Hello!<p>I have an idea for a startup project (in fact it's not only an idea, I even started realizing it, being a cs student) but I have a problem finding a name for it with an available com domain. For the last 3-4 months I thinked only about the "perfect name", but nothing. The problem is I'm not very creative (including finding good names, designing etc).<p>I read many articles about this, but nothing helped. Also I found many naming contest websites, but these cost at least 50$ and I can't afford it, I'm really low on budget (you know, I'm a student).<p>Do you have any advice how can I find a name for my project?
IMO, there are two fairly easy ways to name your company:<p>1) Combine english syllables to come up with a fictitious word that sounds good. This is how Ninite was named and they even provide the source for the program they used: <a href="http://ninite.tumblr.com/post/620277259/how-ninite-was-named-by-a-computer-program" rel="nofollow">http://ninite.tumblr.com/post/620277259/how-ninite-was-named...</a> There are some other tools to help you with this: <a href="http://wordoid.com/" rel="nofollow">http://wordoid.com/</a><p>2) Jam two words and/or numbers together. They can be somewhat or totally unrelated. Examples: 37Signals, RocketDog.<p>Neither of these techniques gets you a name that is <i>related</i> to your project (you can loosely relate to your project with the second technique), but I think that's the least important part. Mostly, you just need a good domain and to sidestep any trademarks. Using a single cool sounding word seems like about the worst angle you can try from a legal/financial perspective; no matter how obscure you think it is (e.g. town names, latin words), it's probably been used dozens of times by others.<p>One of my startup ideas was a company that did this for you. It's not especially hard to do anything of this but it is tedious. It's not a very good idea in retrospect.
There are a couple of sites that I regularly use for exactly this. The key is to find words or synonyms for what your startup does, and enter them in one of these websites:
- <a href="http://www.nameboy.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.nameboy.com/</a>
- <a href="http://www.bustaname.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.bustaname.com/</a>
- <a href="http://www.dotomator.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.dotomator.com/</a>
- <a href="http://www.leandomainsearch.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.leandomainsearch.com/</a><p>These sites give you tons of suggestions. It'll save you a lot of time!
I suggest these tools to help you:<p><a href="http://www.businessnamegenerator.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.businessnamegenerator.com/</a><p><a href="http://www.wordlab.com/name-generators/business-name-generator/" rel="nofollow">http://www.wordlab.com/name-generators/business-name-generat...</a><p><a href="http://www.rhymer.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.rhymer.com/</a><p><a href="http://www.naming.net/" rel="nofollow">http://www.naming.net/</a>
The couple of times I've done this, it involved the co-founders, an unabridged dictionary and a couple of bottles of good scotch. I'm admittedly old fashioned about such things.