Choosing your new brand name – PART I
As everybody knows, a good brand’s name is crucial and it can be a real ‘catch’. So choosing it is a very important step starting your own business. Especially when you run your business on the Internet and if it is a shop for example. Internet shop of lingerie would be even more demanding. That is why we think it is worth taking your time while choosing a really good name.
Firstly – starting an enterprise we aim to develop it further in the future and it is possible that our brand will become popular on a wider scale or even internationally. There are several factors and strategies to be considered during this process and we would like to encourage you to think of the following points: our brand’s name length, its origins and the meaning associated. It is also worth following your intuition and imagination to create something really special.
The brand name’s length
As everybody knows – size matters 😉 In our opinion the length of the name makes a difference. As far as the online lingerie stores are considered – it should be short, brief and catchy. Certainly no longer than about 15-20 words in it.
At this point, we need to take into account that one word names may have already been taken. Especially if they suit to the specific kind of a lingerie offer – for example popular female names and nicknames such as: Lola, Melisa, Adriana, Mimi, Sarah. The same if you choose a name characterizing your products’ features like: intimate, seductive, sensible, etc. Therefore, choosing a one word name we need to be a little more creative and sometimes just use our imagination.
The origin of our label
All of the biggest online companies have short, brief names and their meanings often come from another words or they are simply – made up. Sometimes, the companies just mix and rearrange the letters order in some names, for example: Google originates from the word “googol” which means: the number followed by one hundred zeros. Another popular, catchy names: Yahoo, Asos, Ebay, Allegro, Onet.
What does it mean?
So how can you get inspired to create the perfect label…
We should remember that what we sell is lingerie and that goes well with some fashion capitals’ languages. French, Italian or some exotic dialects may be really helpful while looking for our desirable vocabulary.
Sometimes you can simply use the Google translator and check the meaning of your potential choice or find some synonyms of the words connected with lingerie and feminine intimate accessories (e.g. sexy, sensible, delicate, seductive, etc.) You can be really amazed at how surprisingly good they sound in different languages.
Use your imagination in the process of creation
At this point we should make a list of our potential word choices. Use your imagination and check how those names sound if you reorganize the letters inside or add something personal to the label.
For instance, Italian word: sensuale sounds very well, but… We can create a new, more unique name going from there: sensual => sensel => senselle.
Of course, if we run an online lingerie store, we have to remember that our brand is supposed to be associated with the characteristics of the products sold and the general vision of the whole enterprise. That is certainly something very feminine here.
Some more ideas
Let us check women’s names mentioned before:
Veronica is in French: Véronique, but if we get rid of the accent there is an easier word: Veronique.
As a man I would say that some southern words, especially Italian or Spanish names of towns and regions, sound really nice and a bit sexy as well. You can also use them. Optionally – with some slight modifications.
Take an Italian region Molise – a perfect online shop name. It is similar with the names of towns: Modena, Ferrara, etc. Écija modified a little becomes Desija and additionally it can be associated with the word ‘desirable’ now.
You may not only add something to your original word but also mix two different names into a one. In our opinion it is a good compromise between the two-words label but not too short on the other hand. And this is exactly how our brand name: Lingerose was born. As you can easily guess it comes from two words: lingerie and rose. Both of them are commonly associated with lingerie and sound quite good – not only separately but also very well together.
Another example – Bianti. Originated from Italian: bianachera intima which means simply – underwear.
Let us take a closer look at the two-word names’ examples. Those two parts may both mean something or be associated with something, e.g. Lingerieboutique – the label consisted of two separate words – no need to explain their meaning.
Not only meaningful names may sound good. Example: LouMarie. Two separate, short female names, sound very sexy and catchy together.
The second part
In the second part of this article you will read more about some external factors and techniques which make your chosen brand name outstanding and distinguishing from the crowd.
Now, we would like to encourage you to follow your intuition and write down all the ideas coming to your mind.
So let us assume that we have had no problems creating a list of catchy names and there is some impressive base of our potential labels. The next question is: how to verify them and decide which one is absolutely the best. There are also some interesting external factors affecting future popularity of our brand’s name so we would like to mention them as well. Listed randomly, they need to be considered all together while choosing the best one.
The key words in our domain (in the name of our online store)
It is worth noticing that the usage of the key words in our domain can be very important considering SEO (search engine optimization) and SERP (search engine results pages). However, it has been observed, that this tendency is declining nowadays. In our opinion – worth considering, but certainly – not the most important factor anymore.
Sound and meaning
As we have already written in the previous article – good sound and hit meaning make a huge difference. Those two questions are very individual for many different countries and languages, so we want to have in mind the specifics of our target market.
Melody makers
Once again talking about sound – it is important that our name is not too difficult to pronounce. We have to take into account the potential pronunciation difficulties of our future consumers. It often happens when we choose some too rare and sophisticated words, especially in the foreign languages.
If spelling is too different from pronunciation and the word is not popular at all, our future customers may not want to say it at loud – because of the fear of failure (being “funny” saying it at loud or being not comprehensive). In some extreme cases it can even lead them to avoid buying our products… And that is definitely opposite of what we want.
Another essential matter is spelling. Running own company it often happens that we must spell our company’s name, e.g. on the phone. As we have already said in the previous article – it is good for the label to be short.
Excuse me, once again – what did you mean?
No harm to do a little research and make sure that there is no negative meaning associated with our chosen name in its original language. It is easy to “feel it” in our local market but when you try to sell your products to some foreign customers – that may sometimes be tricky. Easily revealed – just ask some native speaker of the chosen language – either your friend or some stranger met at any Internet language forum. The other way is to use Google Advanced Search. If you set the target language, look for the word and do not find any answers – there probably are not any connotations. If you find many entries – you may want to make sure about it and check most of them. Google translator is very helpful there or once again – asking some native speakers.
The art of choosing
So now we have narrowed the list of our potential names – it is high time we chose our best of the best. What needs to be remembered here is a following point of order: the availability. The only thing needs to be done here is to go to our domain supplier and check if our dream name is not used by anybody else. The website: ovh.com is very helpful here and we can strongly recommend using it. Of course, there are many other sites providing similar services here.
Another important factor is your domain extension – that is what follows your website name after a dot, e.g. in the website address: yourname.com the extension is: “com”.
This determinant depends on the country (or maybe the target market rather) in which you plan to work. If it is one country only you will probably want to choose the extension typical for it.
For instance:
The UK – .co.uk
France – .fr
Italy – .it
Germany – .de
Poland – .pl
Et cetera, et cetera…
For more international enterprises we encourage you to choose the most popular:
.com
.net
.eu
…and so on.
The End
If we are at the finish line of all those complicated recruitment processes – let us get a little break. Then, go back to the topic with some ‘fresh head’. Say it at loud, listen to yourself and check how it sounds. Ask some friends – their first reaction will always verify your choice, as it can be very easily observed if some word is a catch.
Hopefully, you have succeeded and there is no need to start our “castings” from the beginning… It is the high time you registered it now! 🙂
