Invented vs descriptive company names: which should you choose?

Most naming arguments are really an argument between two instincts. One says the name should tell people what the company does. The other says the name should be ownable — a word nobody else has, that the company can fill with meaning. Both instincts are right about something, and it helps to see the whole range before choosing.

Three kinds of name

• Descriptive names say what the business is. AltcoinCharts, CareNearby and LuxuryAuction need no explanation.
• Suggestive names hint at what the business is without stating it. Pawmerce puts pets and commerce together; Skinovea has skin in it and still sounds like a brand.
• Invented names are not existing words. Zevyo, Mivza and Cebsy mean nothing until a company gives them a meaning.

What a descriptive name gives you, and what it costs

A descriptive name does its explaining for free. On a search results page, a sign or a referral, the name itself says what is on offer, which can matter a lot to a local service or a focused product with a modest marketing budget.

The costs arrive later. Descriptive names are hard to make distinctive, because they use the words competitors also need — and names that simply describe a product are generally harder to protect as trademarks than distinctive ones. If that matters to your plans, speak to a trademark lawyer early; this article is not legal advice. A descriptive name also fixes the company to its first product. A business called CareNearby can grow into many kinds of care; it would struggle to become something else.

What an invented name gives you, and what it costs

An invented name can offer more distinctiveness and more room to grow, because it does not describe a product and so does not tie the company to one. Being invented does not make a name available, though. A word that looks invented may already be used by another business, registered as a trademark, used as a product name or taken as a social handle, so it needs the same checks as any other name.

The cost is that an invented name starts empty. Early customers meet a word that means nothing until your product, your design and your marketing give it meaning, so it usually needs more explaining than a descriptive one. It also has to survive being heard: if people cannot spell it after hearing it once, some may not find you.

The middle: suggestive names

Suggestive names can be a good compromise. They borrow enough of a familiar word to point in the right direction — pet, skin, stack, hook — and change enough to stand apart from it. The risk is cleverness: a blend that only makes sense once it has been explained is an invented name with extra spelling problems.

Four tests for any name

1. The phone test. Say the name once to someone on a call. Can they type the address without asking how it is spelled?
2. The category test. Does the name fit the market you are entering — does a health brand sound careful, does a developer tool sound precise?
3. The five-year test. Picture the company twice its current size, in a product you have not built yet. Does the name still fit?
4. The ownership test. Can you have the .com, and is the name plausibly distinct from companies already trading in your field?

Choosing for your kind of business

• Local and service businesses that live on search and referrals: descriptive names earn their keep, provided you check nobody nearby already uses a similar one.
• Business software: suggestive or invented. In a list of similar products, a distinctive name is easier to tell apart. See software and developer tools.
• Consumer brands you intend to build over years: invented or suggestive, chosen for sound and spelling as much as meaning. The beauty and skincare collection has examples of both approaches.
• Anything you expect to change shape: avoid names that describe your first product.

Short invented names are hard to judge on paper, so judge them out loud. The short .com names collection is a good place to try the phone test on a dozen at once.