The Agonies of Picking a Product Name (2011)

Agree that the bias is to overestimate the power of a name but disagree with the notions that a) the name doesn't matter that much and b) the wasteful process of going through a ton of names to arrive at something close to what they started with was not actually necessary for coming up with and feeling satisfied with that name in the first place. I'm pretty sure Hippolist wouldn't have worked as well as Trello in a quantifiably material way.

> "In the end we should have just had Michael do the whole name picking in thirty minutes and been done with it."

I think this overlooks the value of having everyone feel that they were involved/heard. Maybe going through this process at least once is a kind of rite of passage. Next time around, no-one would be as wedded to their ideas and the process would be quicker.

Agree on the spirit of the post. The name really doesn't matter as much. But there are considerations to think about nonetheless.

For example, is the name's domain name available? Can the domain name be misrepresented? eg. expertsexchange.com (Experts Exchange vs Expert Sex Change) How about social media names (eg. twitter.com/<name you want>)?

I think nowadays, considerations on names really should centre on availability of the desired name across domain names, social media pages, and avoiding existing trademarks.

Incidentally I blogged about this recently: http://simononstartups.com/blog/2015/05/31/9-lessons-for-fin...

PS. People criticizing Twitter pointed out at the beginning how "twit" or "tw*t" were bad names to associate with the product too.

>We ended up with a name very similar to the one we started with, one that all of us like just fine, and one which is just going to be what people call our new, supremely free, project management app. I think everyone would have gotten used to Hippolist too, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s called Trello now.

>In the end we should have just had Michael do the whole name picking in thirty minutes and been done with it.

I mean... successful names DO imply what the product is. "Google" is similar to the English language term for staring in wonder. "Facebook" is taken from the existing name for books of college students. "MyFitnessPal," clunky as the name and product are, is a pretty informative name. If you rattled off a list of these names to a grandmother, chances are that she could divine the purpose of each website.

I'm a huge fan of Trello, and I think the name works well the same way that "Xerox" worked well -- because most people really don't have another word for kanban systems or photocopies, and the product name suddenly defines the category. But unless you're churning out revolutionary new products rather than refining existing ideas, I think it makes sense for your name to in some way characterize your product.

Names are really hard. We spent a while trying to come up with a name for our skateboarding app, and settled on Hardware (abbreviated as HDWR). "Hardware" is what skaters call the nuts and bolts that attach the trucks to the deck.

I'm still not totally sold on it, but we haven't been able to come up with anything better.

There's a very similar tale behind the name Toy Story.

I wonder if this submission was influenced by the post about CockroachDB, which was on the front page and seems to have vanished.

It's even worse for non-native speakers.

And then there was Java. Remember that first gold rush of derivative Java related product names?

A bad name can kill a good product and hinder a great product. Example: Diaspora, Deus Ex.