Redo The Web

How I Found My Company Name

I needed a name for my new company. I wanted a name easily understandable by French people, because most of my business will probably be in France. But on the other hand, French tech words sound dated, and innovation mostly happens in English, so I opted for an English name. I wanted a short name so that people could remember it. And I wanted a name with an available domain name and trademark.

How I Found My Company Name

That being said, what should my company name evoke? Without revealing too much about the project itself, let’s say that the name should mix technology and craftsmanship, and should not be too specialized. I chose culinary arts as a good example of handcraft, and also because culinary terms are often associated with pleasure.

So I started to imagine names like WebFumet, PastaCore, OliveOutput, or AsynchronousPie. Soon I understood that I would need a much broader choice to pick from, so I looked into organizing a brainstorming session.

But wait a minute. Generating names based on specific constraints is something a program could totally do. In fact, I developed a library called Faker one year ago, designed exactly for the purpose of generating stuff. How hard could it be to develop a company name generator based on Faker?

Not that hard. It took me a couple minutes to gather tech and culinary terms, assemble them into a new Faker provider, and start generating thousands of company names like DeprecatedCooker, PingPesto, MashupMill, LemonMeta, or ExceptionRosemary. Checking the domain name availability automatically took a couple more minutes. Check the CompanyNameGenerator source code on GitHub to see how easy it is to build your own generator.

After that, I took some time to submit my favorite names to my associate, to some of my friends, and to business contacts. I observed their reaction to each name. I collected feedback on the impressions and ideas the names could lead to. I also checked if the names were catchy enough, and if they could be outdated soon.

I reduced the list little by little, and soon I was left with my best choice, a name I could live with for the next 50 years and be continuously proud of. A name that would grow in my customers’ imagination. A name in which I would put all my work, passion, and art. A name that would be like a flag to gather a team of geeks sharing my vision. You know what that name is? ChocoLabs.

Published on 26 Oct 2012 with tags not technical

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