Branding
Is Your Company Name Easy to Say and Spell?
Does your company name pass the "bad telephone test"? If someone hears it spoken aloud for the first time — over a phone, across a noisy room, from a friend — can they spell it and say it back correctly? If not, you might be doomed from the start. This especially matters for consumer-facing companies.
The Bezos lesson
Jeff Bezos originally wanted to name his company "Cadabra" — to convey how magical online shopping was. But his lawyer convinced him to change it after he couldn't understand the name over the phone and heard "Cadaver" instead. Bezos took his advice and named his company Amazon.
The name change wasn't cosmetic. A name that fails the telephone test creates constant friction: customers can't find you, they misspell your URL, they mishear you in conversation. That friction compounds at scale.
Great consumer names are simple
How many great consumer-facing companies have really complex, weird names? Not many. Look at how simple these are:
- Uber
- Calm
- Airbnb
- Netflix
- Spotify
- Amazon
- Robinhood
- SoundCloud
Great enterprise names are also simple
Enterprise companies get slightly more latitude, but the best ones are still clean and memorable:
- Zoom
- Slack
- Shopify
- Salesforce
The pattern holds: one or two syllables, easy to spell, impossible to mishear. If your name requires a spelling clarification every time you say it out loud, reconsider it early — it's much harder to change later.