Tips for Naming Your Startup

One of the first important things to consider when launching a startup is its name, after all it is the name you’ll be using for all your professional activities, and as an umbrella for your company’s services and products, so it just has to be right.

Here are a number of tips for choosing the right name for yours:

Keep It Short: Sometimes you can get carried away, wanting to choose a name that expresses what your company does so clearly, that you end up with a sentence that feels more like a slogan than a company name. The idea here is to try and keep it as short as possible, so that it’s easier for people to remember, and even faster for them to type into their browsers.

Be Generic or Be Creative: Either go for a generic name that accurately describes what you’re about, or try to be creative and come up with a cool, yet effective and unique name. It’s a bit easier for Arab startups to come up with generic or creative names because many Arabic words are still available as domain names.

Keep it simple: Company names should not be difficult to pronounce or spell, it has to be easy for people to pass on to their friends and acquaintances, thereby aiding you with word-of-mouth marketing. There also shouldn’t be any confusion as to how its spelled when typed into a browser, which is something Arabic startups should pay extra attention to, as translating Arabic words into English letters can be very tricky.

Go for the .com: It’s a reflex a lot of people have developed, to just type in the company name .com; losing all that traffic just because you had to go for the .net or .org or whatever other extension is just a shame, especially when you’re at the startup phase and need every single potential user you can get. As many Arabic words are still available as .com domain names, this could be a relatively easy task.

Avoid Using Hyphens or Numbers: Again to avoid people misstyping your domain name and ending up on some other website other than yours, you should avoid using hyphens or numbers in your name. They rarely ever benefit a website. Many Arabic websites choose names with numbers in them, to stand in for Arabic letters, that should be avoided, not everybody knows what those numbers stand for and they sometimes stand in for different letters depending on where you are in the Arab world.

Keep it Meaningful: As hard as it is to come up with a generic name that says it all about your company, you should still try to come up with a quality name that combines a number of words, a mixture of descriptive with meaningful and generic.

Think Ahead: Yeah sure, you’re starting this as a little project from your bedroom or basement, but if you’re onto something interesting, that little project could turn into a successful company. Take that into consideration when choosing a name, sure you want to sound cool and all, but still professional enough for business and deals.

# Inspired by: Folksonomy