Brand Naming: The Anatomy of a Brand Name

Amazon. Expedia. Youtube. Microsoft. Snapchat. WordPress. Facebook. Do any of these names have something in common?

Brand names are a little bit like poetry. In a word or two you are capturing the essence of a company, product, or service and pushing this on to the customer. It’s a simple word, or phrase, that contains so much meaning and can have a lasting (positive or negative) effect on your business.

Naming a brand is far from simple. It’s one of the most difficult, yet creative practices in marketing, because the options are so vast and the potential to get it wrong is always there. There are dozens, if not hundreds (I spent months brainstorming our own brand name), of ways to name your brand, depending on how you wish your customers to perceive you.

In this post I look at the various types of brand names and delve a little in to what they convey.

Categories of Brand Names.

Brand names tend to fall into several categories: suggestive, descriptive, homonyms, compound names, misspelled or tweaked names, invented, coined or fanciful names, blended or portmanteau names, suffixes, acronyms, backronyms and initialism. Each one with it’s own values, helping you determine the kind of story you want your brand to tell.

Suggestive Names.

Suggestive names offer scope for creativity, originality, and differentiation, without losing sight of the essential communication goals. Suggestive brand naming is limited only by your imagination, making this type of naming a moving target, and one that can evolve with the world of brand names themselves.

Twitter, for example, is a networking/communication platform that can be compared to a flock of birds tweeting at each other.

If you’re able to create a brand name that is clever, understandable, and unique, you’ll be in a good place going forward.

Example Suggestive Names

• Twitter
• Evernote
• Porch

Suggestive names are the most popular choice of brand names, mainly because they are unique and functional. They’re a creative way to position your brand by building upon an idea your customers already understand.

Descriptive.

Simply put, descriptive names describe what the company does, like Snapchat, PayPal, Shredded Wheat, Playstation, The Book People and Toys ‘R’ Us.

Descriptive names quickly convey the characteristics of what the product or service accomplishes. They can often be lengthy and kind of boring, and are also harder to trademark because they make use of everyday language.

Additionally, if your name describes your original idea, then it can be very difficult to scale your brand.

Example Descriptive Names

• Shredded Wheat
• Toys ‘R’ Us
• The Book People

Having said that, descriptive brand names are functional, and clearly position the brand. There’s no ambiguity in Shredded Wheat.

Homonyms.

The technical definition of a homonym is ‘two or more words that have the same spelling, but contain different meanings and origins’.

Be wary of this naming strategy. It’s not cheap, is often challenging to rank organically on Google, and can be almost impossible to gain trademark rights. Having said that, it can make for a memorable brand name.

Example Homonym Names

• Amazon
• Apple
• Square

Google (Googol) and Apple. These were words before they were brands, right? However, these companies simply used these words and created a new meaning for them. This can work, and work very well, as long as the word you pick has little or nothing to do with your use of it. Each of these words had some meaning to it that the respective companies wanted to be a ‘brand characteristic’ of their new homonym. Google wanted to communicate the near infinite reach of its spider by referring to the very large number that math geeks know as a ‘googol’ (10 to the 100th power). Amazon, similarly picked the largest river in the world to communicate Amazon’s vast selection. So, a completely unrelated use of a pre-existing word is fair game as well.

Compound Names.

Take two words and push them together and you’ve got yourself a compound name. Easy, right?

From my experience, these names tend to be more suggestive than catchy, like Salesforce or FreeAgent. Not the most exciting name, but as a B2B brand, it tells potential customers what they need to know right away.

Example Compound Names

• Facebook
• WordPress
• FreeAgent

Misspelled or Tweaked Names.

Misspelling a common word is one of the biggest naming trends at the moment. The rationale behind this approach is often based on making the name ‘their own’ and sometimes it is just about being a bit quirky.

Brand names like Tumblr, Chhirp, Dribbble and Flickr may seem misspelled to be more distinctive and edgy, but the more honest reason they’re misspelled is because they needed to secure the URL (even if they won’t always admit it).

Example Misspelled Names

• Fiverr
• Tumblr
• FLEXX Creative

Invented, coined or fanciful names.

Invented names are quite often created from Latin or Greek roots, such as Verizon, which is constructed from the Latin words ‘veritas’ and ‘horizon’. Veritas refers to truth and reliability, while horizon signifies forward-thinking and vision.

Example Invented Names

• Expedia
• Verizon
• Zulily

The biggest challenge faced when using invented names is that they can be expensive to market because they have no solid meaning or associations. On a positive note, founders are able to control (and grow) the reputation of the brand from the start. Usually these names have no issues in the trademark process and it’s often much easier to secure the domain name too.

Blended Names.

Blended names are often a little more mysterious and obscure than compound names, but can also be catchy and fun. Just as their name suggests, blended names are a combination of parts taken from two words and merged together. Microsoft, for example, is a blended name of microcomputers and software, allowing Microsoft to become a much shorter and more memorable brand name. This is different from a compound name in that blended names are components of existing words, rather than standalone words put together (‘face’ and ‘book’).

Example Blended Names

• Skype
• Instagram
• Microsoft

Suffixes.

Companies want to portray themselves as creative, friendly and forward-thinking. Somehow, this evolved into a common trend that sees startups all with -ly, -me, or -fy in their names.

While these might sound like a fun spin on your brand name (and allow you to grab a .com address), we would not recommend them. It’s hard to differentiate your brand name when it sounds exactly like another one (think ‘Shopify’ vs. ‘Spotify’).

Example Suffix Names

• Spotify
• Shopify
• Backupify

Acronyms, Backronyms and Initialism.

Yes, there is a difference!

American Family Life Assurance Company (AFLAC) is an acronym because you say the string of letters together.

International Business Machines (IBM) is an initialism because you say each letter individually, ‘eye’, ‘bee’, ’em’.

Blog early, blog often (Bebo) is actually considered a backronym because the founders came up with the name Bebo first and then created the words behind the acronym.

These names provide an easy way to shorten a long, descriptive phrase or name, but are less common in the startup world today. We tend to see acronyms or initialism with traditional tech brands who began with long, descriptive names (IBM, SAP, ADP, etc.) Now, with less naming options and even less .com addresses available, we wouldn’t recommend going down this route.

Family Names.

The use of a family name in branding is an old tradition, and not something we see much in todays startups.

Example Family Names

• Ford Motor Company
• Colgate
• H. J. Heinz Company

Whilst not a modern approach to brand naming, family naming does increase the chances of being able to secure the .com domain name.

Closing Thoughts – Get Creative in Brand Naming.

Understanding the various types of brand names creates opportunities. It’s like giving an artist more colors to paint with.

Brand naming rewards creativity. In the name generation phase explore as many categories and types of names for your brand as possible. The objective should always be to leave no stone unturned.