Ask HN: How do you come up with a good name for a startup? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you come up with a good name for a startup?

12 pointsrayalez16 comments

It always takes me forever to come up with a cool name for a project. I have a couple of projects that are already almost complete, but not having a good enough idea for a name is holding me back.

Any tips/advice on coming up with a cool names?

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Paul Graham has done a couple of pieces on naming things.

http://aux.messymatters.com/pgnames.html (2006)

And later this from 2015: http://www.paulgraham.com/name.html

The gist of it is that anything will do, as the name will be associated with your product, not the other way around. Hopefully this can boost your confidence a bit :)

I have too many ideas and too many names but no time to implement all of them. Currently Im working at one of them. And sometimes I have too many names for the same idea, and its tragic because I cant have two domains for the same app, or cant write a book and give it two titles.

My head is a fountain, sometimes I get up from bed by 11pm or 1am to write down that name, and I filled two pages of a notebook with such names and ideas. Not to mention that in the last ten years I bought many domain names but at that time I didnt have advanced skills. So I told you how I come up with ideas, they come to me at any time. I think its part of personality, just like some others dont have the skills to program. I can help you if you need with names, I dont steal ideas, and ideas are hard to sell.

And to give you some choices: you can either give it a common name or something unique. I think the latter one is for really creative types. You d like to be a Spotify, not a HackerNewsify.

Get help. If you are a programmer, odds are that you are not also a wordsmith or branding genius. Like the CEO who gets stuck on his own idea for a logo, or the store owner who can't give up on the pun she thought of for her product category, the tech entrepreneur should not overestimate his strengths in other areas.

1. Take a word that encapsulates the project in some way.

2. Translate it into other languages and find a cooler one. [1]

optional: Use wikitionary to verify the translation and possibly change the tense.

[1] http://translatr.varunmalhotra.xyz/

I don't think there's any guaranteed way, and you have to remember that cool is a perception.

I find the best way for me is to just write down a whole bunch of words describing what I'm doing, then sit with someone and brainstorm, constantly checking domai.nr to see if the domain is free.

I found this Moz blog post to be valuable in coming up with a cool name for project and making sure domain name is available.

How to Hack a Dominating Domain Name for Your Website https://moz.com/blog/domain-name-hacks

I usually check domain names and twitter handle before settling on a name. I prefer hybrid names - combination of two words that encompasses the domain of the project and makes sense for the startup.

Take a random word, add rrrrr and buy a io domain.

result: wordrrrr.io

You forgot to remove the vowel.

No, no, no....you are doing it all wrong. You find the shortest verb describing what you do and add 'ly' after it.

It's very easy to brainstorm. Literally write down 100 things on paper without thinking about what you're writing. Just write as many words/terms as you can as quickly as you can, and don't review until after.

Some will be absolutely silly, but it will get your mind into that creative mode it needs to be in.

I always go with a name that makes it somewhat obvious what the startup is about. i.e. my current side projects bestfoodnearme or nextlesson you can somewhat tell what these are about.

When I have to pitch the idea to someone or get someone to spread the word, this extra bit of obviousness helps.

Buy a dictionary, read it. Buy a thesaurus, read it.

Brute force.

Add one word with another word.

RocketHat

Panfish

Lookcart

Rightsee

Tookway

Just dont use Rocket. I've seen about 100 Rocket____ based names recently.

Pick up a dictionary. Choose a short word. E.g. Slack, Uber, Kindle, Valve, etc.

Remove vowels and add R to the end.

That's sooo last decade.

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