Naming is a strategy problem
A name is not a creative flourish at the end. It is a strategic decision made early, on purpose.
- Guide
- June 2026
- 7 min read
Naming a product or company is a strategy problem, not a brainstorming exercise. Start from intent and positioning, understand the four kinds of name and what each trades away, generate widely against that brief, then filter ruthlessly on distinctiveness, durability, and room to grow.
Naming gets treated as the fun bit at the end, the brainstorm with sticky notes once the real work is done. That is exactly why so many names are forgettable. A name is not decoration applied to a finished thing. It is one of the earliest and most durable strategic decisions you will make, and it deserves to be made on purpose.
Start from positioning, not from words
Before any candidates, answer the strategy questions. What is this for, who is it for, and what does it need to claim in a crowded category. A name is a position compressed into a word. If you do not know the position, you are not naming, you are guessing, and a clever word attached to an unclear strategy is just a nicer way to be forgettable.
A name does not describe the thing. It picks a fight about what the thing means.
The four kinds of name
- Descriptive: it says what the thing is, like General Motors or Whole Foods. Instantly clear, hard to own, and it can box you in when the company outgrows the description.
- Suggestive: it evokes a quality without stating it, like Stripe or Vercel. A strong middle ground, clear enough to hint and open enough to grow.
- Abstract: a real word borrowed from elsewhere, like Apple or Amazon. Little inherent meaning, which is the point: you get to fill it with your own.
- Coined: an invented word, like Google or Spotify. Maximum ownership and distinctiveness, but you pay to teach the world what it means.
Generate wide, then filter hard
Once you know the position and the kind of name, generate without mercy and judge without sentiment. The generating is the cheap part. The filtering is where the strategy actually happens.
- Distinctiveness: does it stand apart in the category, or blur into the sea of names that rhyme with the leader.
- Durability: will it still fit in five years, or does it pin you to a feature, a year, or a trend you will outgrow.
- Room to mean more: can it absorb meaning over time, or does it say everything on day one and nothing after.
- Sound and rhythm: say it out loud, in a sentence, on a phone call. Names live in the mouth before they live on the page.
- The boring, fatal checks: trademark, domain, and what it means in the other languages your customers speak.
Where AI helps and where it stops
Generation is the half that just got free. Ask a model for five hundred candidates in the suggestive register and you will have them in seconds. That is genuinely useful, and it is not the job. The job is deciding which one is worth defending for a decade, which fight is worth picking, which compromise you can live with. That is judgment, and it is exactly the part a generator cannot supply. Use the machine for breadth. Reserve yourself for the choice.
Asked & answered
Treat it as strategy, not wordplay. Begin from intent and positioning, decide which kind of name fits (descriptive, suggestive, abstract, or coined), generate a wide field against that brief, then filter hard on distinctiveness, durability, and whether the name can carry more meaning over time.
Four, roughly: descriptive names say what the thing is, suggestive names evoke a quality, abstract names borrow an unrelated real word, and coined names are invented. Each trades immediate clarity for long-term ownership in a different ratio.
AI is excellent at generating hundreds of candidates, which is the easy half. The hard half is judgment: deciding which name is worth defending for a decade. That part does not automate.