How To Choose a Brand Name: 8 Qualities of a Good Brand Name

"A brand is a promise. A great brand is a promise kept."
- Dave Logan, American business professor and author

Choosing a brand name is an important decision for any business. With its central role in branding and marketing, the brand name of your business can impact its success both in the short and long terms.

So, how do you choose a good brand name? In this article, we will help you do just that by discussing eight characteristics of a good brand name and help you strengthen your brand image in the market.

Fresh

A good brand name should sound current. Brand names that give an air of a now bygone era can seem stale to a modern customer. So, when selecting your brand name, think about how it will sound in the future.

Ideally, a brand name should be timeless and fresh enough to capture the imagination of your target market forevermore. You do not want to sound too contrived or pandering, however, so be sure to find a balance.

Examples of brand names that have done this successfully:

• Apple: Successfully used a word out of context. 'Apple' will be a word used just as frequently now as in a hundred years, making the brand name effectively never age.
• Lego: Combined the first two letters of the Danish term 'leg godt' which means 'play well.' So, for Danish speakers, much like Apple, the name 'Lego' will only age as the language does. Meanwhile, for non-Danish speakers, the name is so nonsensical as to never attach itself firmly to one particular era.
• Coca-Cola: The brand name is derived from the two main ingredients; Coca leaf and Kola nuts. It has maintained its freshness and relevancy even 136 years later.
• Etsy: A name, seemingly meaningless yet managed to create an identity for the audience. Like Lego, since the name has no literal meaning, it will make just as much sense in the future as it does now, making it age much more slowly.
• Starbucks: Although technically derived from the classic novel Mobi Dick, to a modern audience unaware of its origins, the name 'Starbucks' is a simple compound of two regularly-used English words, 'star' and 'bucks'.

An example of how brand names might lose their freshness can be seen in the out-dated practice of naming brands after people. Once a common practice around the turn of the 20th century, brand names these days tend not to contain the names of actual people. There are nevertheless many brands which have survived since then, like Ford and Johnson & Johnson amongst others.

A good fit for the purpose

A good brand name should align with the business' values and image so that it accurately reflects its brand personality.

The brand name 'Google' is perhaps one of the best ever brand names in this respect, since it conveys purpose through its similarity to the word 'goggle' while also sounding fun - a vibe reinforced by its use of multiple bright colors in its logo. The name 'Google' therefore communicates both the function of the service which the business provides as well as its most crucial brand characteristics.

So, if you have found a brand name which you think might work, consider two things:

1. What product or service does this name seem to imply the business sells?
2. Does the brand name fit into the character of what you want your brand to be?

If the answers to both of the above questions are positive, then you may have yourself a good brand name!

Memorable

Naturally, a memorable brand name helps potential customers recall the brand when searching for a particular product or service. A more memorable brand name can therefore feed into both brand awareness and brand recognition, either of which can translate directly into increased profitability.

According to a study by Alvino and Bakkers, high brand recognition both improves the perceived quality of a good or service and increases the willingness of consumers to pay for the brand's products. A memorable brand name can therefore give your business more room to increase prices and hence revenues.

Here are some tips on how to choose a memorable brand name:

1. Keep it short and simple – Keep your name short, simple, and easy to pronounce. The shorter the name, the easier it is for customers to remember and recognize it.

2. Make it meaningful – A brand name that conveys a certain meaning or identity and which ties into the products or services you offer is going to be innately more memorable when customers are trying to recall brands which sell exactly those products or services.

3. Ensure it is flexible – Make sure the brand name is flexible and can grow with your business. It should be able to span different products and services as your business expands.

4. Use auditory emphases - for example, use rhyming (e.g. 7-Eleven or Support Resort) or alliteration (e.g. Chuck E. Cheese)

Examples of brand names that stick in my mind include:

• Youtube
• Tik-Tok
• Nike
• WhatsApp
• KFC
• Reddit

Conducive to visual branding

Visual branding is almost always a crucial component of marketing your brand. Much of the personality and unique flavor of a brand can be attributed to the identifying aesthetics put forward by a business. A good brand name must, therefore, also facilitate good visual branding.

How can a brand name help with the visuals though? Well, there are a few clear ways in which a particular brand name might help or hinder a business' visual branding.

• Name length: Brand names that are overly long may be difficult to position in any visual marketing. Short names, on the other hand, can fit snugly in visual contexts. So, once again, short brand names are better.
• Word-visuals association: Some words ooze visuals. It is hard to hear the word 'orange' and not see the color. A word like 'proprietary', meanwhile, probably inspires less imagination in the mind's eye. A brand name with a good visual association would consequently contribute to any visual branding.
• Letter stylization: Letters themselves can be drawn artistically, so brand names which are identifiable in one or two letters can immediately offer good visual branding.

A few examples of brand names which produce good visual branding are:

1. Dove: The brand name is short and presents an immediate mental image, that of a white dove, meaning the brand name can be easily associated with a soft and white bar of soap.
2. HP: Although officially titled the Hewlett-Packard Development Company, by reducing the brand name to just 'HP', the letters of the brand name itself can become the visual branding.
3. WordPress: The stylized typography of the 'W' in the WordPress logo is distinct and immediately recognizable. The typography is also similar enough to traditional newspaper fonts that a simple 'W' can be easily associated with the word 'press'.
4. Marvel: The six-letter word fits astoundingly well into a simple red box which, when combined with a unique but easy-to-read font, make the visual branding of the comic book publisher easily identifiable by its audience.
5. Tangerine Telecom: An Australian telecom service provider whose visual branding is exactly what you would expect: heavily focused on tangerines. In this case, the brand name and visual presentation of the business work in tandem, heightening the effectiveness of both.

Unique

In marketing, a unique brand name can go a long way. Not only is a unique brand name more memorable, but it also differentiates its brand from others in the same market.

In a study of their own database, Kantar found that brand distinction was strongly, positively correlated with the willingness of a consumer to purchase the brand's products or services. A unique brand name therefore gets you more from each sale, generating revenue all on its own.

Unfortunately, however, there is no simple algorithm which yields a unique brand name. It is simply a matter of getting creative!

Here are a few examples of unique brand names and how they were created:

1. IKEA: A four-letter word made unforgettable simply because of how unique a name it is. IKEA was founded by Ingvar Kamprad, a Swedish entrepreneur born on his family farm, Elmtaryd, near Agunnaryd. Add the first letters of those four names and you get IKEA, a unique and highly personal business name.
2. Adidas: Named after its founder Adi Dassler, creating a unique and phonetically pleasing brand name. Interestingly, Dassler's brother, Rudolf Dassler, created his own brand called RuDa which was later renamed to Puma. The theme is clear: using an existing name, you can directly or indirectly create a distinct brand name.
3. Hyundai: Hyeondae simply means the modern age in Korean. So, although the name might not be terribly unique in Korea, the brand name 'Hyundai' remains very distinct throughout most of the world in places where the world has no linguistic cousins.
4. Nivea: Using the classical language Latin, 'Nivea' was derived from niveus, meaning snow-covered or snow-white. In its feminine form, niveus becomes nivea, so 'Nivea' is yet another international brand which takes its unique name from a single, often foreign language.

Simple

For a brand name to be good, customers must be able to easily comprehend, spell, and pronounce it. In other words, a good brand name is simple. Ideally, a brand name would be simple enough to be able to gain immediate recognition from a consumer.

How simple is simple enough? Fortunately, a nice and simple brand name will roll off the tongue, so it should never be too difficult to tell whether a name is over-complicated.

Examples of simple brand names include:

1. BBC: The British Broadcasting Corporation has a very simple acronym which is easy to read and pronounce for any English speaker.
2. Facebook: A combination of two of some of the simplest and most common words in the English language made one of the most instantly recognizable brand names in the world.
3. Zoom: This brand name is proof that one syllable is all that is needed. Phonetically, the word 'Zoom' is one of the easiest to pronounce in English even though its distinctive 'z' and 'oo' sounds make it very unique, making for a highly effective brand name.
4. 7-Eleven: Simply two numbers. That is it. It is hardly possible to get simpler than that.

Flexible

A good brand name should be versatile and not too limiting. A brand name that is too inflexible may prevent a brand from being able to adapt to future growth and expansion plans.

Common mistakes that may limit the versatility of your brand include:

• Naming your brand after your geographic location: Obviously, geographically restrictive names can cause difficulties when moving or expanding.
• Naming a business after a single product: If your brand name is "Pens and Nothing but Pens", then what do you do when you want to start selling rulers? Indeed, what happens if pens become obsolete? Make sure your name is meaningful without limiting business.
• Naming a brand after a third-party product: Apart from the very real legal problems that such a brand may face, brand names which restrict their brands to simply supplementary products will be an obstacle to any expansion plans.

Legally available

A good brand name should be legally defensible. That is, you need to be able to register the brand name as a business name and perhaps also trademark the name. Note that in some jurisdictions, you must register your brand before using it. So be sure to check the relevant business name register(s) and trademark database(s) to ensure your preferred brand name is available.

Do not choose brand names that sound too similar to any other well-known brands. A brand name like "Koka Kola" or "abibas" will get you sued.

Available online

Before settling on your brand name, check to ensure that you can register a proper domain name for the new brand and secure the relevant social media accounts. This will make it easier for customers to find and interact with your business online.

For the domain name, note that there are many more options than just .com domains or geographic domain names. Some examples of top-level domain names that you can register include:

1. .dev: A top-level domain operated by Google, .dev is a domain exclusively dedicated to developers.
2. .io: Even though .io is a ccTLD for British Indian Ocean Territory; nowadays, this domain name is popular among tech and SaaS startups. Commonly used as an abbreviated form of Input/Output, .io has gained popularity among web applications and tech startups.
3. .ai: Like .io, this domain is also a country code-level domain (for Anguilla) that is now widely used by tech companies providing artificial intelligence (AI) or AI services.
4. .tech: Shortened from technology, this domain name is mostly used by tech companies or other technology service providers.
5. .co: Primarily assigned to Colombia as a ccTLD, it is used by companies, organizations, and different businesses worldwide.

Conclusion

Your brand name is the verbal gateway between you and your customers' memories; it is the strength of the faint thread which draws consumers to your products. Choosing a good brand name is, therefore, a key component of growing your business.

Fortunately, good brand names have several commonalities. In this article, we explored eight of these commonalities and considered how they might help you get the right brand name for your business. Good luck!