Every once in a while The Name Inspector likes to step back and look at the big picture. This post illustrates ten name categories that account for all the names in the TechCrunch company/product index. Well, almost all of them. The name 1 800 Free 411 would have required its own category, and that would have made eleven categories instead of the magic ten. So let’s just ignore that name for now.
Though most of the TechCrunch names are “Web 2.0″ names, there’s nothing particularly Web 2.0 about the categories. They all represent linguistic naming strategies that can be used for companies or products of any kind.
Of course, there are different ways to categorize names. You can use phonetic properties like sonority or number of syllables. You can use semantic criteria, such as whether they are metaphorical, metonymic, or literally descriptive. The categories below are based on the morphological structure of names: what kinds of meaningful pieces they have and how the pieces fit together. They’re listed in descending order of frequency. The number of names in each category is in parentheses.
1. Real Words (34)
Names that are simply repurposed words. Such names can’t be generically descriptive, because then they wouldn’t be protectible trademarks, so they usually work through metaphor or metonymy (indirect association).
Pros: These names are short and come ready-made with rich, often multiple associations.
Cons: Expect to pay money–possibly a lot–to secure the URL. Trademarking can be tricky too.
Adobe
Amazon
Apple
Dapper
Ether
Expo
Flock
Fox
Grouper
Indeed
Inform.com
Live.com
Multiply
Pandora
Pluck
Revver
Riffs
Shadows
Sphere
Wink
Yahoo!
Yelp
Misspelled words
These are simply words that have been misspelled to make them more distinctive. This addresses the URL/trademark issue.
del.icio.us (delicious)
Digg (dig)
flickr (flicker)
Google (googol)
Goowy (gooey or GUI)
Snocap (snow cap)
SoonR (sooner)
Topix (topics)
Zooomr (zoomer)
Foreign words
Renkoo (Japanese renku, a type of poetry)
Rojo (Spanish ‘red’)
Vox (Latin ‘voice’)
2. Compounds (31)
Each of these names consists of two words put together, with the first word receiving the main emphasis in pronunciation. (It doesn’t matter if there’s a space between words). In most cases both words are nouns. Names with verbs in the second position are Bubbleshare, Google Talk, and possibly Tailrank (share, talk, and rank can all be nouns, but they’re verbs under the most natural interpretation). Names with non-nouns in the first position are BlueDot, SocialText, JotSpot, Measure Map, and possibly Jumpcut, Rapleaf, and SearchFox. Again, the first words here can all be nouns, but they’re more naturally treated as two adjectives (blue and social) and a bunch of verbs.
Compounds are a simple way to create new words and are very common in English (and other Germanic languages), so it’s not surprising to find them high on the list.
Pros: The practically limitless number of possible combinations makes it easy to create a unique name. Interesting meanings can be created through the combination of words.
Cons: There are no huge drawbacks, which is one reason that compounds are popular, but they are longer than many other kinds of name.
Attention Trust
Bloglines
BlueDot
Bubbleshare
FeedBurner
Filmloop
Firefox
Google Talk
JotSpot
Jumpcut
Measure Map
Netvibes
Newsgator
OPML Editor
Pageflakes
Photobucket
Powerset
Rapleaf
Salesforce
SearchFox
SocialText
Songbird
TagJag
Tagworld
Tailrank
TechMeme
Webshots
Wordpress
Video Egg
YouTube
3. Phrases (25)
These are names that follow normal rules for putting words together to make phrases (other than compounds).
Pros: They sound linguistically natural and have clear meanings because they follow regular rules.
Cons: Phrase names can be long, and they can also sound awkward when used as nouns if they are not already noun phrases (e.g. Have you tried iLike?)
37 Signals
Adaptive Path
AllofMP3
AllPeers
Amie Street (could be a compound, but __ Street is such a common pattern)
CollectiveX
iLike
Last.fm
MyBlogLog
MySpace
PayPerPost
Planet Web 2.0
rawsugar
SecondLife
SimplyHired
SixApart
StumbleUpon
TheVeniceProject (could be a compound, but the the makes it phrase-like).
TopTenSources
Included in this category are names that consist of a company name or prominent brand name followed by a generic noun. In these names, the first word functions as a kind of modifier of the second.
AIM Pages
Google Reader
Google Video
Microsoft Expo
Yahoo Answers
Notice the Google Talk is not here–it’s on the compound list. That’s because Google Talk is pronounced with the emphasis on Google, which means that the whole thing is treated as one word. As far as The Name Inspector knows, all the names immediately above are pronounced with some emphasis on each word, and the main emphasis on the second. Does anyone disagree?
4. Blends (12)
Each of these names has two parts, at least one of which is a recognizable portion of a word rather than a whole word.
Pros: When they work, blends can be short and elegant and have all the advantages of compounds.
Cons: When they don’t work, blends can be awkward and/or have obscure meanings.
Maxthon (max + marathon)
Microsoft (microcomputer + software)
Netscape (net + landscape)
Newroo (new + kangaroo)
PubSub (publish + subscribe)
Rebtel (rebel + telephone)
Rollyo (roll + your own, or roll + your own)
Sharpcast (sharp + broadcast)
Skype (sky + peer-to-peer)
Technorati (technology + literati)
Wikipedia (wiki + encyclopedia)
Zillow (zillions + pillow, with overlap of -ill-)
5. Tweaked words (11)
Some names are just words that have been slightly changed in pronunciation and spelling–usually with a letter replaced or added.
Pros: As long as people recognize the word, you get all its rich meaning while still having a distinctive name.
Cons: People might not recognize the word, and some of these names can be a little cheesy and gimmicky.
Attensa (attention)
CNet (might stand for computer network, but who thinks of it that way?)
ebay
edgeio
eSnips
iPhone
iTunes
Wikia
Zoho (Soho)
Zune (tune)
Zvents (events)
6. Affixed words (10)
These are all novel forms consisting of a real word and a real prefix or suffix. Notice how common the -ster suffix is.
Pros: These names can be distinctive and meaningful while remaining relatively short.
Cons: Sometimes these names sound contrived. The meanings added by affixes are limited in variety and usually abstract (which means not very vivid).
Browster
CoComment
Dogster
Feedster
Findory
Friendster
Napster
Omnidrive
Performancing (performance isn’t a verb, so doesn’t normally take -ing ending)
PostSecret (post can also be a noun or a verb, making this a compound)
7. Made up or obscure origin (8)
These are short names that are either made up or whose origins are so obscure that they might as well be made up.
Pros: Made-up names can be short, cute, and very distinctive (and therefore easy to trademark).
Cons: Made-up names don’t provide much ready-made meaning to work with (all the meaning has to come from sound symbolism). Good ones are hard to think of, and when they’re short the URLs are likely to be taken.
Bebo
Meebo
Odeo
Ookles
Plaxo
Qumana
Simpy
Zimbra (taken from a Talking Heads song based on a nonsense Dada poem)
8. Puns (8)
These names are words or phrases that have been modified slightly to evoke an appropriate second meaning. They’re similar to blends, but they involve a coincidental similarity between part of the main word and the second evoked word.
Pros: Pun names can be fun and memorable.
Cons: Nothing sounds dumber than a bad pun.
Automattic (automatic, mat –> matt, the guy who started the company)
Consumating (consummating, consumm –> consum(e))
Farecast (forecast, fore –> fare)
LicketyShip (lickety split, split –> ship, the verb)
Memeorandum (memorandum, mem –> meme)
Meetro (metro, met –> meet)
Meevee (teevee/TV, tee –> me(e), the pronoun)
Writely (rightly, right –> write)
9. People’s names (real or fictitious) (5)
Some names are either pitched or recognizable as people’s names. If the audience for a name doesn’t see the connection, the name is just like a made-up one.
Pros: These names are short and give personality to a company (or product or service).
Cons: Aside from personality, these names don’t provide meaning to work with. As with made-up names, good, short ones might not be available as URLs.
Bix (e.g. Bix Beiderbecke)
Jajah (F. Jajah Watamba seems to be their fictitious spokesperson)
Kiko (a name in Japanese and other languages)
Ning (a Chinese name)
Riya (the name of a founder’s daughter)
10. Initials and Acronyms (3)
These are names made up of the first letter of each word in a much longer phrase name. Sometimes the letters are pronounced individually, in which case we can just think of them as initials, and sometimes the combination of letters is pronounced as a word, in which case it’s an acronym.
Pros: These names provide short mnemonics for long, descriptive phrases.
Cons: Zzzzzz. Also, sometimes initials are short when written but long when spoken. For example, the initials www have nine syllables when spoken, while the phrase world wide web has three.
AOL (America Online)
FIM (Fox Interactive Media)
Guba (Gigantic Usenet Binaries Archive)
The Name Inspector hopes that these name categories will be useful to people struggling with their own naming problems. They might suggest naming strategies or spur name ideas that wouldn’t otherwise come up. Good luck in your naming endeavors!
Tags: company names, techcrunch, techcrunch names, web 2.0 names, web2.0 names, naming strategies, name categories, name types, compounds, phrases, prefixes, suffixes, affixes, blends, portmanteaus, puns, acronyms, initials, made-up names
Christopher,
I enjoyed reading your post before taking off for the weekend. And of course it becomes harder and harder to find a brand/company name nowadays which is short/concise and still available as a couple of top level domains. We are happy with the result honoring Jajah Watamba.
Thanks for having us in mind and talk Jajah
Have a great weekend and best regards,
Frederik
Don’t you think Netscape is really a blend of net + seascape (not landscape), given all of the other nautical themes of Netscape?
What about latin sounding names? e.g. Incantis and another would be numbers e.g. Office20.com
Any insight on those types of company name?
I wasn’t aware that Microsoft was a smoosh of “Micro” and “Ware”.
Makes you think, doesn’t it?
Greg: Yeah, I guess that makes more sense. I forgot about that whole nautical thing Netscape had going.
CyberMage: Oops, put the bold in the wrong place–thanks for that (I changed it).
Mark: Classical-sounding names are indeed a whole category unto themselves. They were really a trend in the early 1990s, with Pentium and Acura and all the rest. I didn’t make that a category here, because it’s less a structural property than a matter of how recognizably Latin or Greek the origins of the parts are. Attensa is a good example of a Latinate name, but I categorized it with the other tweaked words.
As for number names, they probably deserve a post of their own. I had a few things to say about them in my analysis of the name 37signals.
There is one category that you might want to look at which is neologism, being from India I love neologism which are based in Sanskrit.
Did you know that Viagra was a sankrit derived from the word ‘vyāghrßh’.
http://www.langmaker.com/db/Phono-semantic_matching
My startup ‘Motvik’(www.motvik.com) is another sanskrit neologism which is simillar to the sanskrit word ’satvik’. ‘Satvik’ mean the one who has ’satva’(pious) ‘guna’(property). On that line we came up with Motvik as one with ‘mobile’ ‘guna’.
Rajan
[…] This blog has an interesting post about how other companies chose their name and Salon published a great article about the process of naming. [Added a year later, I also like The Name Inspector’s blog] […]
somebody contests the origin of zillow here:
http://qwerky.stellify.net/sites/zillow#comment-4939
i’m tracking the weirder names of web 2.0 there.
i don’t have ten, like your post.
Great post. I wish I had seen it a year ago. Reader’s might be interested in the process by which I came up with my company name. I don’t offer it as a role model, but I tried to document my thinking process clearly and that might be interesting: http://www.badlanguage.net/?p=72
You might add that few brand names have been successful with more than 3 syllables. When we started Documentum (4 syl), the only brand that we could think of that had 4 was Panasonic.
I wrote about our experience here: http://newton.typepad.com/content/2006/04/whats_in_a_name.html
Great post interesting to read,
I would loveto hear your opinion in translating names for example is it all right to translate a name from English to another language? or just leave it the same?
I am planning to name my start up “one2one” Trade events and meetings
also will love to know your opinion Is it a good Name? it will be in the middle east so the official language is Arabic but almost all of the business community use English in names and all business corresponds but you have to have an Arabic name also weather it is a translation of your company name in English or the same name but written in Arabic it is up to you , but it is really difficult some time to translate a name as you well know it might give it a entirely different meaning
It is a great guide even for those online earners who do not run web 2.0. start-ups. I have made a few poor choices of domain names in the past - would not like to do it again.
[…] Chris at the NameInspector, has a good post on Web 2.0 names. It covers 10 categories that encompass nearly all Web 2.0 companies. He has some other interesting posts which you may want to check out including one on Guy Kawasaki’s blog, How to Change the World. […]
Another benefit of compounds and phrases is the opportunity to create a double entendre. Our name, postreach, uses the word ‘post’ both as a noun (blog post) and as a prefix (post=after).
[…] In the typology of names, Tinfinger counts as a compound rather than a portmanteau (blend), because it consists of two whole words rather than word parts. The sound is natural and easy, and gets a little poetry from the near-rhyme of the first two syllables. In the orthography this is reflected in the repetition of in, and enhanced by the similarity of the letters T and f. […]
[…] 10 company name types on TechCrunch: Pros and cons (tags: naming branddevelopment marketing advertising) Bookmark to: […]
Google Talk totally belongs in #3, Phrases. It’s just like Yahoo! Answers, and I’ve never heard anyone refer to it as googletalk.
Thanks for the analysis - very interesting!
[…] 10 Company Name Types on TechCrunch Compound or blend? (tags: business analysis language) […]
I have to agree with the popularity of compound names. That is the strategy I have used for many of the pages on my site with great results. For example, brownbeaver, smoothcall, and windfarmer, though, those are adj-noun, adj-verb, noun-verb (i see the noun-verb most frequently). I even thought about making a page called nounverber, but alas, it was already taken!
To a lesser degree I resort to blends like roboprophet and videonomics. Check out my keyphrase page for some others.
Great article! I thought I was the only crazy person out there…
Firefox is not a compound word since it is the name of the Red Panda so it should go in the real words category.
There are many 4 syllable brand names: Mitsubishi, Black & Decker, Ben & Jerry’s, Motorola, Osterizer. They all seem to have that iambic rhythm OSTerIzer, BLACK and DECKer, etc. It flows out easy, so it’s not much harder than a two syllable name.
The Latin, Greek, Sanskrit names seem to me to fit into the “obscure origin” although some have become so generic that they are just bad names. Examples are Polaris, Mercury, Eureka, Oracle, etc.
I find that names with punctuation or odd capitalization, like Pro/Engineer are frustrating, because there are too many variations on their use. People do not consistently spell them the same. Also they cannot be used many times because the / and . cannot be used in file names on computers. I see Pro/E as Pro-E, ProE, Pro_E, and Pro/E which makes the name hard to find with a search engine.
Thanks for the article. It’s harder and harder to think of a good domain name that isn’t taken. Your ideas will help feed my lateral-thinking engine!
[…] I found this interesting article about domain names on the LearningCentre forum. The article covers ten types of domain name, with a description, pros, cons and examples of each. Here is a summary of the name types: […]
In the Pros and Cons section, you might add an additional test: if a name contains a unique combination of characters, it will be much easier to search for. These days, names like “Apple” and “Adobe” are not so good, since they can’t be easily searched for.
Years ago, friends of mine went for a “made up” name when starting a business. They chose “Milum”. It sounded vaguely familiar and sort of Latin. Then the internet came along and they found that having a unique name was really helpful.
[…] Guy Kawasaki’s last two posts over at How to Change the World have focused on language and how people use words to express ideas. Yesterday he pointed readers to The Name Inspector, a PhD in linguistics blogger who has great insights into, you guessed it, names–especially those of businesses. Take this insight on the naming of Apple: Apple Computers is a great name. It’s a model solution to a problem faced by all technology companies: how to make something that’s fundamentally abstract and mysterious seem accessible and appealing. […]
Hi, Chris –
I very much enjoyed this post. By the way, I believe you mean “Bix Beiderbecke”.
best,
Fred
[…] company name types on TechCrunch: Pros and cons : The Name Inspector Commentez, ou laissez un trackback à partir de votre propresite. […]
[…] As the buzz withing the web 2.0 crowd spreads faster day by day,TechCrunch speculates whether spotplex is a better digg. Instead of using explicit votes by site members, spotplex (whose name might be something between a compound and blend, according to this nice classification) uses actual page views on blog posts to rank them. […]
A hosting company I used to work for used a billing product named Ubersmith. When we asked them about it, they said it was a prefix and a suffix smashed together.
I used to ask them a lot about it, because it seemed like such a bizarre word that was hard to remember.
They said that people used to mispronounce it all the time, but once they got the hang of it, it was easy! Their argument was that it was a name they could define, rather than getting lost in the crowd.
[…] The Name Inspector has a great blog all about naming. In this post, he uses the TechCrunch Company/Product Index to help us understand how names can be categorized into 10 types: […]
The science and art of naming is facinating.
I gravitate toward the rhythmic-sounding names, thus MightyFineHouse.
I have a great deal of admiration for the truly fun names out like Yahoo! and Woot.
… and I’ve never understood Amazon.
Thanks for the great article!
Thanks for the mention.
FYI, Songbird isn’t a compound word; It’s a real word:
http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/unabridged?songbird
Best, Rob
Nice summary! It´s really facinating how deep you can go in the “art of naming”.
[…] Chris Johnson analyserar vilt om fördelar och nackdelar med olika typer av företagsnamn som listats på TechCrunch. Ganska intressant för oss alla. Vad tycker du, låter etools bra? Tyck till! […]
Hi - I am tempting to build a brand - Scarecrow Consulting. The feedback is that people do remember - but lots like to take the Mickey - is this because they do not have creative bones in their bodies?
Gary
http://www.scarecrowconsulting.co.uk
[…] Wie sehen aber nun die Namen im Web 2.0 aus? Guy Kawasaki hat einen interessanten Artikel gefunden, wo jemand fast das komplette Namensregister von Techcrunch durchgeht und die Namensgebung erläutert. Die Namen werden unterteilt in: […]
This is a great post - I had a ton of fun with my own company name (JibberJobber.com) and there are some interesting things tied to it. People would frequently say “I’ve heard of that” when they were probably mixing it up with Jibber Jabber or something like that.
Anyway, its been fun, clever, etc. Even though its longer than what I’m used to, it rolls off the tongue and is easy to spell and remember. And its ties into career management with the “job” part…. cool stuff.
Oh yeah, in fairness, my buddy came up with me. I had boring name ideas. His was a no-brainer.
Hi, I have some problems understanding the trademark principles.
I doubt these names can be registered as trademark:
Mybloglog
Multiply
Payperpost
Indeed
what do you think ?
Another question, I’ve bought some domain names a little while ago with intention of developing them, now I’m wondering if they have any value on domain names market. Can you guys take a look ?
http://www.domainnamesauction.org/
Thanks
[…] Dejando a un lado la categoría “divertido aunque inútil” a la que he dedicado el párrafo anterior, en un reciente e interesante artículo titulado “10 company name types on TechCrunch: Pros and cons” del blog The Name Inspector, podréis comprobar que los nombres de las aplicaciones web 2.0 en pueden clasificarse en 10 grupos: […]
[…] If you manage to go through a few names on Techcrunch, like The Name Inspector you will find a few patterns: […]
[…] The post on 10 company name types was so well received that The Name Inspector has decided, shamelessly, to make a sequel. This time we’ll look at names for lesser-known search engines, in which The Name Inspector has a special interest. […]
[…] Chris Johnson from The Name Inspector wrote a really interesting article about the pros and cons of product naming, splitting everything up in the following categories: […]
Just like Ionut, I’m interested in how easily trademarking “Multiply” and “Indeed” would be? They’re such common words!
I never thought much of business name creation, ours came out of necessity - We chose pepsmedia for our web dev & marketing company since prospective clients spelling Pepperrell Media correctly was unlikely to happen
What about metacafe? how would you define it?
[…] What makes Skype unusual? First, while sky peer-to-peer is an extremely descriptive name for a peer-to-peer telephony service that works worldwide, the -pe portion of Skype is almost impossible to associate with peer-to-peer unless you’re told to. So Skype is really more like a tweak of the word sky. When looked at that way, the name is still unusual because the addition of a single consonant to the end of a word (The Name Inspector is talking about the pronunciation here, not the spelling) is a very uncommon naming strategy. No tweaked word names on the TechCrunch index list or the alternative search engine list are derived that way. […]
[…] One good way to increase youir chances of having great name ideas is to try creating different types of name. You might start with The Name Inspector’s classification of names and try to think of something in each category. This will make you consider possibilities you otherwise might overlook, and will help you learn what kind of name is right for your company, product, or service. […]
hi inspector. and thankyou for our interesting post, i enjoyed it.
one question: what about “quote” names, one example for all: mr wolf (the pulp fiction problem-solver character)?
ciao from milano/italy!
max
This post is a vary interesting read. I created a service for finding a domain name for web applications: http://grabagooddomain.com/ It uses real people to suggest available domain names.
When thinking of the name for my company, I tried to conjure up what my clients are desperately seeking, Business Sanity. Thanks for pointing me to Chris Johnson’s site.
[…] Naming a company or a product is harder than you might think. It’s tough to find an interesting, unique and concise name that expresses the goals of the project in a memorable way. We consulted the Name Inspector, Vitamin, and Guy Kawasaki’s blog for help. The global nature of the Internet and the importance of keyword search means that most of the obvious — and not so obvious — company names and domain names have already been registered. […]
[…] One good way to increase your chances of having great name ideas is to try creating different types of name. You might start with The Name Inspector’s classification of names and try to think of something in each category. This will make you consider possibilities you otherwise might overlook, and will help you learn what kind of name is right for your company, product, or service. […]
I think domain names with “.tv”, “.fm” extension might be used even more. Names such us, “http://www.justin.tv” or “http://www.wtop.fm”
hi inspector.
And thank you for our interesting post, i enjoyed it.
But you didnt write Sony. Why?
Mehmet from Afyon/TURKIYE
See you.
Bye
Great site, learned a lot from just a couple posts that I have read so far.
You mention the compound type, but one that you don’t see very often is using “and” to join two words (a true compound!). What do you think about using “and” in a company or site name. The only ones you usually hear of is law firms, but it seems like they might fit in more places as well. I am starting a freelance gig on the side and was thinking of using compound name with “and”…but wonder if it is a bad idea since you don’t see it much.
There are some tools at DomainNameSoup to find some of those domains such as del.icio.us and flickr.
Thanks for the post. This is good inspiration for trying to think of a domain name
i am trying to come up with a suitable name for a software company. i am avoiding techs and softs,
i havent found anything goodd yet, any ideas
I am hosting a product manager training site which will run on its own domain name. The work is directed at pharmaceuticals. I am thinking the website name is Product ManageRX training 2.0 and the abbreviated version is especially important. Seems to violate all the rules listed here. should email be different? e.g. PM911 is a lot easier to remember although the connotation may not be so positive.
Thanks very much,
Carolyn
[…] start with the basics. In The Name Inspector’s typology of names, Withoutabox is a phrase name. A prepositional phrase, more specifically. Without is the […]
great info, really easy to know how to name my company now
[…] Name Inspector in Seattle has posted an article entitled 10 company name types on TechCrunch: Pros and Cons, with a thoughtful analysis of categories the names fall into - he divides them into the following […]
There’s also Reevoo and Mixx, as misspelled names, which are relatively new. http://www.leonbaileygreen.com/index.php/site/permalink/misspelled_internet_brands_names/