Paul Graham's long-lost 2006 Infogami essay, "Startup Names"

If you are interested in evaluating names, I recommend reading The Igor Naming Guide: http://www.igorinternational.com/process/igor-naming-guide.p...

They have quite good categorization of names that helps you think about different names: functional/descriptive, invented, experiential, evocative. Specifically, they use term 'experiential name' for names that hint or evoke an idea what the product does, but reserve term 'evocative' for positioning. Virgin is a prime example of evocative name, while e.g. Infoseek is a experiential name.

A quote from the manual:

One important way that evocative names differ from others is that they evoke the positioning of a company or product, rather than describing a function or a direct experience

The guide also highlights how there can be initial resistance for great (evocative) names. For example, consider Virgin Airlines:

"But public wants airlines to be experienced, safe and professional!" or

"Religious people will be offended"

Or Caterpillar:

"Tiny, creepy-crawly bug",

"Not macho enough – easy to squash",

"Why not "bull" or "workhorse" "?

It's a great read.

I think things have changed a lot since then (it has been half a decade), but it's still mostly right.

Better to be Heroku.com than Cloudhosting.com then and now. But I wouldn't want to be launching Del.icio.us or Flickr.com in 2011.

These days I think you're far better off with simple/short/spellable domains like: Fab.com, Batch.com, Groupon.com, Mint.com, Dropbox.com, Airtime.com, Oink.com.

For consumer-facing web companies these strike the right balance of credibility and hipness. You won't find domains like these unregistered. You'll have to buy them off someone.

For business-to-business companies domains are somewhat less important, names like: Mixpanel.com, KISSmetrics.com, Mixrank.com, Olark.com, Heroku.com will do the job perfectly fine.

One of the things discussed here that isn't as frankly discussed in detail is the diminishing value of a one-word name. A startup such as "color" has little value in selecting such a name, at least comparative to the value the name has itself. As Graham discusses, a little iteration, many beers and constant thinking could probably create a name that would only be slightly less effective.

Wufoo is such an example. Both are short but with both, I literally have no idea what they do at first mention. But they're both memorable and fit generally good brand rules - while Wufoo, undoubtedly, was a much cheaper domain.

But the one-word benefit is strong, and tangible, with a domain such as "shirts.com". Here, there is real and significant SEO benefit, as well as potential branding benefit when posited correctly. When not attached to the physical product - or at least without significant "what the hell this does" connotation - the value of a one-word domain is really not that significant comparative to the perceived mass market value of many of these domains.

This whole problem would be solved if .com's cost $100+ per year to register. Don't have that kind of money? Get a different TLD. I'm tired of having every single name I can think of -- even bad ones -- already registered and unused.

How is Viaweb verbable?

"I viawebbed that store." "We're going to viaweb our platform"... I think not.

Thanks for archiving this and how prescient this was about color.com: "Nothing could be less cool, at this point, than calling a startup “cool.com.”

This is probably the fifth essay I've read on the subject, and they all really agree. Google was being highly eccentric in choosing their brand name when they started up, and it was comparatively rare back then. But look how fantastically successful it is now. It's even more relevant in the current market. The easiest and most permanent way to make an impression, and thus, a user base is with attention grabbing. Beyond that, the creativity will do hakf the work for brand recognition, and repeat patronage will be secured.

The site was taking a while to load for me, so I went ahead and put it up on a PDF if anyone needs it: http://sumukh.me/MWZc+

I'm curious: how can this be from 2006 when Stack Overflow was (according to Wikipedia at least) launched in 2008?

I checked because it didn't feel that old.

Site seems to be down. Google Cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:messyma...

The categorization rankings seem pretty subjective. I read somewhere that your best bet, if possible, is to call your company what it does. If your software emails timed newsletters, call it newsletter or emailer and keep working around that until you find something available.

Without the commentary: http://fpaste.org/GJCi/

Good essay, still fun to read.

I hid the bracketed comments and images. After looking through them they don't seem to add anything to the conversation. I don't want commentary on an article as I'm reading it.

good and non-obvious (at the time) advice, at the end: "Whatever name you choose, be careful. Names stick."

Can someone explain the criteria for each of the tags given in the article? For instance, the "google" tag presumably means "if you google this term, the startup will likely be on the first page of results" (or maybe it means something else?) Is agreeability essentially the same thing (Eg: a unique word) or is it something else? What decides whether something is yellow or red in the "mis-spellings"?

We've got a really great name for our startup, and I'd like to evaluated it by other people's criteria (though, unfortunately, I'm not ready to mention it publicly, since we're still securing everything.) The "really great" aspect of it is a gut feeling, so, I could be wrong.

what did webshaka came to be?

Goddamnit, startups. I should write a post of my own about this because it really pisses me off.

Here is my advice about startup names: Stop It. Seriously though, stop it. You know what I mean: the cute little misspellings, the nonsense words, the dropped schwas in your words...Stop all this bullshit before people begin to think every startup is, like yours, nothing more than hot air.

It's that simple: stupid name, stupid business. Your cutesy little letter drop / intentional, web-domain-grubbing letter substitution name speaks volumes about the probable quality of your business.

Look at Chinese search engine Baidu （百度）. Startups of the world, I want you to read this shit: http://ir.baidu.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=188488&p=irol-homepr... .

In fact, thee of poor orthography, you read this shit twice: http://ir.baidu.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=188488&p=irol-homepr... .

You fucking soak that shit in because this is the best goddamn company name on the planet: "The poem compares the search for a retreating beauty amid chaotic glamour with the search for one's dream while confronted by life's many obstacles". And this is China's most popular search engine.

You know why this is a goddamned great name? Because it took more than 10 seconds to make up. This name is so far removed from cutesy it is absurd.

If the only way, in this infinite plain of possibility that is the entire fucking English language, for you to find an unregistered domain is to misspell already-existing words, I feel supremely sorry for you and your business.

Sometimes in musing about the Turing test I think: this shit works two ways. This is not a test of computers at the peak of their creative intelligence, but of man at the lowest point of his machine-like worst.

You want a dime-a-dozen bullshit startup name? Go here, press a button and BAM: http://www.dotomator.com/web20.html

Does the fact that a machine can make up your business's name in a matter of sub-seconds at all scare you into realizing the cheapness of it all? "Oyodo", "Topicpad", "Rhysero"...

Worthless, reproducible, empty.

Take a look at Apple, even. A soft, fleshy, human, fruit. When it first started, who was it competing against? IBM. DEC. Cincom -- Ugly, faceless, consumer-hostile.

If you've learned anything today, let it be this: take your goddamned time. Your rush to buy a domain name has clouded your vision of what your company is and could be. You have cheapened the potentially meaningful creation of goods and services by, ironically, thinking of things in purely monetary terms. The next time you're on the verge of dropping that silent 'e' and calling it a day, think about Song Dynasty poets and creative visionaries. Think about the entire history of human thought and the struggle to give meaning to a confusing planetary existence, and ask yourself: Wouldn't my name, which appears to be a cross between the words "Rhinoceros" and "Serotonin", be out of place here?

EDIT: any reason for the downvotes? Sure there was cussing, but what are the grounds for your disagreement?

This is terrific. This is newsworthy. Hope it gets legs.