Does anyone have any suggestions for thinking up brand names? Any on-line tools that help? I often rack my brains only to find the trademark already taken.

Thanks,

Ron

I remember going to a conference a few years ago when this was brought up and I think one of the ways the pros do it is to take the product and to say, right if this was a flower it would be..., if this was an animal it would be....., if this was a country it would be....., this then gives a list of words (you get focus groups to do all this), and then you describe the product as explicitly as possible and you then have a list of words that you can work on. You can then look at shortening these names or playing about with the words.

I don't think theres an online way of looking at it, but I don't think even if there was it would be effective, its just one of those things that only the human brain can do.

It's supposed to be for domain names, but it's fun: www.nameboy.com

Not a bad idea. I have used nameboy to help find good domain names. Then I go to my favorite registrar to actually order the name. If you do it this way, you are sure to get the dotcom of your "brand" name.

Ahh yes, you too could spend £500,000 to re-brand your company, only to find that it doesn't work :) Just like British Steel who spent £0.5m to rebrand to Corus - only they didn't remember that just up the road from the Scunthorpe works was a knicker making factory called Chroras - guess the £0.5m went on dohnuts and coffee rather than research.

All these fancy names people come up with, it's all a load of tosh if you ask me, a name should say what you're about, not like Consignia - does that say to you that we deliver mail and packages? Thought not.

Just create a list of three columns


super speed net
ultra disk calc
quik host sale
mega blog manager
killer ads service
gnarly prog write
holy porn show


And then mix and match one from each column.

killer-porn-show is no doubt already taken.

UltraSpeed Service might be good for a pusher.
SuperSpeed.NET would be great for the columbians.
Gnarly Blog Service would be a good tool for the above's customers, at least those of a decade ago.

Hey but what kind of a name is Scunthorpe?

Maybe they ate donuts too, in their day.

Hmmm, don't knock Scunthorpe else I might have to send some friends round to see you :D

:D