Five rookie naming mistakes—and how to avoid them

Almost everyone makes the same ones, but maybe, just maybe, I can help you steer clear of common challenges.

Naming is fun! Until it’s not. And there’s nothing that takes the fun out of naming like realizing you’ve goofed up and need to start over.

Side note: April’s class focus is the Art of Naming—learn tons and tons of ways to come up with creative naming ideas. Join me in class!

Lots can go wrong when you’re naming. But these are five mistakes I’ve made, and they’re ones I still see from newer namers and less experienced agency teams.

1. Working without a naming strategy

It can feel more efficient to “just get started,” but skipping the steps of figuring out how the name should work for the brand, what it needs to say, and how it needs to say it can lead to chaos. You end up sharing names that you can’t defend with your clients, or spiraling because you don’t have structure in place to tell potentially successful names from ones that won’t work.

2. Not making enough names

I almost made this Mistake Number One because it’s the one I see most often. People will tell me they’ve come up with so many names. And then I’ll found out they mean 10.

Start with at least 100. Then make 100 more.

If you’re really, really new to naming, start with 300, because you’re even more likely to come up with a ton of names that just won’t work, for a number of reasons. Make a big creative mess and push yourself to have a lot of ideas, get them into a long list, and start to hunt for the best ones. And be ready to make hundreds more.

3. Assuming there are infinite names

Technically, there are. But infinite good names? No.

As a creative person, you will burn yourself out if you keep going back to the same metaphoric wells trying to find new naming ideas to express a small handful of ideas. Define a clear naming strategy, create the best-possible names you can that fit that strategy, filter those for conflicts, and then do whatever you can to convince get your clients that these names are worth their careful consideration. Because they are.

4. Presenting names that “everyone” knows you can’t own

I’m a bit of a magician when it comes to naming.

If you tell me A) Your naming project is going poorly because all the names are failing and B) The idea you or your client was trying to express in those names, I know which names you’ve considered.

But unlike a magician, I’m going to tell you how I do this trick:

I say the first names that come to my mind.

After years of experience, I know right away when my clients have expectations for names or metaphoric areas that they are unlikely to own, because they are the first ones EVERYONE thinks of. I try to suggest alternative strategies as soon as I hear those. And here, as my gift to you, are those very common names and metaphors:

• Altitude

• Apex

• Beacon 

• Catalyst

• Constellation 

• Horizon

• Latitude 

• Lighthouse 

• Momentum

• Moonshot

• Mosaic

• Nexus 

• Orbit 

• Quartz 

• Spectrum

• Tapestry 

• Names of most Greek gods

• Names of planets

• Names of constellations

• Names of trees

• Names of colors

• Names of fast animals

5. Not setting clear expectations around trademark realities

You don’t have to personally handle trademark, linguistic, common-law or other types of risk filtering. But you should be clear that those things are essential to a name’s success.

Clients finding out the hard way (via cease and desist letter or worse) that the name they loved from you wasn’t free of conflicts can sour things TO SAY THE LEAST. So if you aren’t offering those services, let them know that they should plan for investigating those issues themselves.

Mistakes are ok!

You will make them. I still make them. Not usually the ones above, but other, sometimes even-dumber ones, all the time. Learn from them. Help other people learn from them. Let ME know what you’ve learned from them! And move on.

Learn more about this, and other ways to set your next naming project up for success, at an upcoming Naming for Everyone class!

Happy naming!

Caitlin

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