Journal · Naming
How to check a business name before you register it
Seven checks that take an afternoon and catch what your friends, customers and lawyers would otherwise catch for you after launch.
A name is cheap to change today and expensive to change in a year. Most naming mistakes are found by other people, after launch: a friend mishears it on the phone, a customer types it wrong, a lawyer sends a letter. All of it can be found in an afternoon.
1. Read it with no spaces
Domains have no spaces, so word breaks you didn’t intend show up. The classics are real: Pen Island became penisland.net, Experts Exchange became expertsexchange.com, and Who Represents became whorepresents.com. Write your name out as one string, then read it as a stranger would, left to right.
2. Say it to three people, then ask them to type it
Say the name aloud, without showing it, and ask each person to write it down. If two of them spell it differently, you will be spelling it for years.
If you have to spell it on every call, it’s not the one.
Soft consonants and one obvious spelling win. “Kova” passes. “Qovva” does not.
3. Search it like a customer
Type the name into a search engine and an app store. Whoever owns the first page owns the meaning of the word. A different business in a different country is fine. A brand in your own field with a similar name will outrank you for years.
4. Look at the .com, then look at who owns it
Check your extensions in domainer.gg, then open the taken ones. Parked and for sale is a price negotiation. An active company in your space is a reason to change the name. A dead page from years ago usually means the domain will eventually drop, but don’t plan around it.
5. Check the handles
You don’t need every social handle, but you want the same one on the two or three where your customers are. Discovering that @kova belongs to a stranger and you are @kova_hq is survivable. Finding out after you have printed it is not.
6. Search the trademark registers
This is the one that costs money when you skip it. Search the register in the country you sell in, plus the EU (TMview searches many offices at once) and the WIPO Global Brand Database. Search the exact name and close variants, in the classes that match what you sell.
The test is not identical, it is confusingly similar in the same field. A “Kova” bakery and a “Kova” accounting tool can coexist. Two accounting tools probably can’t. For anything you plan to spend money on, an hour with a trademark attorney is cheaper than a rebrand. This isn’t legal advice, only a place to start.
7. Say it in your customers’ languages
The story that the Chevy Nova couldn’t sell in Spanish-speaking markets is a myth. The Pajero is not: Mitsubishi sold it as the Montero in Spanish-speaking markets, because in Spain the original is an insult. A search for the name plus “meaning” in each language you sell in takes five minutes.
Then stop
A name is a decision, not a research project. If it clears these seven, register the domain, register the most common misspelling as a redirect if it’s a few dollars a year, and get on with building the thing the name will be attached to.