What's in a Name?

After discovering the name for my project was already taken by a similar sounding organization, I set about searching for a new idea. This was really difficult, especially since my old name, Resourceful, seemed to work so well for the brand.

A mind map of various words relating to the topic. Core words are in purple, interesting words are in yellow.

I started by creating multiple mind maps, free wrote, and read through all of last year’s research notes on the topic to get inspired. I then used some different naming techniques to come up with more ideas—descriptive (what it does), fabricated (made up words), acronyms, magic spell (changing the spelling), and combinations of all of these. I came up with a couple hundred ideas, checking trademarks and domain availability.

The list on the left page started out with some notes, but turned into a list of name ideas as they came to me. At this stage, no idea as a bad one, I just need to get them all on the page. I've highlighted some interesting ones here as well. On the right are more visual words.

Domains were not surprisingly a bigger issue than trade marks—so many are just purchased and held onto, and there’s big business in selling popular domains. I eventually landed on a few ideas that were actually available, so the next step will be testing—I don’t want to end up with something that could have negative connotations that I didn’t consider! Below in bold are the options that had passed at least the trademark test. A couple are maybes on the domain, as in, I might have to get creative!