Using Trends To Name Your Business

Your business name is often the first detail someone will learn about your business, and will always remain part of spreading brand awareness and your values. The name implies where you see yourself within your industry, creating a strong tone and feel that describes who you wish to serve, what your products and services will give customers, and how you think of yourself.

Wondering why the name of your business matters? Because the global marketplace has become so large and diverse that customers will actually consider a name when choosing what to buy among a vast selection. Unless you think you can get your products to become the only option within stores, your business and brand need a strong name that people will remember.

To describe the trends in business names, we’ll start with what was most used last year. Next will be the new and returning trends this year, including what not to do, and finally, we’ll discuss the idea of trendy names as a whole and why some trends will always remain popular.

Business Naming Trends From 2021

On the whole, a much larger demand for owning private property was probably behind a large increase in the use of “property” in business names. There were far fewer uses of health-focused business names like “fit” and “health” after they peaked during 2020.

The term “digital” also rose quickly, maybe due to more businesses wanting to promote remote digital work. “UK” was down and “global” was up, perhaps as businesses looked beyond their local customers to larger global marketplaces.

Then, excluding common terms at the ends of names such as “Limited,” trends in name components included:

• describing the business’ reach like “global” and “international”
• using the business’s industry such as “construction” and “trading”
• naming the business type as in “Company” or “LLP”
• future flexible business names like “group” and “solutions”
• less use of small-scale terms as in “home” and “design”
• more large-scale money terms such as “investments” and “properties”

Modern Business Naming Trends

Starting with the entirely positive, the returning trends include business names that are themselves visually appealing or easy to turn into a strong logo, names based on English words or that sound English, and names from ancient myths for clothing. For example, have you heard of Nike shoes? Or acronym names have long been popular and are now widely used for athletic and beauty products, fashion and food, tourism or education.

On the new trend front, businesses in the IT and computer industries have been using names which include “AI” in their name, then creating logos which emphasize those two letters. Then consider whether your new business name can be read and pronounced by reading devices. You can test this by asking any smartphone or tablet with a large language base to read your name aloud. If you follow the other trend guidelines such as short names that are easy to pronounce, you can even simply make up words for your business name.

Business names that are between 4 and 6 letters total like the classic “Lego” or giant “Google” are now more popular than ever, perhaps because they are easy to type, while longer names and multiple-word names should be avoided for the same reason and because they are harder for customers to remember. Compound names (made by combining two other words) grew in the IT fields and with social media companies, though names with capitalized letters in the middle are falling out of fashion.

Specific terms used by the business in their products and services such as the name of a hairdressing technique for a beauty salon are growing in popularity, though you should avoid terms where the customer will always think of that thing rather than your business. Also avoid names that describe exactly what your business does, although this doesn’t always hold true for tourism and travel.

Avoid names based on a misspelt word, while remembering some very unique business ideas that have made this work, and avoid names that were once or still are a person’s name, though a business founder’s name still works well for lifestyle brands, clothing and beauty products, or educational fields. Always avoid names that contain too many or too few vowels, or those which use non-letter characters like numbers and symbols that people won’t be able to easily pronounce and devices will have a hard time reading, not to mention the difficulties of creating a website URL. On the other hand, hotels and restaurants seem to have no trouble including numbers in their business names.

In this internet age, business names that stand out as awkward or unfortunate in meaning or use will remain problematic, especially on social media or the global stage. “Dirty Panda” could be a fun clothing brand name in your local neighbourhood, but could you keep that on the global marketplace or online? Probably not. Finally, don’t forget to check whether a domain name is available for your business name!

Evergreen Trends For Business Names

Perhaps we shouldn’t choose a name following yearly trends. After all, if your name is trendy one year, you could be behind the fashion in the next. You can usually change a business’s name, but no one would recommend changing your name every year other than for pop-up businesses. Or you can simply follow some of these naming trends which have always been good ideas.

Business names should be designed to target the specific type and market of your customers. Think about what your business will do, then put yourself in the shoes of a customer trying to decide between two items on a store shelf, yours and a competitor’s. Which product name would win?

To make your name the clear best choice in a store and a customer’s first choice when next they think about your industry, pick something easy to remember so the name will stick in their head, such as a short word or something your customers can easily pronounce. Using one or more initials for a business name has long been commonplace.

When selecting a name, brainstorm as many words as possible with a strong connection to your industry, then remove those which don’t feel like your brand or fit current trends. Remember that unique names are a legal necessity in your own country, then become a good and trendy idea in the global marketplace.