Naming Your Company with Dot-o-mator

During “the search for company 4.0″ (whose idea is currently major hush hush and on the down low), we are searching for a company name.  The process feels more like trying to find and buy a house than make a business decision.  And every good name we think up?  Seems like we’re always a day late and a dollar short.  For most of the good names we think up, the domain name, and anything closely resembling it, usually isn’t available.  In 90% of the cases where the name is taken, the site has nothing on it and the person is now referred to around the office as “squatter and their advertisements.”  Truly this is a frustrating experience, and no wonder branding companies get paid such big bucks for the service.

At some point, we turned to google for help in coming up with a name by typing such search terms as “web 2.0 names” and “name generator”, and we came across this nifty site called the Dot-o-mator, which really helped us and can help you in coming up with a name, ala Web 2.0 style.  In additon to their name generator, they have some terrific suggestions on naming your site, which of course should also coincide with naming your company.  A few of the suggestions are summarized here:

1. Use a .com name (sometimes others work well, such as del.icio.us but in general, stick to a .com)
2. Shorter is better (Initially we were going to name the company http://thelongestcompanydomainnameintheworldorintheuniverseforthatmatter.com but I didn’t think that’d get by my marketing gurus so we abbreviated it to http://tlcdnitwoituftm.com and it wasn’t taken so now we own it!)
3. Be sure you can say the name without having to spell it out for people (gee, if you are ”a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, esp. a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk”, do you have to be able to spell entreprenoor?)
4. Search for your prospective name on google and make sure there are very few that come up with the same name
5. Pick a memorable name (The Florida Land Company, LLC is one of my company names…ugh – not very memorable…but it has a terrific logo that works well in direct mail)
6. Avoid Trademarks by searching the TESS database on The US Patent & Trademark Office.

Go try the Dot-o-mator and check out the details behind these and other tips.  After reading the tips, you may get a chuckle out of some of the silly Web 2.0 names out there such as http://ubuntu.com, http://yedda.com and http://riya.com (hey, what is a yubnub by the way?). 

If you are currently pondering some names, post a comment and I’d be happy to review them with you.  Or if you chose a name, I’d like to know what it is and how your process worked because I just spent the last four days creating a huge list, narrowing it down, buying up a bunch of domains and now it’s decision time….

…oh ya, we’ll post the real name as we get closer to launch.  Until then, dot-o-mator will have to do.