Catchy, original, evocative—the right name defines your company and is an invaluable marketing tool. Here's how to find it

By Jeremy Quittner

Lisa Tep wanted her spa to have a waterfall, bamboo floors, and a tranquility lounge. After six years, the former accountant had everything set. But her Vienna (Va.) company still didn't have a name. For inspiration, Tep pored over books about Thailand, where her mother was born, and searched the Internet. She considered Lotus, which was taken, and Nail Nirvana, which didn't quite fit. After a year of researching Asian culture, she hit on Sesen Spa. "Sesen" is the ancient Egyptian word for the lotus flower, a symbol of beauty and purity. Perfect. "People would be able to pronounce it, but it was different enough, and it would prompt people to ask, 'What does this mean?'" says Tep, whose company now has 15 employees and revenues of $1.5 million.

A good name is an alchemical combination of message and esthetics. It has to encapsulate everything that makes your business special. It has to be catchy. And it has to be original. "The golden rule of naming is memorability," says Mike Carr, founder of NameStormers, a naming and branding company in Lago Vista, Tex. "If you can get inside the consumer's mind, a lot of other sins will be forgiven."

Bad names—and there are plenty—are off-putting, impossible to pronounce or spell, confusing, or just downright forgettable. Then there are the legions of copycats, such as the many companies adopting names with "oo" after Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO)! made good. But you can do better than that.

Whether your company is starting out or changing direction, finding the right name is a matter of creating a process in which inspiration can strike. Of course, you might get lucky. The founders of 100-person, $18 million Antenna Software in Jersey City, N.J., which makes software that connects salespeople in the field, stumbled on what they thought was the ideal moniker for their company—it was scrawled on the sidewalk in front of their building. But more often, as Tep found, naming your company takes a good deal of research and brainstorming. And no matter where you find your name, you'll have to do some digging to make sure no one has beaten you to it.

Get Creative

You can choose to turn over the task of naming your baby to the pros. But no one knows your company better than you do, so it makes sense to give it a shot yourself first. Draft a small group of company insiders to serve as your brainstorming partners and sounding board. Keep the group small; more than six people can stifle creativity. You can also canvass friends and family for ideas. Begin by listing all the positive attributes of your company and its products; you should aim to evoke your company's personality and the factors that set it apart from the competition. Simple nouns and adjectives work best, such as "warm," "friendly," and "innovative."

You can get creative juices flowing by combing through dictionaries, magazines, and encyclopedias. Web searches might provide some inspiration as well. Rather than consulting a thesaurus, which might steer you to the overly esoteric, Carr recommends leafing through synonym finders and word-menu and word-association books, whose listings are often simpler and more colorful. And look for inspiration out of the office. "Creative inspiration can come from anywhere," says Anthony Shore, global director of naming and writing for brand and marketing firm Landor Associates in San Francisco, "but it is more likely to come from sources that are distantly removed from whatever category you are in." If your goal, for example, is to inspire enthusiasm and excitement, go to an amusement park and look at the names of the rides, or scan skateboarding and snowboarding magazines. Or, if you prefer a more staid company image, you might find a spark in the world of Martha Stewart. Elusive qualities such as sound also play a role. If you're opening a restaurant, for instance, its name should be as appetizing as the food you want to serve.