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.

Never lay your hands on the Neverland name.

Although it is a straight copy by Michael Jackson, and before that by Disney, of a mythical place name in the classic Peter Pan novels, today there are some big organizations and their friendly lawyers protecting the Neverland name. And, of course, Michael Jackson’s estate is probably worth a lot more now that he has passed on. So I was not surprised to read that a would-be tribute musical band had been sent one of those dreaded cease and desist letters for trying to use the name. In a smart move, they are now Foreverland. Much cheaper than fighting a lawsuit… but a positive implied connection nevertheless.

During Jackson’s passing, his Neverland Ranch gained even more immense worldwide coverage. Ironically, when he bought it originally from Sycamore Valley Ranch, he renamed it, but he had subsequently become a part owner of Sycamore Valley Ranch and taken over the ownership. So much of the public immediately recognized the brand as being associated with Michael Jackson - and would attest to that if asked for a common opinion - even though there are many trademark applications and fights over the name. Pity Jackson didn’t properly protect it earlier, instead of the slew of filings on his death (assuming he could get the rights properly from Disney or J.M.Barrie Estate author of Peter Pan).

Enough legal, more interestingly, why does the name have such power, such interest, such fascination? It is a negative right? Wow. Great example of where a negative has become a positive. How much more over the top brandable than Sycamore Valley Ranch? Immeasurable…  with maybe even a touch of genius behind it. Most corporations I know would get all analytical and say it is too negative a name for us - but most of them outside Hollywood are not paid to dream!

Eloquent and beautiful.. but in this day and age Neverland is taken as a name. RIP Michael Jackson… we will leave your place name to your lawyers and family.

Invictus breaks through noise of film names

I had the pleasure of spending Xmas dinner with a Hollywood insider who was pointing out to me how bland and descriptive the titles of movies had become. Even Avatar borrowed a popular online gaming term.

And then there is the exception: Invictus.  Fancy naming a movie after an old poem. But also how clever and inspiring. Because while this movie is about Mandela and his first days in office in South Africa, it is also about many other things as people wrestle with massive sociological change. So much more than a specific story. I especially liked all the little vignettes that Clint Eastwood added to the movie so you never get bored (I only just managed to stay awake in Avatar as it is so predictable).

Like many books, the title is taken from one small key episode in the whole work. Now don’t you forget the great last paragrah of William Ernest Henley’s epic poem:

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Oh dear…TabletMac is such a heavy name!

A year from now people will be so used to playing with their TabletMacs they will have forgotten what a heavy a name it has. Shouldn’t that word be reserved for companies taking their medicine? Who the heck came up with it anyway? (Probably Moses and his stone age friends).

Yes Apple, we know you have lots of brand power and marketing reach, but we are not accustomed to seeing such boring heavy names from you. It is time for a new category name, even if you have to cross over something like you did in moving iPod from internet kiosk usage.

This time you have Kindle and Nook giving you a run for your money on the book front too. Of course, we know you plan to become the standard for video reviewing too. So why not Vpad, or Vpod or VMac or PadMac… almost anything is better than the langourous Tablet name.

How far can you, or should you, stretch a brand?

Well it had to happen sooner or later.  But it was a bit disconcerting to have to stop and think so hard about branding right as we were launching our new eBook Brighter SEO: Organic search engine optimization last week. For those of you who don’t know me, I am also the president of Brighter Naming®, and have previously released titles like Brighter Branding and Brighter Names. Not all titles have Brighter in them (eg Spreadsheet Marketing and Emergency Golf) but we do often refer to our full team as the Brighter Team and of course we put out Brighter Proposals, etc. etc.

Problem is, the publishing company for these books is called Foden Press and people ask why not Brighter Press or Brighter Publishing or similar. Yes, we have one product name mini-franchise spread across two different company names. And we are small and only have very limited branding dollars.

And the funny part is, I personally set it all up and even I was stumped by the question. I mean it is not rocket science after all. Then I thought about how I could have been so dumb until I realized that like a lot of brands, I wasn’t remembering that there is history involved here as well. In fact, Foden Press and Spreadsheet Marketing came along at least two or three years before the first Brighter anything, and at the time I didn’t want to register another business so I simply used my last name.  And I had never bothered to go back and fix it - always being too busy to redo the whole image set and marketing that goes with a company name.

Zynga sings a different tune

The big branding agencies usually say that unless a brand is really broken, don’t change it. In fact, many brands have become better known after a disaster, provided that the situation was properly handled by management. To which I might add, or the problem was real but long ago, and now we can sweep it under the carpet.

Zynga made a lot of its money originally by being the US king of spam. Today they are perhaps still not that well known, but their games are all the best sellers on Facebook. Games like FarmVille, FishVille, PetVille, Mafia Wars, etc.

But how did they get their own interesting name  - that is both short and musical, as well as strong and dynamic? As you may have guessed, it is from the name of the owner’s dog.. hence the logo.

And, according to their website, the dog’s real name was Zinga, which is Swahili for Princess. How come so many people use Swahili as the excuse for any strange African word? They should be more careful. The AfricanLanguages.com online dictionary gives these results for Zinga:

zinga verb

1 roam, wander, rove

2 turn the other way

3 to prostitute

Fancy having to market an airline with a backwards name like Etihad!

As if marketing and promoting a new airline isn’t hard enough, imagine having to do it when you are stuck with a name like Etihad! Yes, they might have recently been awarded some best airline of the year prizes, but obviously they weren’t measuring the name qualities. And across the runway from you stands Emirates making life even harder - another name that was foreign to us, but at least we had heard of it or could pronounce it.

I feel better riding with this airline now that I see their all very experienced British and Australian management team, but I guess the owners are never going to let them have a nicey friendly name. I wonder if they realize their name looks like someone cleverly spelled their name backwards to make a unique email or forum name - at least to western ears and eyes? I choke on enjoying my English premier league soccer everytime this awkward name shows up on the ad boards.

From San Francisco and Pegasus come…..

Truncate the name San Francisco and you have Cisco… the big networking company founded in the San Francisco Bay Area. That is why their logo is half a golden gate bridge (cut lengthwise)!

Now I find out that the big and upcoming Chinese high tech company was going to be called Pegasus (good luck on getting that trademark worldwide), but truncated it rather to be Asus so they could be front of the alphabet. That is a very bad reason to pick a name nowadays. If you are relying on people finding you at the front of the yellow pages directory, then you have much bigger marketing problems. Google searches sure don’t care if your name starts with an A or a Z. In fact, even in alphabetical searches, 3Com, for example, will be ahead of this ass like name.

Around here, every time anyone says Asus, all the latino men named Jesus jump up, as that is what it also sounds like unless people emphasize the H sound of Jesus.. which they don’t do!

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.