Naming Your Business
Here are two lists most entrepreneurs do not want to land on.
1. Worst Company Names Of All Time, here laid out by Inc Magazine:
http://www.inc.com/ss/the-worst-company-names-of-all-time#0
2. Top 10 Worst Corporate Name Changes from Time Magazine:http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,1914815,00.html
What’s in a name?
So, where to start? Entrepreneur Magazine sets out some ideas in an animation on how to go about thinking of a name.
http://www.entrepreneur.com/video/235551
Legal Considerations
This Corporations Canada site offers clear guidelines on legal requirements for your company name. The name must, for instance, be: distinctive, not easily confused with any existing name or trademark, contain a legal element and not include unacceptable terms.
http://corporations.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/cd-dgc.nsf/eng/cs01191.html
Naming Subtleties
And if that’s not difficult enough, there are all the subtle psychological ways in which names influence us subconsciously. Here, for instance, is an NPR article on some of the research that Stanford Linguist Dan Jurafsky has done on the different ways we interpret vowels.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/12/07/143265882/vowels-control-your-brain
Brainstorming Names
List some of the names you have or are considering. Given some of the specific detail you have seen and read above:
1) which of these names are most risky and why?
2) Which of these names seems to fulfill the most requirements as listed above? Be sure to justify your ideas here with details from the insights above.
