Brand Names

There are approximately 300 million brands in the world, so selecting the right brand name has never been more important. Essentially, there are three specific areas that you need to look at when selecting a brand name:

1. Select what type of name you want.

2. Determine what you want your name to say.

3. Check that the name hasn’t been taken already.

1. Select what type of name you want: 

There are seven categories that nearly all brand names across the globe fall into:

There are eponymous names. These names embody the vision and beliefs of their founders. There are arguably lazy examples of eponymous names such as Disney and Burberry, but there are more unique eponymous names such Adidas and Tesla. Whilst Tesla wasn’t named after its founder, its name came from Nikola Tesla and his contribution to electrical engineering before his death in 1943. 

There are descriptive names. These names work by telling you exactly what what the company does. They can however be a mouthful and harder to protect. Examples of descriptive names include American Airlines and The Home Depot. 

There are acronymic names. These names are just a version of descriptive names and are generally more strategic. In our case, SVND stands for ‘Speak Victory Not Defeat’ and it is this guiding principle that informs all that we do. Examples of acronymic names are GE, BT and BP. Kentucky Fried Chicken recognised early on that the ‘fried’ part of their name had negative connotations so it was renamed acronymically to KFC. The Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation was named HSBC to help the bank to expand globally.

There are suggestive names. These can be real life words such as UBER and Slack. They can all be composite words (consisting of multiple words brought together) such as Facebook and Ray Ban (a play on the concept of banning the suns rays). There are also invented words such as Kleenex and Pinterest. 

There are associative names. These names reflect the imagery and the meaning behind the brand. For example, Amazon is named after the Amazon river which is the largest river in the world therefore fitting for a company who wants to have the largest collection of books and clothes, etc. 

There are non-English names. These names are derived from non-English languages. You have Samsung, which means three stars in Korean, Lego which means play well in Danish and Hulu which in Mandarin, has two interesting meanings, each highly relevant to their mission. The primary meaning came from an ancient Chinese proverb that describes the Hulu as the holder of precious things. The secondary meaning is “interactive recording.” These two definitions act as appropriate bookends and are highly relevant to their mission. 

Finally you have abstract names. These names have no intrinsic meaning but use the power of phonetics to create powerful brand names. These names include brands such as Rolex and Kodak. 

2. Determine what you want your name to say:

When it comes to what we want our brand name to say, we often fall into the trap of them being both descriptive and functional. For example:

Who: created them such as Dell

What: they do such as Microsoft 

Where: they are operate such as Southwest 

However the greatest brand names in the world describe and communicate a big idea and are emotive. For example:

Nike: is about winning 

GoPro: is about heroism 

Google: is the derived from the math term, digit 1 followed by 100 zeroes. This very large number helps to house their very large idea of organising the world’s information. 

These brands also tend to follow the structure of any good story (in which your goal is to make the customer/client the hero rather yourself). Essentially, every good story and movie follows this path:

A character has a problem, then meets a guide who gives them a plan and calls them to action. That action either results in a comedy or tragedy. 

3. Check that the name hasn’t been taken already:

Finally, this should come as a no-brainer but can be harder to protect depending on how you or your business have set themselves up (sole traders beware). It is also worth noting at this point, that you want to make sure that the name isn’t offensive in other languages.

TED Archive. (2016). How to create a great brand name | Jonathan Bell.Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzbXht7MJVM. Last accessed 22nd August 2020.

D MILLER. (2014). Tell Stories . Available: https://sethsphd.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/how-to-tell-a-story.pdf. Last accessed 22nd July 2020.