We have talked before about the minefield of choosing company names. As well as the marketing implications there are a whole range of legal restrictions to consider. Sometimes people are just stuck for an idea or find that the company name they had set their heart on has been taken.
If you are really struggling to come up with a company name idea there are now a range of online company name generators to have a play around with.
Biz Name Wiz – Verdict 3/10
Biz Name Wiz looks quite promising to start with. It allows you to put in a range of words related to your business then generates a name. I tried putting in “tours, essex, countryside, cycle” for my new imaginary company doing cycle tours of the Essex countryside. The top 2 suggestions I got back were “toursessexcountrysidecycle” and “countrysidecycleessextours”. Neither of which are very inspiring or clever.
Wordlab – Verdict 4/10
A bit like Company Name Generator wordlab generates random names at the push of a button. However unlike Company Name Generator some of these names actually have meaning. Wordlab has a variety of categories of names to choose from making it more likely you will find something useable.
Name Station – Verdict 6/10
Name station requires a login and doesn’t have the easiest navigation in the world but after a bit of digging around there are some decent tools. It is mainly focussed on domain names but has tools which allow you to see related words and alliterations. Where Name Station does particularly well is that it has some human intervention. You can (for a price) conduct public contests to name your business and see some of the unused names from previous businesses that are relevant to your keywords.
Overall Verdict
Most of these tools are based around domain names rather than traditional business names. A lot of the name generators that I haven’t mentioned essentially work in the same way as the ones above, either generating completely random names or simply joining your keywords together. The better ones, like Name Station, do this as well but then offer another level of choices on top. Ultimately none of these names generators are likely to give you the perfect company name but they could well give you some ideas to start with.
You may also like: What length should a business name be?