#What a name does

A name is a handle, not a pitch. It has four jobs: be said, be spelled, be found, be owned. Explaining the product is the tagline’s job. Stripe doesn’t explain payments. Nobody minds.

So don’t hunt for the perfect word. Plenty of names clear the kill list below. Take a good one and move on.

Most products are bets that may close in two months. Spend on the name like that’s true: an hour and a standard-price domain. Spend more only when the product earns it.

#Two spectrums

What the name points at. Four layers, each one further from the code:

1. What it does — TablePlus, Dropbox.
2. The problem it solves — RescueTime.
3. The outcome — Basecamp, Linear (a straight line through the work).
4. The feeling or effect — Slack, Calm.

The deeper layers age better, because features change and the feeling usually stays. Generate candidates at all four.

How directly it says it.

• Descriptive — Hotels.com, PDF Converter. Clear on day one, impossible to own: no trademark, no search rank, a hundred lookalikes.
• Suggestive — Dropbox, Netflix, Raycast. Clear enough, ownable enough.
• Abstract — Apple, Figma, Hasura. Fully ownable, means nothing until you teach it.

Default to suggestive. Descriptive leaves you unprotected; abstract costs marketing budget an unproven product doesn’t have.

#Ways to make a name

• Plain words from each layer. List every word for what it does, the problem, the outcome, the feeling. Most names come from here or from combining these.
• Compound two short, concrete words. YouTube, Snapchat, Dropbox, FaceTime, Raycast. Each half passes the radio test alone; together they’re new, so you can own them. Words you can picture (drop, box, snap, ray) stick better than abstract ones (sync, flow, hub).
• A word plus a meaningful prefix or suffix. TablePlus, Netflix (net + flicks). The affix has to carry meaning; -ly and -ify only say “startup from 2012.”
• Borrow an idiom. FaceTime was already a phrase. The meaning comes pre-loaded.
• Coin a word by bending a real one. Hasura = H + asura, Sanskrit for demon, a nod to Unix daemons. Abstract on the surface, a joke for the audience underneath. Works best for niche audiences with their own vocabulary.

Signs of a strong candidate: stress on the first beat (DROP-box, NET-flix), hard consonants (p, t, k, b), and it works as a verb (“FaceTime me,” “Dropbox it”).

#The kill list

Run every candidate through these, cheapest first. One unchecked box kills it.

#Free checks

• Radio test. Said once, someone can type it without asking how it’s spelled. Kills cute misspellings (Flickr, Tumblr) and ambiguous sounds.
• Length. Two syllables, three at most. Users shorten longer names into something you don’t control.
• No box. Doesn’t name a feature or an audience you’ll outgrow. A name tied to one feature ages the day you ship the second.
• Bad meanings. Clean in slang (Urban Dictionary included) and in the top five languages of your market.

#Lookups

• Search collision. No big company, common word’s top meaning, or competitor owns Google’s page one.
• The .com owner. No live software product on the exact .com, even when your TLD is free. Parked is fine.
• Domain. Available to register at standard price. No aftermarket, no negotiating. Exact .com first. Otherwise a TLD that fits the product (.fm for audio, .dev for developer tools, .lol for something playful) from: .io, .co, .dev, .pro, .me, .fm, .fyi, .run, .today, .rocks, .fun, .lol, .wtf, .top. .ai sparingly; it costs several times more. Spam filters distrust some cheap TLDs as a whole, .top worst of all. On those, send email from the parent company’s .com.
• Clean history. If someone owned the domain before: the Wayback Machine shows no spam, adult, or casino past, and it’s on no blocklist (MXToolbox, Spamhaus). A burned domain sends your password resets to spam.
• Handles. Exact or close variant free on X, GitHub, npm (if dev-facing), the app stores. Nobody in your space squats the exact handle.
• Trademark. No live mark on the same name or a soundalike in classes 9 and 42 (software), at the USPTO and your target markets’ offices.¹

#Putting it to practice

Naming effort follows the product’s stage. A name is cheap to change before anyone knows it, so don’t pay for certainty early.

#New product — one sitting, under an hour

• Write the product’s job in one line. Then one line each for the problem, the outcome, and the feeling.
• List the competitors’ names. Note their pattern (every one a -Flow, a -Pilot, a -Hub) and stay out of it.
• Generate 50+ candidates across the five ways above. Quantity first; don’t judge yet.
• Cut with the free checks. Do them in your head.
• Run the survivors through the lookups. Expect most to die here.
• Shortlist three. Use each in sentences: “Try ___.” “I built it with .” ” is down.” Pick one.
• Register the domain and handles the same hour.

If nothing survives, blame the brief. The one-liner is usually too broad or too narrow. Rewrite it and generate again.

#Traction — paying users, before you spend on marketing

• Tell five people the name and two alternatives. The next day, ask which one they remember. Ignore which one they liked.
• Pay a trademark attorney for a proper clearance.
• Rename now if either fails. It only gets more expensive.

#Winner — a business you plan to run for years

• File the trademark in your main markets.
• Register the name on the other TLDs from the pool, so nobody launches a lookalike on yourname.io.

#Tools

• vercel.domains — fast availability checks while you run the kill list.
• Domainr — finds domain hacks, where the TLD finishes the word (del.icio.us, goo.gl).
• Porkbun — where to buy: cheap, and the widest TLD selection.

#Footnotes

1. USPTO’s search tool is free at tmsearch.uspto.gov. EU: EUIPO’s eSearch. A free search only catches obvious conflicts. The paid clearance comes at traction. ↩