It’s easy to understand the allure of online name generators, especially for fledgling businesses that lack an abundance of resources to funnel into company naming efforts. Generators are efficient and affordable, and they produce so many ideas that one of them just has to be a winner, right?
Unfortunately, relying on a name generator to name your new business, brand, or product can be a major mistake. Here’s why.
1. The Names Lack Context
At NameStormers, we begin our seven-step process by learning everything there is to know about your company: your origin story, your hopes, your goals, your unique value proposition, and how you plan to grow and expand. We ask challenging questions that help us get deeply acquainted with your business, and this allows us to generate name ideas that work uniquely well for your company. Name generators, on the other hand, rely on limited information and produce results that could work for most of your competitors. Your company name needs to tell your story.
2. Creativity Is Limited
Computers can do plenty of things better than humans can — but at the moment, playing around with language is not one of them. Name generators do not grasp nuances, context clues, or double meanings; the creative names they manage to generate are more random than clever, and the less creative ones tend to be literal and straightforward.
For example, let’s say you want to name a coffee shop. Instead of coming up with creative, bold gems like Starbucks, Café du Monde, or Stumptown Coffee Roasters, a name generator is more likely to spit out names like WorldsBest Coffee, Coffee Cafe, and Coffee Flavor. There may be a few creative ones in the mix; in fact, we tried a free name generator and it provided a few unique ideas like Prototype Coffee, Parachute Coffee, and Syndicate Coffee. But chances are good that you would need to work to tailor your brand to these names rather than tailoring the name to your brand.
3. It’s Hard to Tell the Good from the Bad
The bigger the list of name ideas, the more likely it is that there’s a needle somewhere in that haystack. That’s the draw of name generators: they provide hundreds of names, giving you the illusion that the list is full of potential. But distinguishing the good names from the bad and so-so names can be next to impossible. Even the ideas that are unique and manage to excite you may be a poor fit for your company, or may not even be available to begin with.
4. There’s No Due Diligence
Speaking of availability, finding a great name via a name generator can easily lead to disappointment down the road. Name generators do not provide sophisticated trademark checks to ensure that the candidates they generate are legally available and unlikely to cause conflict or confusion. You’re left to do that work on your own. If you don’t go above and beyond to ensure that the name you like is safe to use, you could face legal challenges or even be forced to endure the tremendous headache of changing the name after you’ve already started using it.
Why Work with NameStormers
With over three decades of experience in company naming and product naming, NameStormers knows how to get the job done well. Our creative naming experts and research analysts work together to brainstorm inspiring name candidates that fit your company’s vision, and then they screen them for trademark conflicts and dotcom availability. We pitch the best names to you and take your feedback to heart, fine-tuning according to your wishes — even if that means scratching all of our ideas and jumping right back to square one. Your satisfaction is so important to us that we’re willing to go back to the drawing board as many times as it takes at no extra cost to you.
Learn more about naming your company by checking out our ebook, NameStormers: The Method and Process of Creating Business Names. Or see for yourself how working with NameStormers yields better results for your company than a name generator ever could and contact us today!