Coming up with a great brand name for a new business, new product or new service is quite difficult. Maybe even more so these days because there are so many existing businesses, because any business can go online and almost instantaneously be nationwide or international, and because have a corresponding domain name is generally important.
Two naming concepts that often lead to great brand name and trademarks are alliteration and portmanteaus.
Alliteration is the repetition of a sound in multiple words. Some brand name portmanteaus:
Coco Crisp
Dunkin Donuts
Krispy Kreme
Circuity City
PayPal
Blackberry
Bob’s Big Boy
Portmanteau is the combination of two or more words into one word. Some well known brand name portmanteaus:
Mircosoft
Comcast
Infosys
Groupon
Amtrak
Netflix
These tools are helpful because they often lead to suggestive names. As I have written before, suggestive names are generally the best. And a mark made up of terms that are otherwise descriptive which is alliterative or a portmanteau may avoid a finding of descriptiveness.
For more brand name tools, see the glossary of linguistic tools from NEONYM.
