Descriptive Name Details

A descriptive name is common among new companies or start-up organizations with limited brand recognition. It gives the audience an instant sense of what a company does. A business can opt for a descriptive name as a start-up when wanting to launch, or a business may consider making a switch once the business begins to grow. A descriptive name's main idea is to get the brand noticed, remembered, and often spoken about by customers.

Descriptive names have their flaws because the name only tells what a company does, but it does not tell who the company is. In choosing the right descriptive name, the following are important and should be considered:

  • Be strategic with the name. Do not consider a name that will make it challenging for the business to grow, evolve and diversify in the days ahead. Whatever name the business decides on should describe what they do but should never restrict the business to a specific category.
  • The name a business will decide on should be easy for customers to say or type, a name that will be memorable.
  • Try as much as possible to avoid a generic name.
  • Also, consider the availability of the descriptive name. The name a business intends to choose should be free to access, use and trademark if there will be a need for it in the future.

Real-World Example of a Descriptive Name

Some popular brands and their descriptive name include:

  • General Motors: is a descriptive name of General Motors Company, an American Multinational Corporation with its headquarters situated in Detroit. The brand is known to design, manufacture, market, distribute vehicles and vehicle parts.
  • Hotels.com: is a website for making bookings of hotel rooms both online and through the phone. In line with their descriptive name, they provide hotel bookings through a toll-free phone number in the United States of America.
  • Bank of America: a descriptive name of an American Multinational Investment Bank and financial services holding company. The company's essence is to help improve people's financial lives through the power of connections.
  • YouSendIt: Although they have now evolved to Hightail, YouSendIt was invented as a cloud service that allows users to send, receive digitally, sign and synchronize files. Their focus during their start-ups was on helping users send files that were too large for email.

Significance of a Descriptive Name

Descriptive names are easy to remember, relatively easy to pronounce and spell. They are likely to receive maximum search engine traffic simply because they contain the main words customers will likely use. It gives a clear description of what the company or organization is into and how it can help customers.

Also, descriptive names cannot be trademarked- a trademark can be a phrase, word, or symbol that identifies a product as belonging to a particular company; it recognizes the companies' ownership of that specific brand. Trademarks prevent other people from using the organization's product or services without permission.

Select a descriptive name for your company if,

  • Your company is just starting, and you need a lot of internet publicity or publicity in general.
  • Your company is doing all it can to overcome the market of a company with a similar name.
  • Your company has suffered in the past because of an overly creative name.
  • Your company has the funds and time to fight other companies with a similar brand name and then establish your identity with the new descriptive name.

Be strategic in getting a descriptive name for the company or brand. Select a name that will be easy for customers to pronounce, spell and remember. Consider the availability of descriptive names and think about global discrepancies, i.e., the words used in naming the company should have the same meaning worldwide.