Naming isn’t all soft, fuzzy language stuff. Mind you, The Name Inspector loves the soft, fuzzy language stuff. It’s his job to love it. But he realizes that businesspeople often have more practical considerations on their minds, as they should. So here are some hard practical truths about naming that The Name Inspector often shares with [...]

When people face challenges they feel unprepared for, they want rules. They want experts to explain to them clearly and unequivocally what to do. And there’s usually no shortage of people willing to step into that expert role. Naming is one challenge that many people find baffling, and naming rules abound in blogs, books, and [...]

The Seattle-based mobile platform company ZenZui recently changed its name to Zumobi, in preparation for a beta release in December. The name ZenZui was based on the word zen plus the acronym zui, which stands for ‘Zooming User Interface’. That’s the technology, developed at Microsoft Research, that Zumobi claims will take the pain out of [...]

While perusing the children’s section of a local used bookstore, The Name Inspector came across a lovely book that’s basically about naming. He was as surprised as you are. The book, first published in 1958, is Ounce Dice Trice. It was written by Alastair Reid and beautifully illustrated by the artist Ben Shahn. Reid is [...]

Last week John Cook at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer asked: What is it with the word ‘dango’ and internet companies?. Of course, there’s the online movie site Fandango. And then there’s Portland’s Jobdango and Seattle’s Zoodango. Now, a former Microsoft project manager is rolling out a new site called GodDango, which he hopes will become a [...]

TrenchMice is was a site where people can share inside scoops about the companies where they work. Trenchmouse John has written a great post about how they came up with the name TrenchMice. This is one of the best, most thorough naming stories that The Name Inspector has come across. John wrote the post in [...]

Last month Rogelio Bernal Andreo shared this naming story with The Name Inspector: The story of coRank is a bit unusual. Back early last year I was thinking of launching a couple of services and wasn’t sure what name to pick (you know how “easy” is to grab a decent .com these days), so I [...]

Several months ago Mike Buckbee told The Name Inspector about his startup named Fabjectory. It will take a 3D digital representation of your Nintendo Mii or SecondLife avatar, or a 3D model you create yourself with SketchUp, and turn it into an actual physical object. Making the virtual real seems to be a new trend. [...]

Marcelo Calbucci, founder and CTO of Sampa, invited The Name Inspector to do a guest post for his Seattle 2.0 blog. The post is up. It’s a brief and basic naming primer for entrepreneurs. Readers of this blog, connoisseurs that you are, may find the material a bit elementary, but just in case you want [...]

Some of you have sent email or left comments asking for advice about how to name your company. The Name Inspector hopes you understand that it takes work to come up with good suggestions, and it’s not really sensible for him to do that work for free because his time is scarce and there are [...]