Branding
Language
Notes on naming things
I am not a naming specialist and I try not to pretend otherwise. But identity work drags you into naming constantly — product tiers, collection names, section headings, the label on a button — and the same few principles keep holding.
Descriptive beats clever, almost always
A clever name has to be explained once to every person who encounters it. A descriptive name explains itself and then gets out of the way. The cleverness tax compounds: every piece of copy, every piece of onboarding, every conversation a salesperson has, all slightly more expensive forever.
The exception is when the category is so crowded that descriptiveness makes you invisible. Then distinctiveness genuinely is worth the tax. But that is a much rarer situation than the people selling naming workshops suggest.
Say it on a phone call
The single best test I know. Read the name out to someone who has never seen it written and ask them to spell it back. Most names that look elegant on a screen fail this immediately, and the failure will follow the client through every customer service call they ever have.
Check what it means where the client actually operates
Not just “does it mean something rude in another language”, which everyone remembers. More often the problem is that it means something specific and unglamorous in the client’s own market — a competitor’s discontinued product, a government programme, a slang term that is three years old and slightly mocking.
Ask four people who live there. It takes an afternoon and it has saved me twice.
Previous article
Next article
Got a brand that deserves to be remembered?
I take on a limited number of projects each quarter so every one gets my full attention. Tell me what you’re building and let’s see if we’re a fit.
