One of the first things many small businessmen do when considering the beginning of a company is to find a name. This process, all too often, relies on cuteness, happenstance, or other irrelevant modes of decision making. Naming your business should not be left to fate or the whims of your favourite uncle. It takes as much procedure and research as any other aspect of your business. Those that fail to realize this often make terrible mistakes when naming their business, putting themselves at a disadvantage right out of the gate. If you want to give your business a name that will last, avoid some of these common mistakes and you'll be much more likely to succeed.



One of the first and most common mistakes to avoid is letting others make the decision for you, particularly by committee. Nothing creative or good has ever come out of a group situation. Now, obviously that's not true, but it's true enough to avoid this pitfall. Perhaps worse than the creative stunt that this type of group analysis will cause, there is sure to be hurt feelings and damaged relationships if you choose to go with one person's idea over that of another. When naming your company, it's best to go it alone. You'll get better results, and no one has to have their feeling hurt in the process. Save the committees for less creative solutions.

One of the worst trends in naming is when a business owner takes two unrelated words and tries to combine them to make a new word. This is overplayed and should be avoided at all costs. There is a rising sentiment against such names, perhaps brought on by the media and their insistence on using the same technique with celebrity couples. Your business deserves better than to blindly follow this nonsensical trend. Come up with a name that is unique and different and doesn't leave people scratching their heads or rolling their eyes.

The single worst mistake you can make when naming your business is to choose a common word as your name. For one, you are guaranteeing the fact that there are probably at least a hundred other companies across the country with the same name. Secondly, you've made your company impossible to find through use of an internet search engine. With so much of today's business being done on the internet, you can't afford to intentionally lose yourself in the shuffle. Even if you don't have a website and won't be making sales over the internet, it's still important for people to be able to find your business with a simple search. If your name is too common, that will be next to impossible.

Is a name everything? Not at all. But by following these hints, you can at least come up with a name that doesn't kill your business before you even get started. Avoid the same mistakes others have made. If you have to, make your own mistakes. Forge new territory in business naming faux pas. But to fail to learn from history is to doom yourself to repeating it.