A brand name should be described not as “good” or “bad,” but as “right” or “wrong.” Because a brand name is a company’s most important item of investment, and it is very important that this investment is made correctly. Just as the CNC machine bought for factory production is chosen through technical analysis and evaluation, a brand name should be created just as technically. Creativity matters, of course, but creativity that does not meet the technical conditions is just “fantasy.”

When setting a right brand name, rather than first trying to come up with the name, you should do the work by following the processes on this page. Below, we explain some right and wrong brand names along with their reasons.

How Goodjob creates the right brand name

How do we do it? Click to learn.


How a Right Brand Name Should Be:
The features a right brand name should have are as follows.

  • Names the target audience can read and grasp. If you want to reach a 60-year-old or a child, your name should be readable from a distance and with ease.
  • It should suit the surface it will be applied to. If you have a tall, vertical package, choosing a long name can be a problem.
  • It should not be confused with other brands. Especially when the beginning of the name is the same as another’s, it creates big problems for standing apart. Today, entering the dairy market with a name that starts with “Milk…” is not wise.
  • It should express its strategy. A brand should carry a promise, and if the name feeds off that promise, it has made a strong start.
  • It should avoid taking on wrong meanings in target markets. Some words can carry a negative meaning in certain languages, or fall into an unfortunate association — it could be a murderer’s surname, or slang for a curse. The internet is full of such examples; there is no need to add a new one.
  • It should suit the brand personality. If we have built a more masculine brand, the name should be made not of soft letters like o, s, and y but of hard dental and labial consonants — letters like T, K, and Z. A children’s product, on the other hand, should be made of the letters children use most in their own speech.

Examples of Right Brand Names:

  • Booking.com: The name expresses the brand’s promise perfectly, with no need for an extra slogan; it spread across the market and both grew the category and took considerable share from long-established rivals.
  • Nespresso: a name that draws on the very nature of coffee and evokes espresso itself — a perfect fit for the product.
  • Chobani: a name well suited to the promise of a brand that puts traditional, authentic flavors front and center.

Examples of Wrong Brand Names:

  • Copying the leader’s opening: on a food-delivery app where dozens of brands already begin with “Burger,” naming the next one “Burger-something” too is a mistake — it simply drowns in the list. The one exception is the category leader that owns the word, like Burger King.
  • Legally fragile or offensive names: names that lean on a legal loophole, or that turn out to be a slur or a crude term in another language, are wrong choices — they invite trouble down the line.
  • Over-narrow, over-ethnic names: a name so tightly bound to a single ethnic or national identity that it cannot travel beyond it will limit the brand’s room to grow.