A while ago Allegra Searle-LeBel sent in a story about naming her online media-editing startup:
We had been struggling for about 2 months, trying to find the right name. There was this funny, almost mystical sense that it existed *somewhere*. We just needed to keep slogging through the troughs of lame options and almost […]
If you’ve bought an artsy-crafty item on the web lately, or if you read Fred Wilson’s blog A VC, then you’ve probably run into Etsy. Since launching in June 2005, this Brooklyn-based company has managed to build an extremely enthusiastic fan base and become the eBay of handmade goods.
Etsy is all about community. There’s a […]
On Monday The Name Inspector hosted a Biznik workshop and everyone discussed the name of the popular photo-sharing site Flickr. It’s an interesting case study in selecting a real word to serve as a business name.
The word flicker clearly evokes scenarios associated with light and photography. One person said it reminded her of movie projectors […]
The name Skype combines the familiar and the peculiar. Though there’s that unmistakable word sky in there, the end of the name is a bit of a mystery. On the Skype forum, an employee reveals that the name was derived from the expression sky peer-to-peer, which was shortened to Skyper and then to Skype. So […]
If you found the title of this post a little confusing, then you have some idea what’s wrong with the name Tenacious Offense. This name belongs to young Seattle-based company that seems to be a kind of rent-a-bizdev team for small startups trying to land big clients. Thanks to Brant Williams for writing and sharing […]
Paul Montgomery writes about his company’s name:
Tinfinger is intended to be to the Who’s Who what Wikipedia was to the
Encyclopedia Britannica. Its main function is a search engine of
biographical information on famous and semi-famous public figures. It
also has news aggregation features similar to Techmeme, based around
people’s names instead of hyperlink hierarchies.
The name Tinfinger is a […]
Hillel Cooperman of Jackson Fish Market sent a pointer to his naming story, which appears in the first post of his company blog. Head on over and take a look. But please do come back.
Back? Good.
The name Jackson Fish Market belongs to a small software company. That could be outright confusing, couldn’t it? But […]
It’s probably safe to say that Amazon (or Amazon.com) has achieved the status of an iconic name.
So, does the word Amazon bear any meaningful relation to the company Amazon.com? Amazon is of course the name of the South American river which is the largest in the world. There were also ancient women warriors, made famous […]
A reader suggested doing a profile of this name, and The Name Inspector thought that was a pretty good idea.
The name Digg depends on felicitous ambiguity, of which The Name Inspector is something of a connoisseur. (He even wrote a dissertation about it, though the kind he focused on there was a bit different). What’s […]
What follows is a story from Dan McComb, one of the founders of Biznik, a Seattle-based social network for independent business people. Dan’s story is so well told that it’s quoted in its entirety here.
By the way, the Name Inspector gets a real kick out of the name Biznik, but, as a Biznik member who […]
