Name Awards

Top 10 ways to find a free .com name in 2010

Every week someone cries on my shoulder about how hard it is becoming to find free .com domain names. Well they are disappearing at a rate of 1 million a month, and have been doing so for a while, so what do you expect if you are only waking up now?

Anyway, here are my professional suggestions. Let me know what you think or pass along the list, with due credit to Athol Foden of Brighter Naming.

1. Use a number in your name. e.g. 3Com, 2Wire, Tack360, etc. Works best if name is mostly seen online and not used much on the phone.
2. Use a different form of a verb.  e.g  Learning Spanish instead of Learn Spanish say. Or Brighter Naming instead of Bright Naming. Non-English languages often have lots of conjugations of their verbs providing even more options.
3. Personalize or localize the name.  e.g.  iFly, MySpinnerTricks, YourBicycleTracks, OurFishingTrips, TexasBigGameSupporters, ScottishCurlingClub, CollegePaymentsUSA, etc.
4. Coin new words from classic or other roots:  Miradiance  (Mira is Spanish/Latin for view), Frito Lay (Frito is Spanish for fried), Verantis (From verity = truth and Atlantis)
5. Use initials as well:   PFChangs, PrintDNA, SugarCRM, NGMoco
6. Combine parts of words: e.g. Solyndra from solar and cylinder, Sony from sonus and sonny, Transcera from transcend and era. Or even combine languages: e.g. NeuStar  (German + English words), Tambrio (English + Spanish).
7. Go Hawaiian, or African, or …     Akamai, Wiki, Ubuntu, Zynga
8. Squeeze vowels in (to make smoother pronunciations) like Avidasports, Affinaquest, or out (aka IM speak) to make for very short names like Flickr, Loopt, VCTRY.
9. Go phonetic with something that just sounds good and create your own meanings:   Cisco, Kinkos, Zanitar, Jamba, Brivo, Ariba, Skype
10. Work with a professional naming agency or consultant that tracks free domains and can also quickly implement one of the above techniques.

Number 10 is probably the least expensive solution when you consider the management time and legal headaches they also solve, especially now that competition has driven prices down to $6000 for corporate accounts, and much less for individuals or small businesses.

Kwik, is it Kewlr or Kewler?

Since I for one have been quoted in the press about new name styles that squeeze out the vowels becoming more popular, I should not be surprised to discover names like Kewlr ( a social bookmarking site) and Kewler (makers of Icy Hot balls) coexisting.

Maybe I will also need a copy of KwikEdit to get my site straightened out before I kew up to go to Kuwait.

Are you antsy for some ittie bittie thing from Etsy?

In the latest Reader’s digest, the Founder of Etsy.com explains how he actually wanted a nonsense word since he planned on creating the brand from scratch. Even so, it is not all of us who watch Italian operas and listen for common phrases. Apparently in Italian etsi means Oh, yes. In Latin, it means although, even if (the article says and if).

From that he derived Etsy, probably because the domain Etsi.com was already tied up by an European Telecom standards body. So it really is not nonsense at all.

Sound a bit cutesy to you? Of course it does… but that is very appropriate for all the hand made arts and crafts vendors that use Etsy as their main online shop site. I might start my Xmas shopping here.. and help the little guys in this economy.

Magenn if you can, a new clean technology that works

Well, if you were going to create a company to invent and deploy lighter than air wind turbine generators, what would you call it?  Windy Sky? What if you imagined that these devices could be deployed worldwide, wherever Magellan sailed?  Then maybe you would come up with a unique new name like Magenn.

OK, I can hear you cringing now and saying “I would never name my company with an awkward coined word like that!”. In such a case, I would remind you of all the people who never would of dreamed of naming their company Cisco or Google. But now those are great names, because their shortness and good phonetics, with sticky consonants, are proving to be memorable brand monikers.

I am not smart enough to know if Magenn’s flying wind turbines will really work… but they are fascinating and we wish them well.  And seriously consider them as  a prospect if you are a venture investor. Their embedded tagline does a great job of positioning the technology until such time as they are better known.

Note: We have no connections to this company and have done no business or technology evaluation other than on their company name.

A peaceful smile.. from a law firm!

Yesterday a law firm brought a smile to my face. No, I did not win a judgment. I simply met a new small business law firm  that had the courage to not name themselves in the usual Stuffy, Traditional and Heritage style! Being the namiac that I am, I was impressed the minute I saw Jennifer’s business card (logo scanned here).

Playing in different technology sandboxes is very “in” speak in Silicon Valley. Visiting a law firm called SandGarden Law plays off that plus much more as implied by the whole garden concept. It makes me feel more at peace already.

Lawyers and clients are people too. I am sure you will interact well with this startup when they make you comfortable on first contact. And no, it is not an Asian zen firm.

P.S. And with a name like that, no tagline is needed.

Will Wolfram Alpha ever develop into a Beta version?

Well we all know it was not unusual in the old days to release beta versions of software to key customers. And that more recently, beta version release has become an art for big players like Google. But releasing Alpha versions on the public is an interesting idea, especially when you are trying to use the wisdom of crowds to actually perfect and develop the product or service.

But why would you name the product after yourself and the word Alpha? We all know Steven Wolfram is a great scientist and the founder of Mathematica (a great name), so what is he up to this time? Maybe he doesn’t have a real name for it yet? Maybe he thinks people might only visit because of his name recognition? Maybe he has fond memories of work on DEC Alpha machines? Maybe he is not sure what it will morph into yet for the final product? Or is it just ego? After all, he has filed for registered trademarks on this name!

In fact his team is so industrious about spreading little TM’s around, one becomes nothing but a dirty squiggle in the middle of the tagline! I am usually a big proponent of those TM’s… but not at expense of ruining the visual treatment.

As a side note, when you have a rather uncommon name like me, it is natural to type it into all Informational Databases, CDROM’s, enclypaedias, search engines etc. Even the very first version of Encarta could tell me something about the Athol’s of Murray in Scotland,and the famous playwright Athol Fugard. Wolfram’s knowledge engine will only spit up the town of Athol Massachusetts, even when prompted. Maybe it really is only an Alpha version after all.

If you want to know more about the name Athol, use a real search engine or see this webpage: http://www.brighternaming.com/atholname.html

Amazon’s shoe fetish is no longer Endless

In the August 3rd issue of Business Week, they report on Amazon’s shoe fetish after Amazon announced they were buying Zappos, the top US online shoe retailer.

Apparently Amazon had been trying to build their own online shoe store for years. No wonder it took so long - they called it Endless.com! For a company that has so many divisions under the Amazon brand, I don’t see where this logic came from. But I really do like how Zappos manages its substore brands, using internet domain names the way they were designed to be used. So we have:

Separately, for my student a few years back who pounded the desk and said people will never buy shoes online, I think this $800 million deal proves you were wrong.

And for all those who asked what kind of name Zappos was, little did they know how strong this name would be for a great brand. Yes, Zapatas are shoes in Spanish. No, the founder is not Latino, he is Asian! But as always happens, the brand promise is always about the experience - which is why I expect this merger to go so well…. two companies that are really passionate about service.

A paragon of names, except when they are all Paragons

At a function last week the speaker woke me up when he casually mentioned in passing “one of those Paragon companies”. I had worked with at least one Paragon Software company before, and vaguely remembered some name confusion.

Little did I know how much more complicated it had become. And how ironic -  since the dictionary defines Paragon as “a model of excellence.”

So today we have Paragon Software, Paragon Software Group, Paragon Software Solutions, and Paragon Photo Imaging. Turns out that none of these were the Paragon I remembered. That Paragon had obviously seen the light and changed their name to Overwatch.

Don’t you like a country where you can incorporate a business only at the state level, and not federal level, and your state doesn’t care what names exist in any other states, even if they are just across the river?

Now quick question for all you young brandmeisters and law students: Who owns the Paragon trademark on software? More importantly for all your sales and marketing execs: When someone refers a prospect to Paragon, who are they going to call?

Lots of power from the sun.. and 3 companies with the same name!

As usual, I was checking trademarks before writing about a name. I thought there was a great educational story about the early-mover advantage of a name like Sunpower. At the same time, I was wondering when combinations of the words sun and power would be thought of as generic in the solar power industry.

Imagine my surprise to discover that the first Sunpower I was thinking of, the one that used to be largely owned by Cypress Semiconductor, was only one of three major Sunpowers in the country. So this first one is often referred to as Sunpower Corp. (of San Jose, CA, and Taiwan). They are a public company (SPWRA and SPWRB) and they have the registered trademark on the name for photovoltaic solar panels, etc.

Secondly there is Sunpower of Ohio. They also have a registered trademark on the name but for Stirling Engine technology rather than pholtaic systems. (A Stirling Engine systems uses reflectors to focus the heat of the sun on a contained liquid that then warms up causing it to spin and drive  a generator. Reminds me of a modern day steam train. But very effective since it requires no fuel other than sunshine). And they have major contracts right in the state of California too with very big power companies!

Then there is Sun Power Inc of Colorado. They are a large non-profit in the greater Denver area providing a host of various power solutions to local residents and businesses. They have just received an $80 million grant to aid in their cause, so they are non-trivial too.

Having multiple companies with the same, or similar names, in a new industry, is not unusual. What is strange here is that they have all grown to significant size without one managing to out-lawyer the others to get sole possession of the name. Let’s see who blinks first. I predict at least one of these names will be changed within  2 years.

PS. There are an interesting number of other registered trademarks on the name Sunpower too, including Snack Food, Vitamin Supplements, Car Tires, etc.

Would you name your company ngmoco?

Well if you answered yes to our title question, without even a blink, then you are definitely part of the Twitter and Computer/Phone gaming generation.

If your stomach turned to knots and you asked yourself why is a professional business namer even raising such an issue, then you are probably a little older and more traditional!

As I sit here and ponder how to pronounce the name and what it means, I realize I am being stupid. Probably only some gaming insiders will know… and half the reason will be the domain was free :).  And to compound the difficulty, they are trying to confuse all the press and media and spell checkers for ever more by writing it ngmoco with a lower case n. Good luck. Everyone else who tried this eventually changed. Hey guys.. it is your name.. not a tweet or text message. Go look at your birth certificate and see if that is spelled lower case.

PS At least their game titles are more comprehensible.. Rolando seems to be their star. Word Fu seems to be the title of another.. not Word F. U. The sounds are so loud I could never concentrate on the words… but I am an older tweeter.