Should you use AI to name
your business?
Naming
AI has gotten pretty good at naming. Slightly inconvenient thing for someone who sells naming to admit, but here we are.
I’ve been trying it since GPT-4. Early on, the names were painfully descriptive, full of clichés, and generally the sort of thing I’d tell a client to avoid. It’s much better now. I can get some genuinely interesting directions out of it.
I also know what to ask it. And I know what I’m looking at when it answers. That’s where this gets a little more complicated.
10,000 possibilities. What now?
AI can feel like having the keys to the world. You can keep asking for more names, and it will happily keep giving them to you. Eventually, somebody has to choose one.
That decision starts before the list. What are we trying to communicate? What would make this business interesting in its category? Have we actually figured that out yet? A good prompt depends on those answers. So does knowing when you’ve found something worth pursuing.
Then the variables start compounding. Something sounds great. Okay. Now let’s see what else it needs to do.
A name makes the shortlist. Now what?
0 / 6Read all six considerations
- Meaning
- Can it hold what makes the business special? Think about its tone, feeling, and the world you could build around it. A strong name can keep giving you ideas for how the business looks, sounds, and shows up as it grows.
- Say. Spell. Remember.
- If someone hears it, can they spell it? If they see it, can they say it? And will they remember it later? Short can help, but a longer name may do a better job in your category.
- Culture
- What associations will your audience bring to it? A clever reference only helps if it lands with the people you’re trying to reach.
- Category
- Does it actually stand apart? Look at the competition before declaring victory. A short name can disappear in a category full of short names.
- Availability
- Explore workable domains and potential trademark conflicts. Search similar names and related goods or services, too. An available URL alone doesn’t clear a name; legal clearance needs qualified review.
- Room to grow
- Will it still make sense if the business changes? A name built around a food truck can get awkward when you open a restaurant.
Explore the things we consider together. There’s no score that can choose the name for you.
Notice I didn’t ask if you like it.
Of course we want you to like it. You’re going to be saying it quite a lot.
But especially when people are naming their first business, “I like it” can end up doing most of the decision-making. All those business considerations above deserve a vote, too. We want a name you love and a good understanding of what it can do for the business.
There’s no perfect name.
You can poke holes in anything. Imagine pitching Virgin for the first time: “Does that make us sound inexperienced?” “Will someone be offended?” You can practically hear the meeting.
Find a possible downside, discard the name, ask for another hundred. Eventually you’re left with something so thoroughly unobjectionable that nobody remembers it. A name may not do every one of these things brilliantly. It should do most of them well.
The work is weighing the opportunity against the risk. Which concerns matter for this business, in this market? Which can we work with? Which should stop us? Shorter isn’t automatically better. Neither is more literal. Even a name’s shape and rhythm can suggest a mood before anyone explains it.
When we were naming Notably, I reminded the client that people generally care more about what a business can do for them than a lengthy explanation of its name. Being easy to remember and recognize matters. Your name doesn’t have to deliver the whole sales presentation.
Will it still fit when the business changes?
A food truck came to us with a name built around being mobile. Reasonable enough. Except they were opening a brick-and-mortar.
Now the thing that made the name so descriptive was the thing making it awkward. The business had somewhere to go. The name hadn’t planned on coming.
That’s the kind of blind spot we’re looking for. We also see ideas that feel wonderfully original until we look around the category. You and your AI can be very excited about something the competition has already done.
What are you hiring a naming agency for?
Imagination, judgment, and a better view of what this thing could become. A name can give an entire business an idea to operate through. It can suggest the language, the identity, the experiences, even what you do next. In many of our projects, we’ve found names that meet all these considerations and that our clients love. That’s what we’re aiming for.
For Notably, the idea grew into a whole highlighting motif: drawing attention to what deserves to be noticed. “Worth noting” gave us language to work with, too. The name started informing how the brand looked, sounded, and showed up. That’s world-building: something the business can keep drawing from. The name should be working harder.
So yes, try AI. Explore. See where it takes you. Then look closely at what you’re choosing, what it opens up, and what you might be missing.
When we’re doing our job well, we’re finding a bigger opportunity for the business and helping you understand the risks of taking it. That’s a pretty worthwhile thing to have someone thinking about before you put the name on everything.