from Hacker News

“Startup Names” by Paul Graham (2006)

by climatewarrior2 on 10/21/14, 9:53 PM with 65 comments

  • by idlewords on 10/21/14, 10:43 PM

    "Nominology is my neologism for the study of naming things!"

    It's called onomastics, son. Now get off my lawn.

  • by harvestmoon on 10/22/14, 1:58 AM

    This article raises some refreshing points on the startup naming process.

    It can be quite tough - and I ran into the naming problem many times over the years. Over 100,000,000 com domains are registered, iirc. It reached the point where I would spend days trying to come up with something that was a) good and b) available.

    Frankly, I ended up feeling that finding a good name for a new project of mine was quite unlikely to happen. Which lead me the idea that the only way I'd be able to find usable (let alone high quality) names was by making a tool to help make it easier.

    So I built Namebird - http://shobia.com/namebird

    For it, I came up with a variety of probability based algorithims to generate names that are catchy and memorable. It works pretty nicely, imo. And, in making it, it has been able to help me find a large amount of domain names that would be good for startups.

    Perhaps some here might find it of value.

  • by Yetanfou on 10/21/14, 11:38 PM

    All you need to produce a 'good' name is a simple script, a list of adjectives and a list of critters. A few sample runs from my proprietary name generator produces these CamelCased (KamlKzed?) marvels of ingenuity:

        FragrantDuck
    CourteousOwl
    RecklessPig
    OtherMoose
    CaringFrog
    MindlessFish
    UpbeatLizard
    WhisperedHippo
    SlushyWhale
    OilyAccountant
    CompassionateHog
    InstructiveMonkey
    ForkedCow
    ...
    Of course I did not work on this script for quite a while, and it shows. To be really trendy I'd have to remove some vowels here and there, change a 'c' for a 'k' now and add the odd '-ly'.

  • by mindcrime on 10/22/14, 1:41 AM

    So, looking at the "nominology" article, and considering our name ( "Fogbeam Labs", with domain name fogbeam.com), I'd rank our name like this

    EVOC - neutral. Fogbeam is evocative of something to do with light and illumination, so if we were a LED bulb manufacturer or something, it would be good. But we're using it as a metaphor, since we're a software company focusing on knowledge management, integration and collaboration. I think our tagline/slogan plays ties it together though "Cut through the information fog".

    BREV - I think we're good here.

    GREP - Yep.

    GOOG - Very much. There are very few other references to the phrase "fogbeam" and the few there are relate to something obviously different - bulbs for auto fog lamps, etc.

    PRON - Yep.

    SPEL - Yep.

    VERB - Fail. I don't think anybody will ever say "Go fogbeam that" to anybody else. :-(

    For the most part, we get a lot of positive comments on the name when we introduce ourselves to people, so all in all, that's one decision that has worked out well. I don't think our name is so special that it will cause us to succeed all on it's own (could any name do that?) but I think it's more than good enough to not be an impediment.

    What do you guys think?

  • by melloclello on 10/21/14, 10:50 PM

    I looked up YouOS, what a blast from an (idealistic) past:

    http://www.youos.com/html/static/manifesto.html

  • by andrewfong on 10/21/14, 10:27 PM

  • by lynnah on 10/22/14, 1:08 AM

    Reddit was "seemingly taken over by teenage boys"

    ... was there a time it wasn't. Love that. Love reddit.

    Also, dotomator can be useful for generating ideas. http://www.dotomator.com/

  • by saturdayplace on 10/22/14, 2:52 AM

    I'm not sure a name has that much of an impact on a business's success. I posted this comment in another thread recently: The word "Target" doesn't really carry any signal about what that company actually does. Ask yourself, in Target's infancy, did the name hurt or help them? I'd guess it had very little to do with their eventual outcome.

  • by vonklaus on 10/22/14, 3:33 AM

    Man Kevin Hale is an amazing startup founder and the whole team from Wufoo was great. However, that name is properly terrible, and I think that it succeeded in spite of that name. Something about it is extremely off putting. Luckily the product and team were phenomenal.

  • by kamikazi on 10/22/14, 8:26 AM

    I recently spent some time (probably more than I should have) at naming my new project.

    I went through a couple of namegenerators and I found bustaname.com to be the best of the lot - specially it's realtime domain availability check (.com/.org/.net)

    Pair it with namechk.com to check availability of social media handles.

    If you are looking for random 4/5/6 letter domains that might be available (mostly sedo) then domainnamesoup.com is at it - eg: http://www.domainnamesoup.com/5letterdomainnames.php

  • by cpeterso on 10/22/14, 1:19 AM

    > Nothing could be less cool than calling a startup “cool.com”

    cuil.com had its 15 minutes of fame, but I see that Google acquired their patents and domain names:

    http://searchengineland.com/googler-killer-cuil-patent-appli...

    http://whois.domaintools.com/cuil.com

    http://whois.domaintools.com/cuil.net

  • by jbrooksuk on 10/22/14, 9:48 AM

    I was talking to my parents about my latest side project, Anorak (http://anorakci.com) and they both laughed at the name.

    I genuinely felt embarrassed when I explained to them that the majority of startups etc have "silly" names. As I was talking about Anorak to them, every time I said it's name, I felt silly.

    And yet, it's never bothered me before.

    I'm not changing the name, but it made me realise.

  • by anonfunction on 10/22/14, 2:23 AM

    A while back I created a startup name generator by fusing tech and culinary terms together. I also set it up to check if the .com is available. It gets a decent amount of traffic and a few domains purchased every once in a while.

    Check it out: http://montanaflynn.me/lab/startup-name-generator/

  • by ehurrell on 10/23/14, 7:52 AM

    Things like this seem like touchstone topics for startups, HBO's Silicon Valley had a scene with the sanest member of their group at a whiteboard filled with names desperately saying "choose one so we can get back to work", and I've certainly been in the same spot. I wonder if startups just compress the ridiculous corporate silliness into short bursts.

  • by teachingaway on 10/22/14, 12:06 AM

    after you have potential names, here's my step-by-step walkthrough for the US trademark application process - http://adlervermillion.com/how-to-trademark-part-2-registrat...

    The trademark application process, at its core, is simple data collection. Sadly, the TM Office website complicates this simple process with a set of baffling forms. Their design philosophy is “more but worse.” Only 40% of DIY apps are approved, so a TM lawyer is recommended. But if you're going to go DIY, just gird yourself for a miserable user experience.

  • by alexqgb on 10/22/14, 3:17 AM

    "In a world where all the obvious names are taken, finding a good name is a test of imagination. And the name you choose tells whether or not you passed that test."

    Then again, what you make of the name also matters.

  • by davidcatalano on 10/21/14, 11:15 PM

    Completely agree. There will always be good names available. Curious if PG would still rate textpayme high as I think its an awful name!

    Selfishly curious, how would you rate my company's name, Modea?

  • by _RPM on 10/22/14, 1:44 AM

    > It’s like running Microsoft software on your servers. [Like StackOverflow, launched in 2008, does!]

    That is a fact I've condemned about Stack Exchange and their founders on Meta.

  • by baddox on 10/21/14, 11:05 PM

    Interesting that he scores "Yahoo" poorly on Googlability. I'm not sure if that's a joke, but "Yahoo" is certainly very Googlable.

  • by bdcravens on 10/22/14, 4:31 AM

    "Nothing could be less cool, at this point, than calling a startup “cool.com.”"

    Interestingly enough, that domain name is for sale.

  • by EGreg on 10/22/14, 3:31 AM

    What if someone registered show.hn? :-)

  • by snarfy on 10/22/14, 5:18 AM

    The best names have two syllables.

  • by BigChiefSmokem on 10/22/14, 12:55 AM

    Capitalize the first letter of a noun and remove vowels at will.

    Example, sewage => Sewg