Here are 5 quick tips on naming your business, from the experts at BrandNewPerfect.Name:

1. We want the perfect domain name.

In the beginning, everyone pined over what seemed to be the perfect domain names – the obvious ones like realestate.com, entertainment.com and internet.com (how would you like to own the ‘internet’?). Then some creative upstarts such as Amazon.com came along and proved what everyone in the advertising world knew already…it’s not what your name is, but who knows your name. So if your brand came first before the Internet you’ll want to maintain that as your domain name (e.g. Metro-Goldwyn Mayer is MGM.com), but if you’re a new company, why now develop your brand with an original name, the way Twitter.com and Zoosk.com did (visit http://www.go2web20.net/ to see the names of new Web 2.0 companies). Coining a new name often makes it a lot easier to get the dot com you want, too.

2. Hey, that’s our name!

In many cases the “perfect name” for your company is already being used by another business, or else they’re using a similar sounding name. Before you even try to register a new business name or domain name, do a thorough search of the Internet, which can help you determine whether there are similar names being used anywhere on the planet. Check different spellings of the name, too. And even if they are being used, that doesn’t mean you won’t be able to use your version. Find out if the name is trademarked. Are they in the same business as you? If not, it may not be a problem for you to call your business Purple Rose Florists if the only other similar company is Purple Rose Tattoos. You can also do a variation in the spelling of the name, or include other words in the name to distinguish it or make it more specific to your business, e.g. Great West Technology can be turned into Gr8 West Tech, or Halcyon Communications can be turned into Halcyon Wordsmiths International. Avoid trademark issues by consulting a lawyer so they can do a search for you in your own country and other countries as well, where the laws may be different.

3. We wish this weren’t our name!

Sometimes your current name and brand is a liability when it sounds too similar to something with negative connotations. Imagine if you ran a store in New York City called Twin Towers Photography? In a real life case, Greenleaf Marketing in Springfield, Missouri, decided to rebrand itself as Red Crow Marketing because their original name sounded too similar to Greenleaf Companies, a real estate company being investigated by state agencies. In those kinds of situations, it makes sense to go through the effort, expense and even risk of rebranding under a new name.

4. We need something that sounds edgy, contemporary.

Rebranding yourself with an edgy, Webby-sounding name doesn’t usually work unless you completely re-style your entire company, and even then it might just seem blatantly superficial and disingenuous to customers and business partners. If you’re a drycleaning company and you re-brand yourself as “e-Clean”, you’d better find a way that people can order drycleaning pickups online or some other Web-related services, otherwise you’ll risk sounding foolish. On the other hand, it doesn’t hurt to style yourself after what you want to be and where you want to be rather than where you are now. Should a name say something about what your business does? Not always. It helps if the name is intuitive to people so they can tell what you do, but once you build a brand you don’t need any further descriptors. For example, does the Coca-Cola Company need to be called Coca-Cola Carbonated Beverages? Instead of simply describing your company by what it is, e.g. American Glassworks, try creating a name that describes its qualities, what it does for the customer or client, or what kind of impact it will have. As a name, Yahoo! didn’t literally describe what the company was offering, but it did describe the exciting experience of finding new sites on the Internet.

5. We want to see our name up in lights.

Not every name will have a symbolic or visual quality, but that’s an important consideration because when it comes time to develop your brand expression – e.g. your corporate colors and logo – how would you like your graphic designer to depict your company. And is that going to be the right image for your company? The name Lion Security lends itself to an instant visual, and it suits that kind of company because it portrays power and strength, but would the same visual suit a retail story selling baby clothes? Perhaps, if it were visualized as a cartoon lion sitting beside a lamb. The point is that the way your name will be visualized is also important in the selection process, not simply the originality or availability of the name. Let’s not forget that a product or service can have its own unique name and sub-brand, too. Rather than just calling your new product “Digital Widgets,” to use a hypothetical example, find out whether your marketing experts or consultants suggest creating a sub-brand with a distinctive name (e.g. Widgetmania) that can be promoted both together and separately from your corporate brand. There are pro’s and con’s to sub-branding…but that’s another topic for another post.

Disclaimer: This article is offered for informational purposes as a free public service and should not be construed as legal advice. Consult your lawyer on all legal issues relating to domain names and trademarks.