Hip application name

Question

I have finished developing a quite useful small application. I would like to launch it, but I am not satisfied with it's name.

What techniques, websites do you recommend that can help a programmer construct a powerful, easy-to-remember application name?

For example:
Firefox is a very powerful name IMO, easy to remember, very visual. But I do not want to simply name my app IceCat because it does not suggest the purpose of the application. Although [ElementName]+[WildAnimalName] looks like a powerful application name generating technique.

Answer 1

What you're getting stuck on is having the name relevant to what you do. You need to get over that. After all, think about names like Google (which at some point will enter the dictionary as a word meaning "online search" because it's been that successful), Yahoo, Flickr, Facebook, etc. Any association with what they do varies from loose to nonexistant.

What you're going through is not a naming issue but a branding issue and for even small businesses you should really have a professional approach to that, even if its just to get a decent logo from one of the many places you can on the internet.

What's the difference? Consider Mac OS X. The release names are things like "Snow Leopard", "Leopard", "Tiger", etc. Now, there's obviously a big cat theme there. What do they have to do with an operating system? Again, absolutely nothing. But Apple have done two important things here:

1. In choosing a theme, they give an expectation to their users and with that comes comfort. A Mac user could see a headline like "Apple unleashes Cheetah" and from those three words would know that Apple has released an update to the operating system. That's powerful and useful; and
2. The particular theme was deliberately chosen for the connotations: big cats are hunters. They're sleek, fast and--let's face it--sexy. There's a reason the big cat theme was chosen over, say, small birds like canaries and finches.

Personally I think one of the best industries at this is the film and television industry. When movies start you often see logos for production companies and some of them are quite memorable in terms of name and/or logo.

I randomly came across a company called Melting Igloo Productions. Personally I think this is a brilliant name. What does it have to do with TV production? Absolutely nothing. But it's memorable and gives rise to a good logo.

Also consider your example: what does Firefox have to do with Web browsing? In fact, Firefox is the third name for the browser (after Phoenix then Firebird both abandoned due to trademark issues).

Things end up sounding cool because they are cool, not the other way around.

Answer 2

brainstorm and just write everything down, let the mind flow free

Answer 3

If you wish to keep it relevant at all (like flickr), write a list of words which describe the product, its user's environment, etc. Try combinations of the words and variations in phonetic spelling.

Answer 4

this sites can interest you

http://www.rhymer.com/questions.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_naming

but when I named my apps, I`m trying and trying and trying....

Answer 5

Firefox and similar are pretty effective but,

For some reason something like IceCat just doesn't appeal ><

I like names that are "web 2.0" (flickr, plurk, etc) but not too weird/obnoxious...

Answer 6

I find the following process useful:

1. put aside some time for "marketing purposes".
2. select your poison - beer, wine, spirits.
3. start yammering about your product and what it does, what sets it apart, what it means to you (hopefully you're not just talking to yourself here).
4. make wild connections between words and concepts. Go down that garden path and see what's there.
5. when you find a name that makes you feel right (like rolling on the floor in fits of laughter), you are done.

If the process fails, wait a week and try again. Heck, even if it works, repeat the process just for the fun of it.

I'll give you an example of how well this can work. We had a persistance library to turn into a product. I was all about serialisation and it was very fast - the name "Serial Killer" finally stuck when we thought about building an MP3 encoder called "Jack the Ripper" that would use the library. At that point we knew we would not find a better name.

BTW - I reserve all the rights on the "Jack the Ripper" name... what a winner.

Answer 7

If you want something slightly techy and ironic, there's always the "YA" ("Yet Another...") prefix. This makes naming very simple. Building a foosheet application? YAFS. What about a bar-processor? YABP.

Mind you, I'm the kind of person who finds recursive acronyms amusing, so you probably shouldn't take my advice on what to name stuff. I wouldn't.

Answer 8

Note that Firefox went through name changes for various reasons, including clashes with other products' names. Phoenix -> Firebird -> Firefox.

As has been noted - branding is not easy. Have you noticed how many big names are making up words because all the meaningful names are taken? Then you've got the risk of stumbling on a word that has pejorative meanings in some language you don't know: Sega took the Italian market by surprise.

I once wrote a program that processed a dictionary, recording the frequency of a letter appearing given the previous three letters. Then I wrote a program to construct random words, weighted using that frequency data. After filtering out real words, I had a list of pronounceable words, which could be eyeballed for suitability for the use in question.

Also, plunder folklore. Classical Greek and Roman mythology has probably been mined out - but there's plenty more cultures to look at.

Answer 9

Some considerations off the top of my head:

• Communicates the product such as Microsoft for microcomputer software.
• Characteristic such as Google which is a large number which appeals to smart people and fits the companies quest to organize loads of information.
• .com availability is an important consideration.
• phonetically easy - two syllables, less than 8 chars, should not require clarification example, "meeso with two e's dot com", "fire dash fox dot com", "the word three, then the numbers 60 dot com".
• Easy spelling and if you can avoid "ie", "sh", "th" as they can complicate spelling.
• Search Engine friendly for example calling yourself "Mobile Gaming Solutions" will make it hard for people to find you via a search engine.

Answer 10

Getting Real has an excellent chapter on the whole promo issue, including this article on the subject of naming.

Answer 11

For starters, there's some simple rules that can help you determine whether a product name is any good or not:

1. Imagine someone has told you the name of your product over the phone ten minutes ago - you haven't written it down, but now you're trying to find it online.

   • If your product is called something friendly, memorable and easy to spell (Facebook, Yahoo, TimeSnapper, Firefox, Youtube, Digsby, Twitter) then you'll probably remember the name, and find it online without too much trouble.
   • If you're using a weird spelling (Flickr, Konqueror), you're going to make it that little bit harder for people to find you. Google will help you with this once you reach a certain critical mass, but until then, you're relying on people remembering exactly how you mis-spell your own name.
   • If your product is called something like WQFTacPro, you'd better hope your customers have a good memory.

2. Would you be embarrassed asking your boss to buy it for your team? "Yeah, um, I think we should use, ah, The, er, GIMP for all our graphics."

Actually coming up with the name is much, much harder... so look around at some names you like, and work out how they were created.

Try basing a name on one or two common words, if you can. Winamp is a great name because it makes people think of Win(dows) + amp(lifier) - same with Face+Book, You+Tube, Time+Snapper.

Avoid names that don't look like names. There's a great multimedia development system called Processing. (No, that sentence doesn't contain a typo. The system is actually called "Processing" - http://www.processing.org/). Word, Excel, Where and More Than all fall foul of this.

Try and come up with a funny story. Nero (the CD burner) is called Nero because the emperor Nero famously "fiddled while Rome burned" (their icon is actually the Coliseum on fire, if you look closely). Once you know that story, you'll never forget the name again.

Think about what your product does and where it's used. If it's a tool for converting images, come up with some synonyms for image (picture, pic, photo, image, snapshot) and some synonyms for processing (crunch, change, merge, mash, mould, blend, grind, tweak) and see what emerges from the combinations. Photomash, Picmerge, Imageblend,

Do some research, see if anything jumps out at you. I once built an app called Sapphire, on top of an in-house framework that needed a name. I did a bit of digging and found out that sapphires are blue because they contain traces of titanium - so I called the framework Titanium, which has nice parallels with the aerospace and bicycle industries, where titanium is used to make strong, lightweight frames for planes and bikes.

Finally, Google your name. See if anyone else is using it. See if the .com domain is available. And make sure you own it. There's a great network analyzer that used to be called Ethereal, and is now called Wireshark because of a dispute over domain ownership - but unless you already know that, you just find the old, out-of-date Ethereal site and think the project is abandoned.

Answer 12

At my work I have a small text file on my desktop with a list of technology nouns, verbs and adjectives that I refer to whenever I have to come up with a name for a new in-house tool I have developed. I pick a name ahead of time and see what words I can form an acronym of the word out of. Most of the names my peers and I end up being acronyms which coincidentally spell out a dirty word, lol..it's kind of an in-house running joke. ;)

I plan on eventually turning this text file into a program which takes the word you want to name your product and automatically suggests possible technology related words to make up the acronym. Perhaps I'll call it the Technological Universal Renaming Device?...

Answer 13

It's really simple.

Mac:

i<appfunction>

KDE:

K<appfunction>

Google/Gnome:

G<appfunction>

Government:

E<appfunction>

Trying to be hip:

My<appfunction>
You<appfunction>

Answer 14

My wife is a freelance copywriter for advertising and she has done naming and branding for corporations.

This is the method she uses:

1. She gets a briefing from the client on the company/product. What is it? What are the concepts and values they're trying to push with this product. What is the intended market? Who are the intended clients? Even though you're naming it yourself, you should still do this type of thinking. Write it down so you can remind youself.

2. Riff, riff, riff. Like Linus Pauling once said "First, have a lot of ideas. Then, throw away the bad ones." For this my wife uses a black piece of paper (no lines) and pen and just writes down ideas. No filtering allowed. Include your associate/friend/partner/spouse. This is brainstorming, pure and simple. When you slow down, get some inspiration from a thesaurus, dictionary, internet, tarot cards, whatever. Keep the ideas flowing.

3. Analysis: Once you have several pages of ideas, it's time to write them down in a list and do some editing. Next to each one write down why you like it, why you don't. Does it fit your briefing?

4. Tinker: Mashup the existing list. Try to work things you like into names you've created.

5. Repeat steps as needed. Do this a couple times.

Eventually you'll have a list of names and some analysis for each one. Make a list of the good ones and make a decision.

When my wife does a naming job, she generates dozens of possible names (out of the hundreds that she thought of) and it's up to the client to pick ones they like. Generally they pick a few and do more analysis (including legal stuff like searching for trademarks). Eventually the product gets named.

Answer 15

I actually like IceCat. Or how about Felice. =)

Answer 16

It might be wise to verify that a possible domain for your name is available since many are not and that it going to be your link to your clients.

Look for associations with possible users. For instance, "StackOverFlow" was always followed by that 'doh!' moment when you see the infinite loop you just executed and therefore does resonate with me. Plus it reminds me of all the stuff spilling out of my head and all the neat things there is no time for.

Personally I'd let my wife pick any names that I'd want to be popular because she understands what's hot and why but I tend to embrace some thing else which does amuse me but couldn't be called cool.

This might be a great time to try those hallway usability tests we were supposed to be doing ...

Answer 17

Look at this http://acronymcreator.net/ for ideas.

Answer 18

The Mythology of some cultures may be also of interest.

Answer 19

Use a program to randomly combine words from astronomy and science as described here.

Answer 20

To get a really hip (web2.0-like) name, make sure that you add some double-vowels and remove or add at least one other vowel or consonant :-)

Examples:

• StackOverFlow --> StaackOvrFloow
• Calc --> Calcr
• Explorer --> Explorr