How synym finds a name

Most name generators glue a few words together and leave you to discover, one by one, that every result is taken. synym works the other way round: it makes a very large number of names, throws away the ones that are already in use, and only then spends effort deciding which of the survivors are good. This page explains each step, and what the checks can and can’t tell you.

1. Words that fit your business

You describe the business in a sentence or two, list a few qualities the name should suggest (“warm”, “precise”, “a Greek god”), and optionally give words to keep out. synym uses AI to gather words that suit them:

• English words, many hundreds of them, spread across the alphabet so the list isn’t all words beginning with a;
• Latin and Ancient Greek words, which give names a classical feel and are often free because few people think of them;
• endings, such as -ly, -ster or -ia, to turn a word into something new;
• adjectives and nouns, for names made of two words.

Each word is scored for how well it fits what you asked for. Your own qualities are always included, so if you asked for “honest”, honest is among the words.

You can also choose a longest name, from 4 to 8 letters, and synym keeps within it.

2. Making names

The kind of name you chose decides how the words are combined:

• A single word uses each word whole: the name of a bird, a star or a Greek goddess, say.
• One word altered to have a new ending joins the root of a word to an ending, the way Spotify joins spot and -ify. It also tries each word with no ending at all.
• Two words pairs adjectives with nouns: a colour or a metal with an everyday object, for instance.
• All three, the default, does all of these at once.

That gives many thousands of possible names. A name made of two well-fitting words starts near the top. Names containing a word you asked us to avoid are dropped, even when the word only appears by accident across the join.

3. Is the domain free?

Starting with the most promising names, synym checks whether each name’s domain looks free under the endings you ticked (.com, .net, .org, .io, .ai and others, plus your own country’s ending if we can tell where you are).

This is a quick heuristic check, not a lookup at the registry, so a domain shown as very probably available may occasionally turn out to be taken, and someone else may register it between our check and your purchase. The registrar will tell you for certain when you try to buy it.

4. Is there a matching trade mark?

We keep our own copies of the United States (USPTO) and European Union (EUIPO) trade mark registers, updated every day. A name gets a red light for a register if that register has a live mark (registered, or applied for and not yet refused) whose words are the same as the name, ignoring capitals, spaces, accents and punctuation. So a mark written in capitals, with a hyphen or with a ® still counts against the same words written as one name.

What this check doesn’t catch matters as much as what it does:

• Similar marks. Trade mark law protects against confusingly similar names, not just identical ones. A name one letter away from a registered mark, or one that sounds the same, could clash with it. We don’t judge similarity: that needs a person who knows the trade.
• Marks containing the name. A longer mark that includes the name, such as the name followed by “Garage”, doesn’t count against it in the list, though each name’s page lists such marks so you can look.
• Other countries, unregistered rights, company names and logos without words.

So a green light means “we found no identical live mark in these two registers”, not “this name is safe”. Our trade mark basics guide explains what to do next.

5. Choosing the best

Checking every name would be slow and wasteful, so synym checks the most promising names first, until it has a long shortlist that passes the filters you chose (by default: at least one free domain and no matching trade mark).

6. Judging the whole name

Two good halves don’t always make a good name: some joins are awkward to say, or read as something else. Each name on the shortlist is judged again as a whole, for how it sounds, how easy it is to say and spell, and how well it fits your business. The best name on the list is shown as 100, and the rest are ranked below it.

7. A page for each name

Open a name and you see its scores, the domains and their status, and the trade marks in each register with the same words or containing them. The page explains why the name scored as it did, and checks the trade mark registers again for the latest records, so you aren’t relying only on last night’s copy.

What we keep

We keep your search so the same link shows the same results, but not who made it, and the words you ask us to avoid never leave our server. The privacy page has the details.