Choosing a Winning Business Name - Dos and Don'ts

Do ...from Jones Translation Services.
- keep your name short and snappy. Two or- be limited by your name. Make sure you've
three syllables are ideal and preferably no moreroom to expand or diversify in the future. If you
than four.call yourself Greenville Motorcycle Repairs, you'll
- make sure all words in your name are easy tohave an uphill task attracting customers if you
pronounce. People won't want to say your nameever decide to start repairing automobiles or
out loud if they aren't sure of the correcttrucks or if you want to attract customers who
pronunciation, which will mean you might lose outdon't live in Greenville.
on word-of-mouth recommendation.- include bland, meaningless words in your name.
- get your name checked out by a professionalQuality Solutions, Synergy Designs or Premier
linguist if you intend to sell abroad, to make sureLogistics say nothing about you except that
your name doesn't mean something rude oryou're boring and lacking in creativity.
negative in the language of your customers.- choose a name consisting only of initials, unless
- check how your name looks when all the wordsyou always accompany it in promotional material,
are run together in lower case as in a URL. Theon stationery, company vehicles etc by a tagline
websites Publish It and Who Represents didn't doeg RGS - Advancing Geography and Geographical
that, unfortunately.Learning (RGS is the Royal Geographical Society in
- check that your name fits on to your packaging,the United Kingdom). People don't have a clue
company vehicles, headed notepaper and businesswhat initials stand for.
cards when it's written down.- base your name on a pun that makes people
Don't ...cringe eg Thaitanic, Curl Up and Dye. It might
- just combine your own name with what you doseem funny and original at first but gets boring
as it tells potential customers nothing. There'safter a while.
nothing to distinguish Smith Translation Services