What’s in a Name? Picking a Name for a Business (Or Blog) Is Hard
Let me tell you about a room with eight people arguing over whether the word "save" or "commit" is better.
Naming Things is Hard
My day job is as a software developer. If I asked someone unfamiliar with software development what they think the hardest part of the job is, they’d probably say the coding or some other technical aspect. Let me tell you about a room with eight people arguing over whether the word save or commit is better. The end result of that meeting? More time needed to make a decision.
While maybe not the hardest part of the job, programmers often joke that naming things is the most difficult part. As always, here's XKCD #910 capturing this perfectly.
The Struggle of Naming a Business (or Blog)
A few months ago, my partner and I were thinking of starting a small business centered around board games. Obviously, small businesses are serious... business. We spent a couple of weeks brainstorming name ideas.
At the time, I was listening to Gimlet’s Startup podcast, where host Alex Blumberg and his business partner Matt Lieber hired a professional branding firm to help them name their new company. If you’re trying to name something, I highly recommend listening to their How to Name Your Company episode. I laughed at the absurdity of them listing adjectives that describe a gimlet (the drink) and somehow relating them to their business.
Only days later, I found myself mimicking this absurd behavior. We were going through a list of astronomy and space terms when we came across Ephemeris.
Ephemeris - In astronomy and celestial navigation, an ephemeris is a book with tables that gives the trajectory of naturally occurring astronomical objects and artificial satellites in the sky, i.e., the position (and possibly velocity) over time.
— Wikipedia (last visited Feb. 3, 2025)
Conceptually, Ephemeris fit our idea—a board game café as a service with a centralized website for finding games to play. We loved it… except that no one knows what the word means. We had only learned it minutes ago. At this point, we were just following in the footsteps of the Startup podcast. We decided to move, but not before texting my friends about this esoteric word I just learned.
Later, we stumbled upon a clever pun for our board game business: Shelf Life. Perfect! Surely, no one else had thought of this incredibly obvious pun before!
Except... a quick Google search for Shelf Life Games turned up a Facebook page, a YouTube series, and a cool-looking website/game (https://shelflifegame.com/) all with similar names. We decided to proceed anyway. Shelflifegames.com was taken, but we snagged the very cheap shelflife.games URL instead.
Perfect is the enemy of good
— Voltaire
Picking a perfect name is probably impossible, but when you’re creating something new, it feels deeply personal. A name is no longer just a name—it becomes an existential concern.
“What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Think of successful businesses: Google, Spotify, Apple. Juliet had a point—these names don’t inherently mean much, but they are known by reputation. That doesn’t mean a name is pointless—a short, understandable name has advantages—but in the early stages, don’t get hung up on finding the perfect one. Pick a name that brings you joy and motivates you.
I learned my lesson with Shelf Life Games. We spent many evenings obsessing over the name when there were so many other problems to solve. It took me just one evening to come up with this blog’s name, which allowed me to focus on more important things—like writing this post.
How did I come up with Dewlap Games? I was brainstorming animal-based names and remembered that female rabbits can get a funny-looking double chin called a dewlap. Does it relate to board games? Not at all. But anytime someone asks, “What is a dewlap?”, I get to show them.
Some things to keep in my when picking a name for a business or product.
- Check if a domain name is available and affordable – https://porkbun.com/
- usually .com top level domains are the most expensive, try other top level domains like .games, .io, or .net
- Check for existing trademarks – https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/search
- You don't want to have to change names because of a conflict with an existing trademark
- Google it – Google Search: Shelf Life Games
- Due to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) you may find that highly popular sites with similar names may outrank your in searched. It took weeks, and a lot of effort doing social media posts to get our website to be the top listed item when searching "Shelf Life Games" even though that is our actual website name.