Invented, altered or plain words: styles of business name

Business names come in a handful of styles, and the style matters more than it first seems. It decides how quickly customers understand you, how easy the name is to find free, and how strongly the law will protect it. synym makes three styles of name (a single word, a word with a new ending, and two words), and each sits somewhere on the scale below.

The scale of distinctiveness

Trade mark law in most countries sorts names by how much they describe what you sell. The terms vary, but the idea is the same in the EU, the US, the UK and Switzerland:

1. Generic. The ordinary name for the product: Bread for a bakery. Never protectable, because everyone needs to be able to use the word.
2. Descriptive. Says directly what the product is or does: a quality plus the product, such as “fresh” with “loaves” for a bakery. Usually refused registration, or protected only once the name has become known for you after years of use.
3. Suggestive (allusive). Hints at a quality without saying it: Netflix, Coppertone. The customer has to think for a moment. Generally registrable.
4. Arbitrary. A real word with nothing to do with the product: Apple for computers, Shell for oil. Strong protection.
5. Fanciful (invented). A word made up for the purpose: Kodak, Xerox. The strongest protection of all.

The trade-off is plain: the more a name explains itself, the weaker its protection and the more likely someone else already uses something similar. The more distinctive a name, the more you have to teach people what it means.

A single word

A real word used as a name: a bird, an element, a feature of the landscape. When the word is unrelated to what you sell, this is the arbitrary style, and it can be very strong: easy to say and spell, memorable, and protectable.

The difficulty is availability. Short English words were registered as .com domains decades ago, so a single word that’s free is often long, unusual or from another language. That’s why synym also looks at Latin and Ancient Greek words: aurum (Latin for gold) or kairos (Greek for the right moment) has the solidity of a real word but is much more likely to be free. Check the meaning carefully, though; classical words often have more than one.

A word with a new ending

A real word, shortened to its root and given a new ending, as Spotify is spot + -ify. These sit between suggestive and fanciful: the root hints at the idea, while the ending makes the whole thing new.

This style is the easiest to find free, because the combinations are endless, and invented words protect well. The risks are that the result can sound like every other start-up (-ly, -ify and -io are heavily used), and that a clumsy join produces something hard to say. Say each candidate out loud; synym’s final scoring tries to favour names that flow, but your ear is the final judge.

Two words

An adjective and a noun, joined or not: a colour, a metal or a mood paired with an everyday object. These are easy to understand and to remember, because each half is familiar, and they can tell a small story about the business.

On the scale, a pair is often suggestive and sometimes arbitrary. Its weakness is that the trade mark is only as distinctive as the combination: “quick” and “print” are both descriptive, and so is the pair for a printing shop. Pairs that join two unexpected words (a metal and a lamp, say, for an accountant) are stronger than pairs that describe the product. Two-word names are also longer as domains, so decide early whether you’ll write it as one word or with a hyphen (most people leave the hyphen out when they type).

Other styles

synym doesn’t make these, but they’re worth knowing:

• Founders’ names (Ferrari, Smith & Partners): personal and trustworthy, but tied to a person and often hard to register, since others share the name.
• Places (Zurich Insurance): give a sense of origin, but are usually descriptive of geography and weak as trade marks unless the link is fanciful.
• Initials (IBM, HSBC): concise once famous, but forgettable and easily confused when new.
• Misspellings (Lyft, Flickr): can turn a taken word into a free one, at the cost of spelling it out on the telephone test described in how to choose a business name.

Which should you choose?

If you’ll trade in many countries, or expect competitors to copy you, lean towards invented and arbitrary names: they are easier to register and defend. If you’re a local business that depends on people understanding you at a glance, a suggestive pair can be worth the weaker protection. Either way, avoid names that simply describe the product, both because you probably can’t register them and because a competitor probably already has something close.

On synym, “All three” is the default because it compares every style against your description and lets the scores decide. If you already know the style you want, choosing it narrows the list to that style. For the legal side, see trade mark basics.