Are all the good names for technology companies dismantled?

Bebo, Etsy and Kijiji sound more like the first words of a child than like the names of technology companies, but this is so. This is an excellent example of how difficult it is to give a simple and “speaking” name for a startup.



In modern conditions it is very difficult to find a common word in order to name your company. The times when companies called simple words, such as Apple, are long gone.



The main reason for this situation is a decrease in the number of free domain names. Now over 193 million domain names are registered on the Internet and hundreds of thousands more are acquired every month. How to choose a good name in such a situation? It all depends on how you evaluate its quality.



Should it cause a definite reaction, report something? If you consider the name as an information platform, then it should tell people about what you are doing, or, in the case of technology companies, cause interest.

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Usual names such as Google, Digg, Twitter, Skype or Yahoo certainly fit into the category of names that cause a certain reaction, and to some extent "foolish" names. Google has become perhaps one of the main driving forces behind this trend. The name comes from the word "googol", meaning one with 100 zeros. For the founders of the company, it symbolized their main mission - to organize an infinite amount of information on the Internet.



Now the unusual word has become a verb and is used in speech along with the words used daily. If earlier we searched, now we are “google”.



The same goes for Twitter. According to the authors of the service, the name was chosen this way, because the birds communicate with each other using twitter (tweet). And now the word “chirp” also means to quickly tell something to friends and acquaintances. Similarly, a successful company can give meaning to a name that may seem controversial at first. Each name has disadvantages, but the main thing is how the company uses it as a brand.



Since Google has become successful, more and more companies come up with at least fancy names for themselves. Whimsical words or phrases that are funny combined not only to find a free domain for them, they also give companies the opportunity to characterize themselves with this word. Cody Brown, founder of the Kommons social news platform, believes the company’s name has provided space for business growth. It became a compromise between being more specific and giving a solid first impression, or being more extensive and opening up new possibilities in the future. At that time, the domain with the correct spelling of the word “commons” was taken, and I had to change one letter, keeping the sound. And such a domain name was able to register.



Adding, deleting, or changing one or more letters in a dictionary word has become another trend when naming a company. Flickr, Tumblr, Vimeo, Kommons and Hipmunk were born this way. And the main reason why we encounter startups with such fancy names is the availability of domains with the same name.



The first thing many companies are trying to do is make sure that the domain name they want to use can be registered. And it takes a lot of time to find a good name for the domain. In other words, the domain is all.



The activities of technology companies are often complex and incomprehensible to users, so a creatively designed logo or name allows companies to be more accessible. There is no limit to human creativity. But if you manage to come up with a name that, in addition to the sonority, will receive an excellent domain, then this will give you strength.



via CNN