Skip to main content
Brand Names

How to Name Your Brand: A Founder's Complete Guide

·12 min read

Your brand name is the first thing customers will learn about you. It appears on every touchpoint — your website, your business cards, your social media profiles, and in every conversation about your company. Getting it right matters.

The 5 Types of Brand Names

Before you start brainstorming, understand the five categories of brand names:

Descriptive

General Electric, PayPal

Tells you exactly what the company does. Easy to understand, hard to trademark.

Invented

Kodak, Xerox, Google

Completely made up. Highly trademarkable, but requires marketing spend to build meaning.

Blended

Pinterest (pin+interest), Instagram (instant+telegram)

Combines real words into something new. Best of both worlds — meaningful AND unique.

Metaphorical

Amazon, Apple, Nike

Uses existing words with symbolic meaning. Memorable, but domain availability is challenging.

Acronymic

IBM, BMW, IKEA

Shortened from longer names. Efficient, but lacks personality at first.

Why Blended Names Are the Sweet Spot

Blended names — portmanteaus created from combining two meaningful words — have become the dominant naming strategy in tech. Think about it: Pinterest (pin + interest), Instagram (instant + telegram), Netflix (net + flicks), Spotify (spot + identify), Microsoft (micro + software).

These names work because they carry embedded meaning (you can feel what the company does) while being unique enough to trademark and short enough to remember.

The Brand Naming Checklist

  • 1Is it easy to spell? (No unusual letter combinations)
  • 2Is it easy to pronounce? (Read it aloud — does it flow?)
  • 3Is the .com domain available? (Or a credible alternative like .co, .io)
  • 4Is it trademarkable? (Search USPTO and EUIPO)
  • 5Does it work internationally? (Check for offensive meanings in other languages)
  • 6Is it short? (Ideally under 10 characters)
  • 7Is it memorable after hearing it once?
  • 8Are social media handles available?

Generate Your Brand Name

Our Brand Name Generator takes two keywords that describe your business and blends them into dozens of unique, pronounceable brand name candidates. Each result is scored for quality, and we show you which part came from which keyword.

Try Our Brand Name Generator

Enter two keywords and get dozens of unique brand name ideas — free and instant.

🏢 Generate Brand Names