Thinking of a name for a startup

Written on 05 January 2014

My sister approached me recently for help to rename her startup, Pretty Swirls, an online cake business. I told her that I'm not the right person to ask because I am bad with coming up with names ever since I was playing Maple Story at the age of 10. However, after reading that we can become more creative by practising idea generation , I decided to give it a try! First, from what my sister told me, I identified the problems and issues with the current name, Pretty Swirls :

  • People that she met could not pronounce "Swirls " properly or found it hard to pronounce. This made her dishearten as her business's name is mispronounced most of the time, especially at marketing events.
    • This also meant that potential customers, who have heard of her business, might not be able to find her website online as they don't know the name exactly.
  • Some people could not understand the name immediately because they do not know the meaning of "swirls".
    • This meant that people who heard of her business's name might not know what her business is about, which can lead to possible loss of potential customers.

Second, based on above mentioned issues and my sister's request, I listed down the criteria for possible names:

  • The name has to be easy to pronounce.
  • The name has to be easily understood.
  • The name has to have some relevance to the business. (Though this is not necessary, I feel that it is better that people can roughly guess the business just by hearing the name).
  • She would like to have words like cakes, miss, art, lace, lush, sweet, beauty in the name.
  • The domain has to be available since it's an online business.

Finally, I came up with a list of suggestions, as part of practising idea generation, for her to choose from:

  • Bake Lady
  • 10 Grams or TenGrams or (a relevant number) Grams
  • Grams of Sugar or 100 Grams of Sugar
  • Beautifully
  • Prettify

Ultimately, I feel that she has to like the name herself because it will stay with her business, hopefully, forever from now on. It's not advisable to keep changing the name of a business because the reputation built up using the old name might not be transferred to the new name properly which can cause customers be confused and the founder may have to rebuild the business's reputation with the new name. How do you usually come up with names for your company or products? Share them in the comments! (: Alfred

startups