Naming is hard: a curtsey for some success

Naming a company (or product or web site) is a high-stakes, difficult task. Everybody wants that ideal name: you know, the one that’s short, memorable, and perfectly expresses what you do, the one that will make people nod and say, “I get it!” Oh, yes, and the one that nobody else is using, and whose short and hard to misspell domain name is available. 

It almost never exists. Memorable names are usually memorable because they’re supported by marketing efforts. Sometimes it’s easier; for example, you get the buzz that Twitter has had, and your name is known by people who aren’t even sure what it is you do. But mostly, it’s effort. You know who Adobe and Apple and IBM and AT&T are not because these are brilliant names, but because a lot of effort has been expended to teach you who they are.

That’s why it must have been painful for the people at Sk*rt (as in Skirt) to have to give up their names. The site, brainchild of Houstonian Laura Mayes, sometimes described as “Digg for chicks,” had a great name to build on: it suggests women (the audience), it’s fun and plays with gender concepts a bit, and it’s short and memorable. And they were being threatened with legal action by a publication called Skirt, so it had to go. Ouch. 

In Digg-like fashion they asked their users to help pick a new name, and the winner was Kirtsy. Hats off to Laura and company: it’s a great name. It has the same feel at Sk*rt, the same wink at traditional ideas about women, and it’s short and punchy. Great job. 

I bring this up partly to give some deserved props to Kirtsy, but also to point out a few things to keep in mind if you’re going through the naming ritual now:

1. The perfect name probably does not exist. Pick one that works, and be prepared to support it with marketing efforts. If you do well, later people will point to it as an example of the magic name they want to find. 
2. That said, you might get very, very lucky, so keep a notepad by the shower so you can jot down that idea that strikes like lightning on something more substantial than toilet paper. 
3. If you use a gimmick, use your own gimmick (as Kirtsy did, and I don’t mean gimmick badly). More to the point: dropping the “e” in front of the “r” in Flickr fashion is not clever or memorable, unless you were the first. And you’re not. 
4. Don’t make yourself crazy. Put a time limit on the process, based on when you really have to have your new name, and pick something from what you’ve got. 
5. Do real brainstorming. That means sitting smart people down in a room (physical or virtual), capturing all their input, and evaluating none of it as it happens. That horrible idea from Bob might make Jane think of something brilliant. Brainstorming doesn’t work if evaluation happens concurrently with idea generation, so appoint someone the head stormer and give them power to quash any “Yeah, but…” digressions. This will kill the creativity.

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