How did you choose the name for your web company?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23456

by kingnothing • 19 years ago

4 9 19 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm in the midst of working on a couple of different ideas for a web app and am having a hard time coming up with good names. Any advice?

gibsonf1• 19 years ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=17449

bootload• 19 years ago

One of the founders of a startup I once worked for, took great pride in naming his startup using a euphemism for his todger (Monty Python, meaning of life, Part VI: The Autumn Years, 'not the Noel Coward Song' http://www.guntheranderson.com/v/data/isntitaw.htm )

Now as a private company this was fine. But I imagine there was lots of chuckling going on explaining this question to the VC's and companies who eventually invested. The biggest laugh came as the company eventually went public and was sold out to a rather conservative consulting company. Took a while till the name was dropped.

dawie• 19 years ago

Try http://grabagooddomain.com.

figgy• 19 years ago

:: I made up the name.

:: It's one word

:: People here it and wonder what it is - drives them a bit crazy and they just have to find out (or so we always hope)

:: It's easy to say, sounds friendly

:: Easy to spell

:: Timeless/trend-less

Those are the basic tools we used. From there it was a lot of laughter and fun. :)

kyro• 19 years ago

Just write down a bunch, A BUNCH, of words that relate to the purpose of your site, the effects you want it to have on society, etc. and just sift through them. Try and combine them, but keep it short.

edawerd• 19 years ago

I pretty much based the name of my company based on what domain names were available. I wanted it to be short, catchy, and easy to remember. I'm not the most creative person, so I asked some friends for suggestions. In the end, it was my friend who came up with the name (mygrub.net)

staunch• 19 years ago

I like nonsensical names because descriptive names tend to sound extremely boring and can limit you. With time anything you choose will come to feel familiar.

One method I like to start with is using foreign words written in latin alphabet. Japanese works great.

Here's a good site with vocabulary lists: http://www.learn-japanese.info/indexv.html

wammin• 19 years ago

searching GoDaddy for a good domain, we stumbled on wamily.com and it was available and so perfect. Wamily = "Web Family". The choice of the name actually helped us shape the product.

How did you choose the name for your web company?

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