1. Naming is a creative process. Be prepared to look further than the obvious. You cannot own the obvious.
2. Don’t expect to find the name in a brainstorm session. You might, but I doubt it. Seriously, your time is valuable, don’t waste it. And you need plenty of time to do this right. Just because somebody tells you that it will be fun to get together and be creative, doesn’t mean that you will actually be creative. What you will discover are that most of the words could have been found, by you, without leaving your desk.
3. Have faith. Trust your namer, namist, name generator, namologist; word rider (or whatever they call themselves today) to do their job. Let them go away and rootle around and dig and have all of the disappointment for you. They do that so that you don’t have to. You don’t need to know what they’re doing. If it was easy, you would have done it yourself.
4. Forget your hysteria about owning a “.com”. Your brand name and your domain name do not have to be identical. No, they don’t. Please don’t give up on a fantastic trade-markable name just because someone else owns the domain. Think laterally. Be flexible.
5. Be prepared to think differently. The answer to your problem may be quite challenging. Be prepared to be challenged.
6. Listen carefully. Listen again. That’s the only way you’re going to hear the magic. Please pay attention, I said, “Magic”.
7. The biggest barrier to a great name? You. You and your personal taste. Objectivity in naming is the hardest thing to achieve and this makes naming not just problematic but downright frustrating. Don’t ignore the criteria that you set out with, they may help you to see more clearly.
8. Finally, give yourself time to succeed. You cannot hope to produce a golden piece of intellectual property in a few days, or over night, so don’t believe anyone who tells you that they can.
Naming is tough, very much like a game of ‘Snakes and Ladders’ but, as long as you understand that at the start you won’t be disappointed.
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