Nomenclature for startups – how to name your startup

Naming your startup is a great next step when it comes to pursuing your dreams and jumping into the world of startup and entrepreneurship. It can be a tiring and exhausting process, which is why most companies resort to just aping existing organisations, e.g. Urbancart or Stay Villa. Now cutting corners not only questions your ingenuity but also creates confusion and lack of clarity among your customers. So let your juices flow and fix on something that you think will truly click with the audience and give your brand a unique identity.

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Core belief

It’s important that you name your company after your core beliefs, and what your company stands for in the industry. Example, if you’re a shoe maker and want to create shoes that donate to charity – you can call them “souls”. What is your company’s core belief system that makes you unique? Name it after that and the PR stories will churn themselves.

Unique positioning

What makes you unique in your field? Ensure that your positioning strategy is woven discretely in the brand name. Like, Apple is a sign-off to the apple that fell on Newton. It symbolises that an idea can come from nothing but disrupt the course of history, which is what Apple stands for. Tinder – is the spark that lights the fire in a room. The dating app didn’t want to be a matrimony app, but just a spark that initiate a fire between two people. That’s their unique positioning strategy and your brand name must speak of that.

Domain name

Now comes the tech part. Make sure that your domain name is available and you have the means to book it for years to come. Hold ownership to all domain entities to your site, in case your competitor tries to buy them off before you do. You need to have the right domain name that’s short enough and has enough bandwidth to be scalable. Example, if you have a website called – wearehellobottlers.com and you sell bottles online, then for each subdomain you don’t want to create something complex domain names, so keep it short and trendy.

Branding

Do your research on what your brand name and logo might possibly translate to in different languages; you don't want to offend people in different countries. Does the word have a universal appeal and does it make sense to trademark it? These are the questions that you will need to think about when naming your startup. If you call it something that isn’t easily recognizable or doesn’t have a social media handle after it – you may be asking for trouble in the future. Pharma and Agro startups must be even more careful about it.

RoC guidelines

The Registrar of Companies (RoC) has their own guidelines when it comes to nomenclature and naming your company, and these must be stringently followed. You can’t have a name that’s a plural, misspelling, adding location, different combo, etc. and the name must be unique to the business that you’re in. A list of all the regulations can be found here in the “Draft Rules under Companies Act, 2013” website.

Read Also: 5 things to keep in mind before naming your startup