How do you choose a business name?

Great names are: memorable, pronounceable, meaningful, available (domain, trademark, social), timeless, and differentiated. Most names get 3–4 of those; very few get all 6. And naming decisions stick for decades. Don’t rush it. Don’t crowdsource it. Invest the time; the right name saves years of marketing effort.

Descriptive (‘General Motors,’ ‘Home Depot’): clear, hard to trademark. Suggestive (‘Amazon,’ ‘Oracle’): evocative but not literal. Abstract (‘Kodak,’ ‘Xerox’): highly distinctive, require marketing to become meaningful. Founder (‘Ford,’ ‘Disney’): personal, but can limit growth. Compound (‘Facebook,’ ‘PayPal’): clear meaning combined distinctively. Abbreviation (‘IBM,’ ‘KFC’): works when the full name is clunky. Pick the type that fits your business and ambition.

For each candidate name, score 1–5 on: (1) memorability (hear it once, remember it), (2) pronounceability (is there ambiguity? misreadings?), (3) meaning (does it hint at what you do?), (4) distinctiveness (not confusable with competitors), (5) domain/trademark availability, (6) international friendliness (offensive in other languages?). Discard any scoring below 3 on availability or international friendliness.

A .com is still the gold standard in 2026. If exact .com is taken but affordable ($500–5,000), buy it. If unaffordable ($100K+), pick a different name — people will type .com and land at someone else. .io, .co, .ai are acceptable for tech/AI companies. Never launch with a domain that’s three words with hyphens; people forget and mistype. Availability is often the hard constraint that kills otherwise-great names.

Three tests: (1) the voicemail test — can someone hear the name once and spell it correctly? (2) The cross-cultural test — what does it mean in Spanish, French, German, Mandarin? (3) The Google test — does searching the name return unrelated, established companies? Test with real potential customers, not just your internal team. Teams fall in love with names customers find confusing.

Before committing: trademark search in every country you’ll operate (start with USPTO and CIPO for North America). Hire a trademark lawyer — cheap insurance. Register the name in your country. Buy the .com, top social handles (@yourbrand on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok). Secure these before public launch. Brands that skip legal work often get forced rebrands a year in — far more expensive than the upfront work.