Here’s why you think naming is hard (and how to make it easier).

Naming is a can of conceptual worms and not everyone loves playing in the dirt.

If you’ve ever been part of a particularly painful naming process, you probably have a visceral understanding as to why: open-ended briefs lead to a stupendous amount of name generation and unruly longlists; too much choice stokes subjectivity and changeable opinion, and makes pragmatic feedback impossible to both give and get; both client and creative teams get increasingly frustrated, feeling misled and misunderstood.

If you’ve had the pleasure of participating in a well-run naming process, you know these projects have the potential to be some of the most inspiring and creatively rewarding around. You also know just how much figurative dirt you get under your fingernails along the way.

Naming is hard work.

That’s why there are people who specialise in it. Every namer worth their salt has a process designed to turn the variable twists and turns of naming into an approachable and inspiring experience for both creative and client teams. And every single one of those processes is built to counteract a fundamentally human characteristic: subjectivity.

Scale breeds subjectivity.

A name can come from a founder; it can come from an idea; it can come from a phrase (hello acronyms); it can describe your product; it can describe the feeling your product gives people; it can come from an amalgamation of two or more words; it can come from Latin (please stop doing this); it can come from history; it can come from your imagination. A name doesn’t even need to be a real word because, over time, it’ll turn into one.

When faced with that kind of scope, it’s all too easy to fall back on opinion - to let our gut guide us to whatever feels right and trust we’ll “know it when we see it.” But that’s an approach that ignores a critical truth: if you can’t articulate what you’re looking for, you won’t know when you’ve found it.

Objectivity starts with a focused brief. 

That’s why naming briefs are so important. And they don’t fall squarely on the client’s shoulders, by the way. It’s the creative team’s job to help challenge and define that brief before the project gets underway. The client knows more about their business than the creative team ever will, and the creative team knows more about naming than the client - together, they’ve got the power to craft an absolutely bulletproof brief. And, done right, that brief is going to narrow the scope of creative exploration considerably.

That sounds like a bad thing but trust me, when the starting point is “absolutely anything,” a little bit of focus goes a long way. There are many different types of names, each with their own strengths. And certain types of names are particularly suited to solving certain business challenges. In addition to understanding what the new name needs to do for the brand, you’ve got to understand what it needs to do in the wider context of its sector: will it leverage industry convention to build trust and familiarity, or subvert it to stand out?

Naming criteria: the astronavigation of naming. 

You can - and should - explore a range of solutions along the way, but being able to answer these sorts of questions at the start of a naming project is critical to the project’s success. In doing so you’ll be able to create a set of naming criteria that will help steer the process away from subjectivity and towards a definitive answer.

Naming criteria are a set of objectives born of the brief; things the name must do in order to work for the brand. Like bumpers at a bowling alley, naming criteria are a tool for keeping everything from generation to discussion focused on solving the original naming challenge at the root of the project. Referencing those criteria at every stage of the process means you’ll go into your first share with a longlist that answers the brief, and you’ll leave that share knowing what worked, what didn’t and, most importantly, why.

A name is a powerful thing, not the only thing. 

After subjectivity, the thing that makes naming so difficult for so many people is the pressure to get it right. And that makes sense. A name is usually a brand’s longest-living artefact - the last thing to change, if it changes at all. It’s an introduction, a first impression and an opportunity to decide what kind of story a brand is going to tell.

A name is a big deal, but it can’t do everything. It doesn't need to; there’s an entire arsenal of brand assets that work in tandem with the name - not to mention all of the marketing that helps establish the brand and endear it to people.

Liquid Death isn’t trying to sell anyone on the idea of refreshment (its tagline, Murder Your Thirst, does that) or even selling itself as drinking water (its headlines, like Don’t be scared. It’s just water, do that). Instead, it aims to entertain and make people laugh.

Pivotal, a brilliant startup we had the pleasure of rebranding, doesn’t scream biodiversity or environmental data, but symbolises the context in which the startup was born: it was (and is) a pivotal moment for nature, and a pivotal opportunity for investors, businesses and landowners to make a real difference by restoring, maintaining and enhancing nature capital.

Hulu, a household name around the world, doesn’t scream streaming platform, but symbolises the brand’s mission, meaning both “the holder of precious things” and “interactive recording” in Mandarin.

As important as naming is, brands will always be much, much larger than their names alone. Those who accept that are able to use it to their advantage, creating a name that does one thing exceptionally well and sticks in people’s minds as a result.

After all, a name can be anything. Therein lies the perpetual challenge – and the solution.