Almost every company name in use is one of six shapes. Once you can see which shape a name is, the arguments about it stop being matters of taste: each one has a known cost, and the cost turns up in the same three places every time. Whether people can spell it after hearing it once. Whether they can remember it a week later. And whether the domain is still free.
The Six Shapes
Listed from the easiest domain to the hardest, which is close to the reverse of how immediately each one makes sense to a stranger.
Invented
A word made up from nothing: Kodak, Xerox, Zalando. Nothing in any language competes with it, so the domain is almost always free and the name is yours everywhere at once. The cost is that it means nothing until you spend time and money teaching people what it means, and it is the shape most likely to be misspelled.
Blend
Two words merged where they meet, so the result is new but carries a piece of each. Instagram from instant and telegram, Microsoft from microcomputer and software, Pinterest from pin and interest. A blend keeps some of the meaning an invented word throws away and usually stays short, which is why it remains the best trade in the list.
Suffixed
A root plus a short ending that turns it into a brand: Shopify, Spotify, Bitly, Calendly. The ending is what makes the spelling unusual enough to still be available. It reads as a company immediately, and it also reads as one of thousands, because this has been the default in software naming for fifteen years.
Compound
Two real words run together: Facebook, Salesforce, Snowflake, Mailchimp. Its great virtue is that it spells itself from hearing, which is worth more than it sounds. Its problem is that both halves are ordinary words, so the good pairs went years ago and you should expect to work through several before one is free.
Alliterative
Two words sharing an initial sound: PayPal, Best Buy, Coca-Cola. Repetition is a genuine memory aid, and this is the shape people recall most reliably in tests of their own shortlists. The constraint is brutal: fixing the first letter cuts your available vocabulary by roughly a factor of twenty, and the memorable pairs are the ones everyone else also thought of.
Evocative
An ordinary word applied where it has no business being: Apple, Amazon, Blue Bottle, Red Hat. The strongest for recall, because the picture arrives before the explanation does. Also the hardest to get: single common words are gone, and the better a two-word pair reads, the less likely it is still available.
What Each Shape Costs
Spelling means whether someone can write it down correctly after hearing it once. Domain odds describe the shape, not any particular name.
| Shape | Domain odds | Spells itself? | Says what you do? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Invented | Usually free | No, expect to spell it out | Nothing at all |
| Blend | Usually free | Roughly half the time | Hints at it |
| Suffixed | Often free | Yes, if the root is a real word | Hints at it |
| Compound | Often taken | Yes | Hints at it |
| Alliterative | Often taken | Yes | Sometimes |
| Evocative | Rarely free | Yes | Nothing at all |
It Has to Survive Being Said Out Loud
Every name eventually gets dictated down a phone line, read off the side of a van, and typed from memory by somebody who heard it once at a party. A name that has to be spelled out every time is paying a small tax on each of those occasions, and the tax compounds.
There is measured evidence that it is real. Alter and Oppenheimer, writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2006, compared newly listed companies whose names were easy to pronounce against those whose names were not, and found the fluent ones performed better shortly after listing. The effect was concentrated in the first days and faded afterwards, so it is not a rule for picking investments. What it is good evidence for is the underlying point: how easily a name goes down changes how people feel about it before they know a single other thing.
The test that matters is cheaper than any study. Say the name to somebody once, then ask them to write it down. Whatever comes back is what your customers will type into a search box. Invented names fail this most often, which is the one real argument against the shape that is otherwise the easiest to get.
Read it again with the space removed
A pair of words that is perfectly clear with a space between them can spell something else entirely once it becomes a domain. This has caught real companies with real budgets, and it is always discovered by somebody else, usually in public. The generator screens every two-word suggestion in its joined form for exactly this, but the check takes two seconds by eye and is worth doing on any name you did not get from a tool.
Generate names in all six shapes
Tuned by industry and tone, each one shown with the domain it would take.
Why Everything Short Is Already Taken
The supply of short domains has not grown in twenty years and demand never stopped. Single dictionary words went first, then two-word pairs of common words, then the pairs that merely sounded good. What is left in that space is held by people who are not using it and are waiting to sell it.
This is what pushes serious naming towards the top of the list above, and it is worth being clear about why. An invented word is not chosen because it is a better name than Apple. It is chosen because Apple is not available and something has to be.
The three usual escapes are worth ranking. Adding a word like get, try or the reads as a second choice and hands a share of your traffic to whoever owns the version without it, permanently. Taking a newer extension is fine now in a way it was not ten years ago, and is much better than a compromised name on a .com. Inventing or blending a word is the only approach that reliably finds something free and short at the same time, which is why so much of the last decade's naming looks the way it does.
Whatever you choose, check the name at a registrar rather than on a lookup site. Availability moves by the hour and the only authority is the place that would sell it to you.
How to Test a Shortlist
By the time you have five candidates, opinions stop being useful and small tests start being. These take an afternoon between them.
The dictation test
Say each name once to five people who have not seen it written, and ask them to spell it. Count how many get it right. This single number eliminates more candidates than every other test combined, and it is the one people skip.
The week test
Show the shortlist, then ask the same people a week later which ones they remember. Recall after a delay is what a name is actually for, and it rarely matches which one everyone preferred on the day.
The search test
Search the name on its own, then with your industry beside it. You are looking for who you would be competing with for your own name, and for anything already sitting on the first page that you would rather not be confused with.
The handle sweep
Check the name on every platform you might ever want, not just the one you are opening today, and claim them the same day you find them free. Handles cost nothing to hold and are impossible to get back.
The noisy room test
Say it across a room with music playing. Names that rely on a soft consonant or an unusual vowel fall apart here, and every trade show, phone call and podcast introduction is this test.
How Long Is Too Long
There is no rule, but there is a strong pattern. Most names people can recall without effort sit between five and fourteen characters, and almost none of the ones you can name from memory run past twenty.
The reason is not aesthetic. A long name gets shortened by other people, and you do not get to choose the abbreviation they land on. If your name is going to become three letters or a single syllable in everyday use, it is better to find out while you can still pick which three.
Count the length in the form people type, with spaces removed. A two-word name that looks comfortable on a sign can be an awkward run of eighteen characters in a browser bar, and the browser bar is where it will spend most of its life.
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