Why picking a name for a startup does matter

There are the right reasons to agonize over a name, and then there are the wrong reasons. Your name needs to be easily and intuitively pronouncable in the user's head. Furthermore, and similarly, it needs to be easily spellable.<p>IMO, too much fuss is made over the need for a "memorable" name. Names usually don't become memorable until they become <i>known</i>. We all think Google is the ultimate example of a "memorable" name, inasmuch as it became a verb through its ubiquity. But it's memorable in hindsight. It became a verb only <i>because</i> the product became ubiquitous. I can guarantee you that, had Google been named something different -- let's say Gorkle -- we'd all be talking about "gorkling" things right now.<p>Memorability is the product of good marketing; it is not the antecedent to it. Focus on getting <i>to</i> memorable.

The logo's rather unfortunate as well. Double entendres can also be visual. A star inside a pink circle? At least it wasn't brown (hit me with your best down vote).

So you chose a name that was actually a word in another language (tl;dr: pinkeln = peeing in german), and it was embarrassing when you found out. But then you say, "Did it hurt us in the end? I don’t think so." And this is evidence that Color made a good choice to go after a name like theirs.<p>Color paid half a million dollars for domain recognizability... and this is beneficial because they didn't accidentally choose a name that means peeing.<p>I don't think your evidence actually argues for your point. What about all the names that aren't a common word in your target language, but don't mean peeing in others, either?

I'm going through the process of picking a name for a product and I have to say, it's tough. You need something memorable, but also something that's easy to say or turn into a verb. You want it to be able to roll of people's tongues without sounding awkward or stupid. It also has to be obvious how it pronounced so you don't end up with confusion.

When I started Mandalorian I had no idea of the trouble I was getting into. People calling us Mandolin, having to explain how to spell it three times in a row, and worst of all, coming mid table on alphabetised supplier lists.<p>If you're starting up, think about your market and your competitors. You don't need a cool funky name. It just needs to be fairly short, easy to spell and say, preferably starting with A or 1 if you're going on supplier lists and not easily confused with or tied to something else in the market.

Is it better to:<p>-create a name using a combination of existing words? (e.g. MySpace, RadioShack, etc.)<p>-create a name that doesn't really mean anything to a majority of users (but possibly memorable)? (e.g. Twitter, Tumblr, etc.)<p>-create a name from existing word(s) but change the spelling for funkiness? (e.g. Digg, Reddit, etc.)<p>-create a name derived from another language? (e.g. Roku, uh...)<p>-do something else?<p>Also, randomly found this too: clickable: <a href="http://www.thenameinspector.com/10-name-types/" rel="nofollow">http://www.thenameinspector.com/10-name-types/</a>

Of course, the mother of all cross-language naming errors was when Chevrolet tried to sell the Nova in Mexico. In Spanish, "no va" means "it doesn't go".

I think the real lesson here is one that many companies have leanred the hard way: be aware of translational problems if you will be going international.<p>Also, I would have advised them against the use of the Elstar part. Most people probably have/had no idea what an Elstar is outside of that region.

One of the big contentions over the Colo[u]r debate wasn't necessarily the name but the domain name. I'm pretty used to seeing colourapp.com or mycolour.com, etc. at this point. The start-up name IS definitely important, but the domain name is less so imo.

Are you sure you've drawn the right conclusion?<p><i>Why picking a name for a startup does matter</i><p>vs<p><i>Did it hurt us in the end? I don’t think so.</i><p>Seems that the correct conclusion is: even if you pick a disastrous name, you can always change it later.

If you're going to change names I would go for one you won't have to spell out loud to every single person. It also feels awkward to say in English with the 'w' after the 'z'.

Depending on your service changing names can be expensive. Of course if you can buy domain names for $250k then everything becomes more fluid.

Zwapp Connect and the hyphenated domain name are not good.

So, you're throwing away all that free publicity?

Im in the process of putting up some landing pages to tes 3 names for the same service, it plots actions you take to a visual timeline.<p>What do you think of the following names:<p>Plotsdots.com<p>Whatstat.us<p>Timestat.us<p>Without having seen anything else which would you say rolls off the tongue better?