If your company makes several products (e.g. games), I think the names of your products matter far more than your company name does.
Stepping back to a less sarcastic point, your metaphor is useful. I don't really understand why Medium is called Medium, but it doesn't really matter, because I have a degree of trust in where it came from.
I think they're much less important than people think they are, and usually cite both Airbnb (a name that actually has negative connotations to the positioning Airbnb aspires to now) and Ebay (an utterly meaningless name) as examples.
Earlier comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4684845 --- shorter: equity goes into a name; it isn't extracted from it.
People mock Lady Gaga for her clothing, similarly Lorde gets criticism for dancing funny. The occupy protesters were dismissed with comments like "They might have a point but they're not going to convince anyone dressed like that". People have said that DuckDuckGo is awesome but they can't recommend it to people because of the name. In the last few days I have seen people say they wouldn't trust the cubieboard because http://cubieboard.org/ isn't a very good website.
So appearance matters. Your name is part of your appearance. This means from a pragmatic perspective I agree with pg's comment comparing it to aerodynamic drag. On the other hand I don't thing this is a healthy state for the world. In all of the examples above the substance is far more important than the presentation. In many cases accepting the presentation in it's own right would be even better. Looking different should not be a sin, and often it should be embraced as adding flavour to the world.
A final note, It is interesting to note that in the dotcom bubble, Many of the big survivers were businesses where their name did not reflect their function. Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Ebay. I think a big part of this is that while they built on a core product, their name didn't present the notion that they were restricted to their core product or even that their core product could change entirely.
(1) Bad for one many reasons: Can't be googled. Can't spell it. Wrong associations. Legal/Trademark trouble. These are damaging.
(2) Neutral. Most company names are basically neutral. Microsoft, ebay, amazon, google. They may have little advantages (eg google, the verb). They're fine.
(3) Good names. These have one or more distinct advantages. Suer memorable. Real good/clever associations. SEO benefits, etc.
The difference between 1 & 2 is pretty big. Companies should definitely avoid category 1. It's not so hard. Category 3 is only really useful in conjunction with other things. A name that is easily remembered, spelled and has the correct association is only an advantage if it is said to potential customers. It's helpful, for example if the company does a lot of trade shows/conferences.
For what it's worth, I think Twitter is one of the best company names. It helps explain the product, which is hard to explain. I think ebay, amazon, microsoft and most names are neutral. I think a lot of the web 2.0 names are bad (eg Del.ico.us).
The authors tentatively conclude, however, that the actual name (old or new) doesn't seem to really matter, and instead what's happening is that a major rebranding effort is seen by stockholders as credible evidence that the company is serious about overhauling the business in other, non-name-related ways as well.
So I think the answer is probably more nuanced than "as long as it's not a name that is blatantly awful" like the one you suggested.
My default position after watching this industry for a few years is that if you have a trendy name, I won't even bother visiting your home page. I'll change my mind given a good reason, but that would be something like a personal recommendation from a trusted source or seeing favourable comments from credible posters on sites like HN.
For example, right now, if you have a start-up and you have chosen a name consisting of some random, non-descriptive word followed by ".ly" or ".io", I am going to assume you would be a waste of my time without even looking. Sure, I might miss out on a good thing for a while, but I'm willing to accept that risk to avoid forming a foolish business partnership with a couple of youngsters who once read a book about MVPs, spent a weekend throwing up a sign-up page using Bootstrap, and hope to flip their company or at least secure an acqui-hire within a year. When you launch selfish.ly or blocking.io, that's what you look like in my head.
Two of my favorite naming examples are Dropbox and GoPro, both manage to be memorable, succinct and convey a clear purpose without being cheap, literal or generic (e.g. "ShareAnywhere"). I'm sure these names helped the brands get to where they are.
For every Dropbox, there's a Heroku.
As one example, I can't think of a more generic name than Southwest Airlines, but somehow they've managed to brand themselves as the fun airline. With a little more effort, I'm sure even better examples could be identified. Coca-cola? McDonald's? Meaningless names.
same sort of start-up culture pervaded the industry
I'd say that's the problem right there. Shouldn't the importance of a name be relevant to the customers and not the founders? :)
This is especially important in the consumer space (when you buy a GoPro you don't just buy a camera, but buy into the whole extreme filming experience). There are other comparable cameras, but consumers don't even bother researching them. They buy the brand. This is why GoPro is a $2.5bn company today; Panasonic or Sony could have made the same product with typically obscure naming (XVH-800 whatever) and it would have remained just a niche thing.
People are buying an experience no less than they buy utility, and branding is core to that. I do look at branding in a very wide sense; to me GoPro's branding starts with the name, continues with their sponsored videos and ends with the product packaging and store display.
"I'll put it in the Dropbox tonight."
If you treat this as an equation, you want to increase: % of people that 'Get' what you do (off the bat), and % of instances people can easily recall your name, the next time they have that problem you solve.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296304...
Consequently naming is not the end all be all of branding. But studies have shown that a name's: connotations, imagery, and ability to generate "top of mind awareness", has proven to generate equity and favorably move a company upwards in consumer preference ranking. This may be diluted at when a company reaches a certain critical mass.
But consider this: Why wouldn't you want a name that's expressive to: who you are, and what you do as a company? It makes you much easier to remember and talk about.
If you search brand name in google scholar there's many more interesting studies on this subject.
tldr: It's not everything but it certainly helps.
I think it matters but in a very complex way, thus you can't be sure about your choice until in a very late stage. But if you reach this stage, it means that you already have made many things correctly, so a rebranding is within your options.
In the tech industry if you're planning to differentiate your product on its output: Come up with a few possible names, searched for them online, try them out on a few friends, check them with your team, and you've done about as much as Google did. You probably don't need to get million-dollar consultants to 'design your corporate identity', much though consultants would like you to believe you do.
On the other hand if you're entering a crowded market (energy drinks, for example) and your main product differentiator will be branding, getting the branding right is going to need a bigger investment. This may also be the case if your tech startup is entering a crowded market and differentiating with branding.
I find it so odd that all of these companies have names that tell you nothing about the business. Welcome to swaply, we sell insurance. I always have thought that your business name should give some information relating to what your business does. 'Swaply Insurance', slogan here. You instantly know what they are about.
The energy behind a great name will give your product momentum, it'll make it easier to evangelise, as the name will trigger off a narrative that pretty much tells itself.
Please stop using the lybian country code TLD. It sounds stupid.
Depending on your market, you want to find something that 1. you can pronounce well [1], and 2. whose pronunciation and meaning are clear across countries.
[1] I'm an Italian living in US, especially in the beginning I had this problem
If an app has an ugly icon, I think two things:
* If they skimped on the icon -- the gateway to the app -- what else did they skimp on? Security? Privacy?
* Do I really want the homescreen of my $X00 smartphone marred with bad design?
In the past i was in the music industry, organizing events and concerts. During one summer I remember a lot of large scale beach parties were being promoted, all relevant radio's were buzzing with things like: 'the largest beach party of this summer', 'the best beach party' etc. So we decided not to follow the herd and went out advertising our event with the name 'The Worst Beach Party of this summer'
it turns out .. people loved it and it was hit!
I believe if you are developing something that the market is dying for the name and the marketing matters less; else make sure you don't screw that up.