dealing with. These are the people who think they could go back to 1997 and register google.com and hold them hostage years later for millions. Spend some time browsing on Sedo or Flippa and you'll see how stupid these people are.

My suggestion: don't give in to these people. Keep digging for a good name, or look into one of the new generic tlds.

bsvalley 9 years ago |

If I build hand made products from my garage and sell them online for example:

1- make up a new word based on a word that best describes your business (e.g. Maker = makr)

2- if taken, look for synonyms of that word and repeat step one (e.g. Craftsman = krafsman)

3- if taken, repeat 1 and 2 with a combination of 2 words (e.g. HomeMade = Homade, etc.)

dvcoolster 9 years ago | |

I usually do the same as well. It's just that it can take anywhere between 1 hour to a couple of days of fooling around. After a while, its gets all confusing, which one was better, you ask around, but everyone has different views. If you are in a group deciding to come up to the name, it becomes even more tiresome. I was just wondering for an easy to browse service of domain names, submitted by community where one can buy and share goes to the person who submitted and small part to the platform. Not sure, if people would like it though, it really needs a big community to support who believe domains need to be used for making websites and not hoarding for a future sale!

meagher 9 years ago |

Adding words before/after your ideal domain tends to work: gotinder.com, hioscar.com, invisionapp.com, etc.

For domain name example.com: tryexample.com, getexample.com, goexample.com, hiexample.com, exampleapp.com

SBCRec 9 years ago |

I name my side projects internally after famous battles the ancient romans were involved in.