The Naming Convention

TL;DR ?? I'm starting a podcast about names... Company Names, Product Names.

In my work at Stellar, we help hundreds of ambitious founders incorporate their companies.

And as a 'branding person', I have a deep appreciation for good names.

I actually sometimes get involved in brainstorming the names of my friends’ companies.

Here is some of the 'naming' work I've done...

• I have friends who sell fermented foods that are rich in probiotics, and good for the gut.? So late one night, after tossing around a few ideas with them… I proposed ‘Gutsy’… and it stuck!
• Another friend was building an oil trading company, and we were looking for names that had an available .com domain.? I suggested ‘Oil Matters’… and it too, was adopted.
• When I consulted for Singapore’s DBS Bank in/around 2013 — on their strategy for reaching ambitious startups in Singapore — I named the program ‘Business Class’, and it continues to be used today.?
• Same thing in/around 2009 when I gave the Singapore Health Promotion Board the name for their program: 'Healthy Together' — a social media and community-focused program to encourage Singaporeans to get healthy.?
• I named my first PR & Marketing agency business, Omnifluence — to explain how social media was going to disrupt everything we knew back then, about ‘Influence’.?

So.? In short… I love creating brands — product names and company names.?

And I love discovering the stories behind the names, of the many startups that I meet.

That's why — I want to start a podcast to interview founders about their Product and Company Names… what they mean, and how they came about.? What inspired the names?? What other names they considered, and why they eventually chose what they chose? ?

I’ll also ask some practical questions about their logo designs, and how they chose their domain names… especially if the coveted .coms were not available when they picked a company / product name.

I hope this effort will accomplish a few things...

1. To give Founders a place to share their story... behind the one thing that distinguishes their products and companies, from similar-looking competitors.
2. To help others, who are in the process of thinking up new names for their startups — in a world, where many ‘good words’ are already used, and where quality .coms are already taken.

The name of this podcast will be called… well… ‘The Naming Convention’.

I even bought the domain name for it! www.TheNamingConvention.com

First of all… a ‘Naming Convention’ can simply mean — the agreed way in which names are ascribed… or the way naming is usually done.

Well, if you're a geek, then... "a naming convention is a set of rules for choosing the character sequence to be used for identifiers which denote variables, types, functions, and other entities in source code and documentation."

But the ‘Convention’ in this name also carries a second meaning — A meeting, or assembly for a certain topic.? And in this case, I hope to gather the insights of founders who named the companies that they are building.