People who start up a business have a lot of ideas about how they want to be viewed and they play around in their minds with the kind of business name they want to use.  Some people swear by online name generators. Others just know what to call their business. A lot of small businesses have traditionally tried to make the purpose of their business clear in the name they choose. Andrews Plumbing is a good example of that type of name. If you are in a small community, this works very well. Even in a larger town or city, it still works and it gets listed near the top of any alphabetical catalog such as the yellow pages.

But is it catchy? No.

Personal Plumbing is a more generic name in one way and yet it is open to misinterpretation. It could be a name of a plumbing company or it could be an avant garde and overly catchy name for an urologist.  The idea of naming is much more complicated than you might imagine until you have tried it yourself. Pam’s Pampered Poodle Parlor is another example of a catchy type of name – but it is confusing. Does Pam only pamper poodles? But trying to find a name that is descriptive and yet catchy is only part of the story.

The real dilemma these days is that the old way of catering to print ads is gone by the wayside. So many businesses advertise on the internet now that you have an extra naming pressure and that is the pressure to have a name that is also search engine friendly. Not only is this a challenge, even finding an available domain name the matches or at least comes close to your business name is a challenge. And even if you do find such a domain name, you are still facing the issue of catchy versus descriptive.