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Ask HN: Is there any science to naming products?

5 points by santy-gegen ↗ HN
I've been growing as a developer for the last couple months, using deliberate practice. Now, I'd like to release a mini product I've built for myself into the market, and am curious about what are the best practices (if any) for naming products.

I read the PG essay on changing your name: http://www.paulgraham.com/name.html and it seems I don't have the naming skills he talks about haha

Any advice would be super welcome :)

8 comments

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JohnFen
Naming things is very hard. As hard as it is to make good names for functions, variables, etc., it's even harder for products.

There is a great deal of literature out there on product naming, but I think that it's all very squishy and it's easy to overthink the whole deal.

What I do with my products is to avoid getting too imaginative or fancy. I name my products in a straightforward way such that you know what the product fundamentally does by the name alone. For example, instead of naming a shopping list program "The Shopinator" or something, I'd be more likely to name it something like "<DBA> Shopping List Manager". Doing that also helps to keep you from accidentally stomping on someone's trademark.

It's worked well for me, but I have no idea if it would work well for anybody else.

santy-gegen
Ok, I'll use the condition that the utility of the product has to be clear from the name alone. Sounds reasonable.
JohnFen
Another piece of advice: at least do a web search on any name you are considering[1]. In part to find out if someone else is using a name that's too similar, but also to find out if the name you're considering has some sort of adverse implication that you're unaware of.

[1] My business attorney insists on also doing a trademark search.

santy-gegen
Can't believe this advice is free. Hacker news really is an amazing community. How do you actually do a trademark research?
nosrepa
Just take what it does and add -er.
santy-gegen
Tried it, incidentally. It was taken however (multiple times haha)
Leftium
Let your customers/target market give you the best name.

Peter Shallard "The Shrink for Entrepreneurs" didn't come up with that title. That's what his best clients were calling him.