A business name is the one branding decision you will live with daily for years, and the one most founders make in an evening. Here are the rules that survive contact with reality, and the free startup kit that generates names, taglines, palettes, and logo concepts from a one-line description.
The Say-It-Out-Loud Test
Every great business name passes three spoken tests: you can say it on the phone without spelling it, hear it once and type it correctly, and say "I work at ___" without wincing. Names that fail these tests tax every referral you ever get.
Domain Strategy, Honestly
The exact .com is nice, not necessary. What matters: the name plus a natural modifier is available (getname.com, namehq.com), the social handles exist in some consistent form, and — critically — nobody established already owns the name in your industry. The startup kit links every generated name straight to a domain availability check.
"You cannot A/B test a name after you have printed it on a van. Do the checks before you fall in love."
The Three Naming Lanes
Descriptive (Leeds Emergency Plumbing) — instantly clear, SEO-friendly, hard to trademark, hard to expand beyond. Suggestive (SwiftFlow) — evokes the benefit, room to grow, needs a little marketing to explain. Abstract (Zephyr) — maximally ownable, maximally expensive to give meaning. Most small businesses are best served in the middle lane.
Check Before You Commit
Search the name plus your industry. Check your national company register (Companies House, ASIC, the NZ Companies Office, provincial registries in Canada, your Secretary of State in the US). Search trademark databases for your class of goods. An hour of checking beats a year of rebranding.
Then Make It Visual
The startup kit pairs each name with a colour palette and three logo mark concepts so you can see the brand, not just read it — and the full version adds a pitch, mission statement, and a branded PDF you can hand to a designer as a brief.