Naming & Nomenclature

Everything starts with a name.

More than any other thing, your name is your biggest brand asset: it’s where you can make a good impression, and it’s where you can stick in someone’s memory. A good name doesn’t save a bad business, but it’s critical for a great one. If your name is boring, hard to pronounce, or confusing – you are consistently missing out on the opportunity to make a lasting impression with people.

You can do all the branding you want, but if you start a business with a bad name you’re wasting your time and money. With so much riding on your name, it’s important to take the time to create names that put your best foot forward.

Naming Services

At Overhaul, we’ve created names for companies, services, products, buildings, restaurants, and retailers. The names are all different, but our goal is the same: to create a name defines your essence as a company, while standing out from the competition.

Name Development

This work is more involved than opening up a thesaurus or mashing words together. With our process, we’re able to uncover great names that make connect you to your core customer.

Name Architecture

The bigger your business, the more moving parts there are (ie. multiple departments, locations, products). We can help you develop a naming framework or system to help your names feel cohesive and stay consistent.

Re-naming

Uh oh. Made a mistake? We’ll help you reset, and build a game plan to get back on track.

Stakeholder Consultation

Sometimes you need to include more people in the process. We’ll help you do that, and come out the other side with your sanity intact.

This should be easy, right?

A name is just a word or two, so how hard can it be? The outcome may seem small, but in fact this is some of the most critical work you can invest in. We promise you, bad names just are not worth trying to fight against. So, while you could pay your nephew to spend an afternoon looking through a dictionary, you shouldn’t.

Here’s why: naming a product or service is a delicate balance between function and form. When you look to name a company or product, you’re looking for something that sparks a picture in your audience’s mind – one that embodies your character, but also one that tells people what you do. At the same time you need to consider the practical: is it memorable? Does it make sense verbally? Is it easy to pronounce? Does it stand out? Does it strike the right tone?

Do the due diligence

Even if you have a good name, there’s more work to see it through to the end. For example, does your name have good URL or social handles as options? Maybe you need to vet your name with a group of stakeholders.

We’ve seen and done this work before, and we know the common issues that you can come across while creating a name. Our job is to help you avoid the missteps to get to the point where you have a great name in hand.