Phoenix Studios
The Process, power and pitfalls of brand naming
2nd February
/
5 min.
In the world of brand building, a name is one of the most visible and enduring assets a company owns. It can be your first handshake with a customer, your shorthand in global markets, and your signature across every touchpoint. But while a name must work hard, it cannot carry the entire brand on its shoulders.
The role and limits of naming
A brand name can be a powerful cue: succinct, memorable, and evocative. It can trigger recognition, imply value, and open the door to deeper meaning. But it is not your brand story, your positioning, your customer experience, or your product innovation. It is a vessel—one that gains power when filled with consistent, compelling associations over time.
Names like “Apple,” “Nike,” or “Virgin” didn’t mean much at first. Their strength today is the result of decades of brand-building investment. In contrast, names that try to say everything—descriptive to the point of dilution—risk becoming forgettable. The best names spark curiosity, not solve the whole equation upfront.
Name types: More than just descriptive or invented
Naming consultants often classify name types in dozens of ways, each with strategic implications. Some of the most commonly referenced categories include:
• Descriptive (e.g. General Motors, British Airways): Clear, but limiting in stretch.
• Symbolic or Evocative (e.g. Amazon, Patagonia): Rich in narrative potential.
• Coined/Invented (e.g. Google, Aviva): Unique and legally defensible, but harder to decode at first.
• Founder-based (e.g. Dyson, Ford): Personal and legacy-building.
• Acronyms (e.g. IBM, EY): Functional, but often lack immediate meaning.
• Colloquial or Idiomatic (e.g. Slack, Yahoo): Distinctive tone and cultural flair.
• Wordplay or Compounds (e.g. Facebook, YouTube): Informal and memorable.
This type of classification helps organisations evaluate not only creative direction, but legal risk, international viability, and strategic stretch. For instance, in fragmented global markets, a made-up or symbolic name often travels better than one rooted in local idiom.
In the world of brand building, a name is one of the most visible and enduring assets a company owns. It can be your first handshake with a customer, your shorthand in global markets, and your signature across every touchpoint. But while a name must work hard, it cannot carry the entire brand on its shoulders.
The role and limits of naming
A brand name can be a powerful cue: succinct, memorable, and evocative. It can trigger recognition, imply value, and open the door to deeper meaning. But it is not your brand story, your positioning, your customer experience, or your product innovation. It is a vessel—one that gains power when filled with consistent, compelling associations over time.
Names like “Apple,” “Nike,” or “Virgin” didn’t mean much at first. Their strength today is the result of decades of brand-building investment. In contrast, names that try to say everything—descriptive to the point of dilution—risk becoming forgettable. The best names spark curiosity, not solve the whole equation upfront.
Name types: More than just descriptive or invented
Naming consultants often classify name types in dozens of ways, each with strategic implications. Some of the most commonly referenced categories include:
• Descriptive (e.g. General Motors, British Airways): Clear, but limiting in stretch.
• Symbolic or Evocative (e.g. Amazon, Patagonia): Rich in narrative potential.
• Coined/Invented (e.g. Google, Aviva): Unique and legally defensible, but harder to decode at first.
• Founder-based (e.g. Dyson, Ford): Personal and legacy-building.
• Acronyms (e.g. IBM, EY): Functional, but often lack immediate meaning.
• Colloquial or Idiomatic (e.g. Slack, Yahoo): Distinctive tone and cultural flair.
• Wordplay or Compounds (e.g. Facebook, YouTube): Informal and memorable.
This type of classification helps organisations evaluate not only creative direction, but legal risk, international viability, and strategic stretch. For instance, in fragmented global markets, a made-up or symbolic name often travels better than one rooted in local idiom.
In the world of brand building, a name is one of the most visible and enduring assets a company owns. It can be your first handshake with a customer, your shorthand in global markets, and your signature across every touchpoint. But while a name must work hard, it cannot carry the entire brand on its shoulders.
The role and limits of naming
A brand name can be a powerful cue: succinct, memorable, and evocative. It can trigger recognition, imply value, and open the door to deeper meaning. But it is not your brand story, your positioning, your customer experience, or your product innovation. It is a vessel—one that gains power when filled with consistent, compelling associations over time.
Names like “Apple,” “Nike,” or “Virgin” didn’t mean much at first. Their strength today is the result of decades of brand-building investment. In contrast, names that try to say everything—descriptive to the point of dilution—risk becoming forgettable. The best names spark curiosity, not solve the whole equation upfront.
Name types: More than just descriptive or invented
Naming consultants often classify name types in dozens of ways, each with strategic implications. Some of the most commonly referenced categories include:
• Descriptive (e.g. General Motors, British Airways): Clear, but limiting in stretch.
• Symbolic or Evocative (e.g. Amazon, Patagonia): Rich in narrative potential.
• Coined/Invented (e.g. Google, Aviva): Unique and legally defensible, but harder to decode at first.
• Founder-based (e.g. Dyson, Ford): Personal and legacy-building.
• Acronyms (e.g. IBM, EY): Functional, but often lack immediate meaning.
• Colloquial or Idiomatic (e.g. Slack, Yahoo): Distinctive tone and cultural flair.
• Wordplay or Compounds (e.g. Facebook, YouTube): Informal and memorable.
This type of classification helps organisations evaluate not only creative direction, but legal risk, international viability, and strategic stretch. For instance, in fragmented global markets, a made-up or symbolic name often travels better than one rooted in local idiom.
A strategic and structured process
While the process outlined here represents a best-in-class approach, it’s not one-size-fits-all. It can flex based on the scale of the business, the complexity of the portfolio, the level of legal risk, or the geographic reach—what’s essential for a global corporate rebrand may be unnecessary for a fast-moving product launch.
Brand naming is not a creative free-for-all. It is a disciplined process blending strategy, creativity, and rigorous due diligence. Here’s how a robust naming journey unfolds, from insight to implementation:
1. Naming Brief
A shared, strategic starting point. The brief defines the project context, audience, legal parameters, naming style preferences, and strategic criteria. At Phoenix Studios, our brief includes a “naming map” that classifies competitor names by type—highlighting both conventions and white space.
Example: When launching a new consumer sub-brand, a UK energy provider used a competitor map to spot that most rivals relied on abstract, two-syllable names. They pursued a bold, idiomatic direction to stand apart.
2. Test Names
Initial test names are generated—not for final use, but to pressure-test the brief. This step helps confirm that the creative direction is yielding viable results before deeper investment in ideation.
Example: A fintech brand used this phase to realise their brief was generating only functional, uninspiring names. Revisiting tone of voice and naming criteria early saved weeks later.
3. Collaborative Creation Workshops
A creative, facilitated session that brings strategy, semantics and storytelling together. There are conflicting views on the efficacy of name ideas created under pressure in a ‘brainstorming’ context, but it can help surface valuable directions and ideas, as well as build consensus among stakeholders. These typically include activities like:
• Introductory framing on name types and associations
• Word association and category reframing
• Brainstorming across naming territories
• Prioritising longlist candidates based on relevance and distinctiveness
Workshops often include brand, marketing, legal and product leads to align early on direction.
4. First Shortlist: 10–20 High-Potential Candidates
Following the workshop, a preliminary shortlist is filtered on the basis of first-level checks:
• Meaning: Etymology, unintended connotations
• Trademark: Identicals screening
• Google: Conflicting associations or image search surprises
• URL: .com or preferred domain availability
• Linguistic: Phonetic ease, potential mistranslations
Example: Schweppes launched “Tonic Water” in Italy without proper linguistic vetting. The term translated locally to “toilet water.” Avoidable—but only with rigorous screening.
5. Final Shortlist: 5–8 Candidates
The most viable names are evaluated further, including:
• Enhanced trademark and Google checks
• Visualisation in mock contexts (e.g., app icon, product label, hero ad)
• Scenario testing for pronunciation and spelling in key markets
Example: When Ernst & Young rebranded as “EY” in 2013, they discovered too late that the search term also surfaced a gay lifestyle magazine, creating an unintended brand overlap.
6. Final Name Registration
Final documentation is prepared and handed to the client’s legal counsel. The agency typically supports:
• Full rationale and documentation
• Coordination of global linguistic clearance
• Final registration of trademark and URL
Example: Danish energy giant Dong rebranded as Ørsted, only to face legal action from the family of the scientist after whom the name was taken. A clear case of insufficient trademark due diligence.
Why Due Diligence Matters
A name can be strategic, clever, even iconic. But if it can’t be owned, pronounced or trusted, it’s a liability. The most creative name in the world is worthless if it fails a trademark check, offends in another language, or brings back the wrong results in a Google search. As such, legal, linguistic and digital vetting are not optional—they’re risk mitigation.
Architecture and naming strategy also must reflect real-world application. It’s not enough for a name to look good on a brand book. It has to work on mobile, in signage, in URLs, and on search engines.
The Role of AI: Acceleration Without Sacrifice
AI is rapidly transforming the naming process—bringing speed, scale and analytical depth to a traditionally manual domain. But its value is in augmentation, not just automation.
AI can:
• Generate hundreds of name candidates from structured prompts across different types and tones
• Cluster names by phonetic similarity, semantic field or emotional valence
• Rapidly screen names for domain availability and SEO conflicts
• Identify potential linguistic or cultural red flags using large multilingual corpora
• Simulate human response to names using trained language models based on brand personality or category archetypes
Used thoughtfully, AI can accelerate iterations, reduce blind spots, and free up strategists to focus on storytelling and context. The best outputs still require human evaluation, but the path to finding them is faster, smarter, and more expansive than ever before.
Selling It In: Conviction Over Consensus
The final hurdle is stakeholder buy-in. New names often meet resistance. Why? Because unfamiliar words feel risky. Humans are creatures of habit. Leaders worry about how a name sounds in boardrooms or investor calls.
Overcoming this takes vision. Show what the name will look like in context. Pair it with brand story and design system. Help people imagine it, not just react to it. Some of the world’s most iconic names—Accenture, Google, Uber—were once considered strange.
Internal education is as important as external communication. This is not about choosing the name everyone likes. It’s about choosing the name that will work hardest for the brand, and committing to it with purpose.
In Summary
Naming is a rare blend of strategy and semantics. It requires creativity, logic, and legal sharpness. A name can elevate a brand, but only if it’s treated as part of a broader identity system—not a standalone silver bullet.
Done well, naming clarifies brand ambition, differentiates in crowded markets, and builds value that lasts for decades. But it must be earned—through process, discipline, belief—and increasingly, through intelligent use of AI.
A strategic and structured process
While the process outlined here represents a best-in-class approach, it’s not one-size-fits-all. It can flex based on the scale of the business, the complexity of the portfolio, the level of legal risk, or the geographic reach—what’s essential for a global corporate rebrand may be unnecessary for a fast-moving product launch.
Brand naming is not a creative free-for-all. It is a disciplined process blending strategy, creativity, and rigorous due diligence. Here’s how a robust naming journey unfolds, from insight to implementation:
1. Naming Brief
A shared, strategic starting point. The brief defines the project context, audience, legal parameters, naming style preferences, and strategic criteria. At Phoenix Studios, our brief includes a “naming map” that classifies competitor names by type—highlighting both conventions and white space.
Example: When launching a new consumer sub-brand, a UK energy provider used a competitor map to spot that most rivals relied on abstract, two-syllable names. They pursued a bold, idiomatic direction to stand apart.
2. Test Names
Initial test names are generated—not for final use, but to pressure-test the brief. This step helps confirm that the creative direction is yielding viable results before deeper investment in ideation.
Example: A fintech brand used this phase to realise their brief was generating only functional, uninspiring names. Revisiting tone of voice and naming criteria early saved weeks later.
3. Collaborative Creation Workshops
A creative, facilitated session that brings strategy, semantics and storytelling together. There are conflicting views on the efficacy of name ideas created under pressure in a ‘brainstorming’ context, but it can help surface valuable directions and ideas, as well as build consensus among stakeholders. These typically include activities like:
• Introductory framing on name types and associations
• Word association and category reframing
• Brainstorming across naming territories
• Prioritising longlist candidates based on relevance and distinctiveness
Workshops often include brand, marketing, legal and product leads to align early on direction.
4. First Shortlist: 10–20 High-Potential Candidates
Following the workshop, a preliminary shortlist is filtered on the basis of first-level checks:
• Meaning: Etymology, unintended connotations
• Trademark: Identicals screening
• Google: Conflicting associations or image search surprises
• URL: .com or preferred domain availability
• Linguistic: Phonetic ease, potential mistranslations
Example: Schweppes launched “Tonic Water” in Italy without proper linguistic vetting. The term translated locally to “toilet water.” Avoidable—but only with rigorous screening.
5. Final Shortlist: 5–8 Candidates
The most viable names are evaluated further, including:
• Enhanced trademark and Google checks
• Visualisation in mock contexts (e.g., app icon, product label, hero ad)
• Scenario testing for pronunciation and spelling in key markets
Example: When Ernst & Young rebranded as “EY” in 2013, they discovered too late that the search term also surfaced a gay lifestyle magazine, creating an unintended brand overlap.
6. Final Name Registration
Final documentation is prepared and handed to the client’s legal counsel. The agency typically supports:
• Full rationale and documentation
• Coordination of global linguistic clearance
• Final registration of trademark and URL
Example: Danish energy giant Dong rebranded as Ørsted, only to face legal action from the family of the scientist after whom the name was taken. A clear case of insufficient trademark due diligence.
Why Due Diligence Matters
A name can be strategic, clever, even iconic. But if it can’t be owned, pronounced or trusted, it’s a liability. The most creative name in the world is worthless if it fails a trademark check, offends in another language, or brings back the wrong results in a Google search. As such, legal, linguistic and digital vetting are not optional—they’re risk mitigation.
Architecture and naming strategy also must reflect real-world application. It’s not enough for a name to look good on a brand book. It has to work on mobile, in signage, in URLs, and on search engines.
The Role of AI: Acceleration Without Sacrifice
AI is rapidly transforming the naming process—bringing speed, scale and analytical depth to a traditionally manual domain. But its value is in augmentation, not just automation.
AI can:
• Generate hundreds of name candidates from structured prompts across different types and tones
• Cluster names by phonetic similarity, semantic field or emotional valence
• Rapidly screen names for domain availability and SEO conflicts
• Identify potential linguistic or cultural red flags using large multilingual corpora
• Simulate human response to names using trained language models based on brand personality or category archetypes
Used thoughtfully, AI can accelerate iterations, reduce blind spots, and free up strategists to focus on storytelling and context. The best outputs still require human evaluation, but the path to finding them is faster, smarter, and more expansive than ever before.
Selling It In: Conviction Over Consensus
The final hurdle is stakeholder buy-in. New names often meet resistance. Why? Because unfamiliar words feel risky. Humans are creatures of habit. Leaders worry about how a name sounds in boardrooms or investor calls.
Overcoming this takes vision. Show what the name will look like in context. Pair it with brand story and design system. Help people imagine it, not just react to it. Some of the world’s most iconic names—Accenture, Google, Uber—were once considered strange.
Internal education is as important as external communication. This is not about choosing the name everyone likes. It’s about choosing the name that will work hardest for the brand, and committing to it with purpose.
In Summary
Naming is a rare blend of strategy and semantics. It requires creativity, logic, and legal sharpness. A name can elevate a brand, but only if it’s treated as part of a broader identity system—not a standalone silver bullet.
Done well, naming clarifies brand ambition, differentiates in crowded markets, and builds value that lasts for decades. But it must be earned—through process, discipline, belief—and increasingly, through intelligent use of AI.
A strategic and structured process
While the process outlined here represents a best-in-class approach, it’s not one-size-fits-all. It can flex based on the scale of the business, the complexity of the portfolio, the level of legal risk, or the geographic reach—what’s essential for a global corporate rebrand may be unnecessary for a fast-moving product launch.
Brand naming is not a creative free-for-all. It is a disciplined process blending strategy, creativity, and rigorous due diligence. Here’s how a robust naming journey unfolds, from insight to implementation:
1. Naming Brief
A shared, strategic starting point. The brief defines the project context, audience, legal parameters, naming style preferences, and strategic criteria. At Phoenix Studios, our brief includes a “naming map” that classifies competitor names by type—highlighting both conventions and white space.
Example: When launching a new consumer sub-brand, a UK energy provider used a competitor map to spot that most rivals relied on abstract, two-syllable names. They pursued a bold, idiomatic direction to stand apart.
2. Test Names
Initial test names are generated—not for final use, but to pressure-test the brief. This step helps confirm that the creative direction is yielding viable results before deeper investment in ideation.
Example: A fintech brand used this phase to realise their brief was generating only functional, uninspiring names. Revisiting tone of voice and naming criteria early saved weeks later.
3. Collaborative Creation Workshops
A creative, facilitated session that brings strategy, semantics and storytelling together. There are conflicting views on the efficacy of name ideas created under pressure in a ‘brainstorming’ context, but it can help surface valuable directions and ideas, as well as build consensus among stakeholders. These typically include activities like:
• Introductory framing on name types and associations
• Word association and category reframing
• Brainstorming across naming territories
• Prioritising longlist candidates based on relevance and distinctiveness
Workshops often include brand, marketing, legal and product leads to align early on direction.
4. First Shortlist: 10–20 High-Potential Candidates
Following the workshop, a preliminary shortlist is filtered on the basis of first-level checks:
• Meaning: Etymology, unintended connotations
• Trademark: Identicals screening
• Google: Conflicting associations or image search surprises
• URL: .com or preferred domain availability
• Linguistic: Phonetic ease, potential mistranslations
Example: Schweppes launched “Tonic Water” in Italy without proper linguistic vetting. The term translated locally to “toilet water.” Avoidable—but only with rigorous screening.
5. Final Shortlist: 5–8 Candidates
The most viable names are evaluated further, including:
• Enhanced trademark and Google checks
• Visualisation in mock contexts (e.g., app icon, product label, hero ad)
• Scenario testing for pronunciation and spelling in key markets
Example: When Ernst & Young rebranded as “EY” in 2013, they discovered too late that the search term also surfaced a gay lifestyle magazine, creating an unintended brand overlap.
6. Final Name Registration
Final documentation is prepared and handed to the client’s legal counsel. The agency typically supports:
• Full rationale and documentation
• Coordination of global linguistic clearance
• Final registration of trademark and URL
Example: Danish energy giant Dong rebranded as Ørsted, only to face legal action from the family of the scientist after whom the name was taken. A clear case of insufficient trademark due diligence.
Why Due Diligence Matters
A name can be strategic, clever, even iconic. But if it can’t be owned, pronounced or trusted, it’s a liability. The most creative name in the world is worthless if it fails a trademark check, offends in another language, or brings back the wrong results in a Google search. As such, legal, linguistic and digital vetting are not optional—they’re risk mitigation.
Architecture and naming strategy also must reflect real-world application. It’s not enough for a name to look good on a brand book. It has to work on mobile, in signage, in URLs, and on search engines.
The Role of AI: Acceleration Without Sacrifice
AI is rapidly transforming the naming process—bringing speed, scale and analytical depth to a traditionally manual domain. But its value is in augmentation, not just automation.
AI can:
• Generate hundreds of name candidates from structured prompts across different types and tones
• Cluster names by phonetic similarity, semantic field or emotional valence
• Rapidly screen names for domain availability and SEO conflicts
• Identify potential linguistic or cultural red flags using large multilingual corpora
• Simulate human response to names using trained language models based on brand personality or category archetypes
Used thoughtfully, AI can accelerate iterations, reduce blind spots, and free up strategists to focus on storytelling and context. The best outputs still require human evaluation, but the path to finding them is faster, smarter, and more expansive than ever before.
Selling It In: Conviction Over Consensus
The final hurdle is stakeholder buy-in. New names often meet resistance. Why? Because unfamiliar words feel risky. Humans are creatures of habit. Leaders worry about how a name sounds in boardrooms or investor calls.
Overcoming this takes vision. Show what the name will look like in context. Pair it with brand story and design system. Help people imagine it, not just react to it. Some of the world’s most iconic names—Accenture, Google, Uber—were once considered strange.
Internal education is as important as external communication. This is not about choosing the name everyone likes. It’s about choosing the name that will work hardest for the brand, and committing to it with purpose.
In Summary
Naming is a rare blend of strategy and semantics. It requires creativity, logic, and legal sharpness. A name can elevate a brand, but only if it’s treated as part of a broader identity system—not a standalone silver bullet.
Done well, naming clarifies brand ambition, differentiates in crowded markets, and builds value that lasts for decades. But it must be earned—through process, discipline, belief—and increasingly, through intelligent use of AI.
Staff Writer
