By Ushamah Sammy

When many people think about setting up their own web site, whether for personal or business reasons, they have a list of things they need to do. This usually includes choosing a content management system to organize and present the site and creating the look and feel. The importance of selecting the right domain name is often overlooked choosing the right name is not as easy as it sounds. This plays a very active role in how well people can find your site as well as how easily they can remember the address. An effective name is a crucial part of the overall web site design.

When selecting the right domain name, there are a few things to keep in mind. It should be short and easy to pronounce. Many people try to be clever and use a unique spelling or incorporate numbers and letters to create a word. Although it is fun, it makes finding your site more difficult. It is worth the time to sit down and brainstorm ideas. Start by listing the five keywords phrases that best describe the domain you want. If this will be a business site or one that is focused on a particular topic, use words and phrases that relate to those subjects.

Most businesses use their name as their web site domain. This helps build brand recognition. Once you have found the name that you think works best, make sure there are no similar domains already registered to other users. It is recommended that you do not use “the” at the beginning of the name, plurals or hyphens when selecting the right domain name. Web searchers usually cannot remember which combinations to use. If there are already similar domains, then those will be shown higher in search results at first. The dot.com suffix is the most commonly used option.

If you want to increase brand recognition, and web site traffic, choose a domain with this suffix as an option. Most users are still not comfortable using dot-net or dot-org. Selecting the right domain name for your site can be the difference between being found quickly and not being found at all. Short, catchy names that describe what the site is for or that contains your business name are the best way to increase traffic to your site. It also builds recognition. Site addresses that are easy to type and remember will increase your branding marketing value.

If you want to know details about web hosting, domain and CMS, please visit http://viewmyhosting.com

A host of new, short domain names will be made available under the body responsible for domain names ending in .uk, Nominet. It plans to allow the registration of previously-banned domain names consisting of one or two characters.

The non-profit body also plans to allow people to register names consisting of terms that make up other parts of domains, such as com, gov or edu.

Nominet’s Policy Advisory Body (PAB) has recommended the changes and it has now asked users and industry to respond to the plans, which it backs.

“These recommendations and suggestions have been reviewed internally and we consider that in general where there is no longer a technical or policy reason for a restriction in our rules, then those rules should be removed,” said a Nominet statement.

via Nominet plans release of super-short domain names | Pinsent Masons LLP.

Keep It Simple And Easy To Remember

Domains – Most customers who look for a website want to remember something that is associated with the product or service you are offering. Unless you have a lot of money to spend on advertising like eBay or Amazon your best bet is to choose a domain name that represents your products and services. Use simple and easy to remember words that are spoken often by your customers. For example, your eCommerce business might be selling racing bikes so consider the domain names: racingbikes.com or roadracingbikes.com. Try to avoid names like joesracingbikes.com or smithsracingbikes.com even if your company is called that. We want to make sure your domain name is easy to remember and captures the widest scope of customers.

Don’t Be Fancy

Try to make sure you choose domain names with the correct spelling and to use short hand words. I have seen some domain names like racingbiks.com or rcingbikes.com. These are words we may know when we are sending a text via SMS but when it comes to marketing your eCommerce business it is not worth shortening your domain name for people to try to remember.

It’s very common to see onlinebusiness.com get shortened to onlinebiz.com, which is not very good for search engine optimization and other keyword link strategies that I will discuss about.

Choosing Dot Com Or Another Extension?

According to Verisign, over 45% of total domain registrations have a .com extension. Keep in mind that shoppers will more than likely remember a.COM extension while shopping online and this will have an impact on how successful your business will be. In any business I set up the first extension I look for is a .com, which allows me to expand and market my business globally even if I am not a business located in the United States.

Domain Name Friendly For Search Engines

You may have realised my emphasis on choosing a domain name that is related to your products and services and also my encouragement to keep it simple. The reason why I recommend you look at choosing a domain name related to your products and services is to allow for search engines to easily find your website. Having the right keywords that relate to your eCommerce business in your domain name can play a vital role. For example if my domain name was racingbikes.com and I went online to search for “racing bikes”, more than likely your website will come up at the top because it is the most relevant to the key words searched. This has already conquered half of your battle. If you had chosen rcingbikes.com, then you would be spending a great amount of time and resources trying to optimize your website.

A question I get asked quite a lot is what happens if the domain name I want for my eCommerce business is taken? Since there are billions of websites on the Internet, it would be common for single and double word domain names to be already taken. Though don’t sweat, because you can still create a domain name from other keywords in niche markets. Let’s take for example the keywords “racing bikes” again. Since racingbikes.com is taken, let us dig further and choose a brand of bikes you want to focus on. Shimano is a popular and reputable brand: so let us choose shimanoracingbikes.com. You could repeat this with many other brands and use that to create a lot of domain names that would be directed to your website. Alternatively being more generic you can choose topracingbikes.com or leadingracingbikes.com. Which ever keywords are dominate in your market, try to find out which ones would be profitable for your eCommerce business and search to see if the domain name is available.

Checking If Your Domain Name Is Available

There are many domain name registers in the market but I don’t recommend you buy domain names from them as they don’t provide good support.

How To Register Your Domain Name

The company that I use to register my domains is Namecheap and I can highly recommend them. They are very affordable and provide 1 year of private registration as of writing this. It also allows me to keep my business address and phone details private at no additional cost. A lot of top Internet marketers use them because they provide good support and also they refer any spam complaints to the web host.

The process in registering your domain is a very simple process. Once you have decided on a domain name, check to see if it is available and then register it through Namecheap. Once that is completed, you will receive a couple of notification emails with your registration certificate and you will be the owner of the domain. In the next few posts I will explain to you how to setup your hosting services and link them to your domain name.

http://www.internetbusinesspath.com/
Tyrone Shum is an internet marketer helping you enhance your internet business through his weekly podcasts, tips and resources.

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• Why should I trademark my domains? What are risks if I DO NOT trademark my domain names? (startups.com)

Intellectual property, trademarks and copyrights–if you are in business, you probably know what these are and how important they are. However, an online business has additional factors that must be considered to protect its brand within the Web’s wide exposure.

What follows is an excerpt from a Brandsplat Video Report in which Brandsplat CCO Enzo F. Cesario interviews Daniel Greenberg, director of domain name management and online brand protection for Lexsynergy. Greenberg is also a practicing attorney who specializes in Internet Law and Trademark Law. (Watch the complete Video Report )

CESARIO: Can you tell us a little bit about brand protection? Can you define it for us?

GREENBERG: Brand protection involves various methods that allow a brand owner to prevent third parties from infringing upon their particular mark. So, for instance, it includes buying a trademark, registering a domain name, registering copyrights, patents and designs where applicable. In essence, it prevents third parties from using the particular mark unlawfully. For instance, the word Brandsplat would be a trademark, the domain name is Brandsplat dot com and the layout and content of the site would be copyright. So, all these put together is intellectual property, which amounts to brand protection.

CESARIO: So is your domain name an online trademark? Can you expound on that?

GREENBERG: Yes, it has become a species of online trademark. For instance, most people do their business online, they shop online, they bank online; and if you don’t have control of your brand over the Internet, it will be very difficult for customers to locate you. So, if you had to compare it to the bricks-and-mortar world, it’s almost the signage that is outside your business. For instance, in the online world, if you don’t control your particular mark or your brand, it’s as if your competitor has taken your particular mark and put it outside his store. So it has become a brand identifier on the Internet.

CESARIO: I see. So how has Lexsynergy protected their brand online?

GREENBERG: When we first started off we were very cost-conscious, so we started with a Google search and a free online trademark search, which you can do with several databases online, to see if anyone else was using the name Lexsynergy. It is an invented word that doesn’t mean anything, so it’s easier to protect. We then secured the domain name in all generic top-level domains, such as com, net, org, info, biz, tel (e.g. Lexsynergy.com, Lexsynergy.tel, etc), and in the countries where we trade or intended to trade. Country code top-level domains or ccTLD (e.g. Lexsynergy.co.uk or Lexsynergy.us), we secured those. And once we had done those, we branched off and started to file trademarks to protect ourselves. And obviously, trademarks are more expensive so we did that at the end as the business grew.

CESARIO: Those can be very expensive. How would you advise a business that doesn’t have a lot of resources to protect their brands online?

GREENBERG: I would start off by coming up with a unique name first, just to make sure that no one else in your particular industry is using that particular mark. I would also try to find an inventive word such as Google or Kodak — those words that mean nothing. For instance, Apple is a very good trademark for computer products in a computer store, but a very poor trademark for a grocery store because it’s descriptive of what it would be selling. So come up with a unique name, then do these online searches through social networking sites or search engines; and if they’re available, go for the domain names, then go for the trademarks. And just remember trademarks are territorial, which means that you only get protection in the country in which you register the mark, and domain names are international, in that they give you international exposure. So I would advise to go that route.

— Enzo F. Cesario is an online brand management specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a social media company that uses blogs, articles, videos and social media to drive traffic to your site. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit our blog at http://www.iBrandCasting.com/

One of the greatest strengths of the Web is that it gives everyone with a connection the ability to publish content, period. Anyone can register domain names and build attendant webpages, often for what amounts to a pittance. Some domains cost as little as ten dollars to register, or less if the buyer wishes to bundle the purchase of several names at once. Naturally, this flexibility has attracted the attention of people with less than honest motives for their efforts.

Like it or not, there are individuals online who aren’t content to promote their brand through their own efforts and hard work, but would prefer to profit by the work of others. They accomplish this through a number of unfortunate methods. They domain-squat on names they expect to become famous, use similar names and domains to get attention, and in general rely on the good name of brands they have nothing to do with to draw in business.

As part of the effort to build up a brand into something to be proud of, it’s important to focus on brand protection. It may sound silly on the surface; after all, who could be confused by Makdonolds as opposed to McDonalds? However the issue isn’t always quite so ridiculously clear, and can lead to a number of hassles a brand just doesn’t need. Here we share three common hazards and their solutions for safeguarding your brand.

Hazard 1 – Cybersquatting

In short, cybersquatting is a series of methods for registering and maintaining a domain name solely with the intent to profit from another agency that desires it.

The first method revolves around predicting the need for the domain name itself. As in the above example, suppose in the early days of the Internet someone outside McDonald’s had registered all the relevant domain names. When McDonald’s finally goes to establish a Web presence, they find the names they need are all taken, and thus have to bargain with this individual for terms under which he’ll sell them back, obviously at a profit to himself.

Other methods involve registering similar domain names to existent ones. Suppose again that McDonald’s had possession of McDonald’s.com, but not McDonald’s.net. The squatter picks up the .net domain, knowing that at least some people will come to the page out of curiosity or by accident. Once again, they can bargain with McDonald’s over ownership, or they can provide a link to McDonald’s own webpage, and thus get click-through traffic that can be monetized with ad revenue.

Solutions to Cybersquatting

Due to the fight over free speech and free market rights pertaining to the Web, cybersquatting is not easy to define as illegal. It is certainly unethical, but given the myriad of international laws governing the use of these domain names there is not always a clear recourse in overcoming these activities.

There are always methods that can be used, however. First, there is the legal recourse of going through ICANN for arbitration. However courts can and often have overturned ICANN’s rulings upon further review. The legal fees associated with this process may exceed the cost of simply buying the domain outright from the squatters.

Another option is to be creative with your domain names. Google, Yahoo, icanhascheezburger, and similar domain names share a certain nonsense quality. They aren’t commonly used words, and are less likely to get snapped up by squatters. If your business isn’t tied strongly to a real world word already, consider coming up with something outside the box to prevent yourself from getting squatted. Purchase several of the more common variations on your domain name as well, to prevent the parallel name style of squatting.

Hazard 2 – Typo Squatting

Typo squatting relies on common typing errors or shortcuts to redirect users to a site other than the one they intended to visit. For example, information.com could be typed as iformation.com or info.com, and lead to the squatting site instead of the intended location. While this may seem like a variant on cybersquatting, it ends up being rather different in practice.

As with parallel naming, the intent here is to use a similar name to draw in users looking for one site. However the intent is very rarely to sell the url to the parent company. More frequently, these sites direct to ‘gripe’ pages, spambots, malware propagators and other malicious activities.

Solutions to Typo Squatting

Once again, legal action can be taken to protect a brand (particularly if the squatters are profiting from the venture), but can quickly become expensive. A more cost-effective route for a smaller brand just getting started would be to post information to your social media news room and webpage about any such sites you come across, with warnings and information on how to circumvent them. Taking responsibility for your brand is the best way to protect it and cement its value in your audience’s mind.

Hazard 3 – Complacency

It’s tempting to register a domain name and trademark, and think that’s all you need to do. However, neither of these confers automatic protection. Yes, they allow for recourse to the law in the event a case goes to court, but the Internet is a place where information moves quickly. By the time you fight things out in a court case that you may or may not actually win, people already have associated your brand with the spambot they accidentally got directed to.

Solutions to Complacency

Be proactive. Education is your best defense on the Web. Learn about common cybersquatting and typosquatting tactics. Check your domain and see if others are using these tricks to hurt your brand (consciously or inadvertently). Be aware, be informed, and take every step you can. The Internet is a dynamic place, and it falls to you to make sure that benefits you, rather than blemishes your brand.

Copyright © By Enzo F. Cesario

Enzo F. Cesario is an online brand specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the “voice” of our client’s brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to Brandsplat.com or visit our blog at http://www.ibrandcasting.com

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• URL Typos May Earn Google $500M a Year (abcnews.go.com)

In 1915, California farmers banded together to rename the ahuacate, a pear-shaped fruit with pebbly skin and an oversized pit inside. They knew this Aztec word was hard for Americans to pronounce, and the Spanish version of the name, aguacate, was just as difficult for them. The new made-up name they agreed upon, avocado, sounds vaguely Latin American but does not present pronunciation problems for English speakers.

Those California farmers wisely recognized that an unfamiliar product with an unfamiliar name is hard enough to market, and when it also has a name whose sound patterns are unfamiliar to the ears of the public, that’s one success barrier too many.

Foreign names for companies or products sometimes do very well in the American market. We also see plenty of pseudo-foreign names – created by misapplying spelling patterns found in foreign languages. For example, “soleil” is the French word for sun. When a suntan lotion placed a circumflex mark over the “o” in “soleil,” it created fake French. Such names can appeal to those who have a slight knowledge of the foreign language – enough to recognize foreign implication but not enough to identify its implementation as wrong.

Use the following four-point checklist to make sure you’re branding well by giving your name a foreign flavor rather than burdening your creation with a seriously disadvantageous name.

1. Does the spelling create uncertainty? A Chinese appliance company uses the brand name Haier for its Germanic implication of technical quality. However, with that spelling, an English speaker might pronounce it either HIGHer or HAYer.

Likewise, imagine someone confronting the brand name Pricci for the first time. It might be meant as an Italian surname, but that still leaves open whether it should sound like “preachy” or like PREEsee – or even like a cheeky spelling of “pricey.” Hesitation over pronunciation hurts word of mouth publicity.

2. Are there diacritical marks? These include accent marks, the umlaut (two dots over a vowel, common in German), the o-slash (ø) in Danish and Norwegian, the tilde (that little squiggle over the “n” in Spanish words like señor) and many others. Sometimes these are added because they are needed to be correct in the foreign language that is the source of the name, and sometimes, as with the suntan lotion with the extra circumflex, these are added solely for effect. Either way, the marks signal foreignness and make a reader slow down and consider how to say the word.

Note that many people don’t know how to type special characters. And on the web, some browsers and email readers don’t interpret those special characters correctly. Consequently, brand names with accents, circumflexes, umlauts, tildes and o-slashes often get butchered in writing. (I’ve mostly avoided using them in this article for that reason.) If your media coverage and bloggers leave them out, then your branding becomes inconsistent.

3. Does the written name seem totally forbidding to your target audience? It’s not surprising that no one, as of this writing, has yet snagged the domain XuStore.com even though it would be pronounced “Shoe Store,” because the name Xu (also written Hsu in another transliteration system) flummoxes Westerners who do not speak Chinese. I understand that the common Vietnamese name Nguyen is pronounced nWEN, but that’s another one that many Westerners encountering it for the first time would not even dare to try.

A foreign company name might also seem forbidding mainly because it’s long and contains syllables that have to be painstakingly sounded out. For example, both

Kamehameha Kites, named after a Hawaiian king, and Vneshtorgbank (a large Russian enterprise which is now called Bank VTB), would give many Americans pause.

4. Is your target market clueless when it comes to foreign languages? A customer base that has traveled widely and knows one or two non-English languages generally takes a hard-to-say foreign name in stride better than a stay-at-home population of English-only folks.

My advice is that a “yes” to more than one of the above four questions indicates too high a risk for your naming. Just one “yes,” however, could make for a cool invention. Remember Häagen-Dazs? That premium ice cream brand got a massive boost from its fake-Swedish name. Despite its umlaut and weird alphabetical sequences, it has only one probable pronunciation – and sophisticated, well-heeled consumers took to it like, well, a scrumptious treat.

— Marcia Yudkin is Head Stork of Named At Last, a company that brainstorms creative business names, product names and tag lines for clients. For a systematic process of coming up with an appealing and effective name or tag line, download a free copy of “19 Steps to the Perfect Company Name, Product Name or Tag Line” at http://www.namedatlast.com/19steps.htm

How to Uncover The Internet’s ‘Secret’ Goldmine
Great domain names are becoming increasingly scarce. Close to 23 million “.com” names have been registered, and over 22 thousand are being purchased every day. It means that you’re more likely to win the lottery than find a good domain name.

Owning a domain name that helps to successfully “magnetize” a flood of traffic is like gold to any online business. But the increasing scarcity of domain names that are memorable, short and suggestive have turned them into hot commodities. Look at some of the recent acquisitions in domain names:

– business.com sold for $7.5 million
– asseenontv.com sold for $5 million
– altavista.com sold for $3.3 million
– loans.com sold for $3 million
– autos.com sold for $2.2 million
– wallstreet.com sold for $1.03 million
– forsalebyowner.com sold for $835,000
– drugs.com sold for $825,000
– cinema.com sold for $700,000
– art.com sold for $450,000
– engineering.org sold for $199,000
– fruits.com sold for $160,000
– perfect.com sold for $94,000

However, while some domains may have been sold for millions, corporate buyers backed by large bank accounts are not alone in the domain name game. Even entrepreneurs and speculators are making a good living in buying and selling domains.

Everyday, domain names are selling for as little as $100 or as much as $1 million on public auction sites. For example, eBay.com recently featured actual bids for as little as $500 for “golegs.com” to as much as $20,000 for “arlington.com” — and thousands more hovering anywhere in between.

Some individuals seem to know where to grab these “nuggets of gold.” In fact, a handful know about an untapped goldmine that lies discreetly tucked away in the dark corners of the Internet. And the awareness of this source has helped these “lucky” individuals generate either outrageous fortunes or outrageous levels of traffic for their website.

The goldmine to which I’m referring is the pool of expired domain names. While only a few people may be privy to its existence, it is nonetheless ballooning with every passing day. As much as tens of thousands of unclaimed, unrenewed and expired domain names become available on a daily basis.

An expired domain is one that was registered previously but wasn’t paid for in time for the renewal date, thus returning it to the pool of available domains. There are many reasons for non-renewal (e.g., the owner forgot, has lost interest in the venture, was no longer in business, was no longer reachable or just didn’t pay for it for whatever reason).

However, you may be asking, “Sure, but I’m never going to find good domain names let alone do so before someone else snatches them up.” For a long time, being “lucky” also meant being alert for the countless domains that become available, and being swift in registering them before anyone else does.

However, new tools are now available, making the process of searching, finding and registering great domain names a lot easier. In fact, some of them also help you to become aware of soon-to-expire domains, granting you an almost psychical edge over your competitors that allows you to snap up names just seconds after they’re actually dropped.

Nevertheless, a compelling domain name can help an online business become more visible, credible and accessible. And it can also help a person make a fortune. While finding one was very prohibitive, with the help of tools that are now at your disposal you can be a part of the gold rush, too.

© 2002 By Simon Grabowski, CEO of GetResponse.com

About the Author –
Simon Grabowski is the owner of many online businesses that generate close to a million dollars in annual online sales. His latest is the BizMint.com, a unique, sophisticated tool that helps you to explode your online business by searching and registering from millions of expired and soon-to-expire domain names. See http://www.bizmint.com/

Publishers note:This article was originally published in August of 2002 and is being republished for historical value and reference.

You’re starting a new company, launching a new product or trying to inject pizzazz into an existing company or product that seems way too boring and ordinary. Try these 7 techniques to shape the basic facts about your business into a name with energy and zing.

The examples we’ll use to illustrate the techniques are a family restaurant run by a guy named Rob, which serves updated Italian favorites, and a business coach who helps webmasters add profitable sidelines to their business.

Technique #1: Alliteration. Repeated initial sounds or letters charge up a name with magnetic style.

]]> http://website101.com/domain-name/company-product-naming-boring-business-name/feed/ 0 http://website101.com/domain-name/company-catchphrase-creating-motto-slogan-business/ http://website101.com/domain-name/company-catchphrase-creating-motto-slogan-business/#comments Sat, 06 Feb 2010 16:24:07 +0000 Mike Valentine http://website101.com/?p=3872

• “Reach out and touch someone.”
• “The ultimate driving machine.”
• “Finger lickin’ good.”

Chances are, you not only know immediately that those slogans come from AT&T, BMW and KFC, in that order. Those catchphrases may also very well have persuaded someone you know to place more long-distance calls, purchase a particular brand of car and decide where to stop for supper.

Such slogans truly influence customers, and that’s why you want one for your own company.

Begin by brainstorming a lot of words related to your business – at least 50 of them. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, phrases – just keep going and going until you have a long, disorganized list.

Next think in general terms about what you want to say – the motivating message you want to get across to current and potential customers. Focus, so that it’s something specific rather than something any competitor might say. Note that the BMW slogan works as well as it does because it’s not a statement Toyota or Ford wants to make. Likewise, a burger place that caters to parents and children probably wouldn’t want to use the idea of licking fingers in its motto.

Now combine the words and refine the combinations until they sing and dance on the page. Don’t stop when you get one slogan that feels really catchy – keep on going. Play around with the wording so some are funny, some are serious, some are weird or edgy and some are homey.

Look through your catchphrase candidates and identify up to five that seem most promising. We’ll now run them through a few crucial tests.

Is the slogan fresh and original? Don’t poach phrases that have already been used, like American Express’s “Membership has its privileges” or Nike’s “Just do it.” That diminishes your business and might even land you in legal trouble.

Does the slogan pass the telephone test? That is, if someone heard it without seeing it, would they understand what it means? Will people understand what you mean without a whole lot of context or a long story? If seen on a truck whizzing by at 70 miles per hour, would it make sense? Your answer to all these questions should be yes. If not, cross out that candidate or tinker to improve it.

Is the tone right? Think about your customer base, and make sure the personality of the slogan matches what they expect from your company. A bank that wants to appear solid and traditional normally wouldn’t use slang or a sing-song rhythm, while a club for twenty-something singles probably wants wording that hops and excites rather than cool, understated elegance.

Is the message clear and unambiguous? Test your favorites on people who haven’t heard them yet, who resemble your customers and who may not know much about your business. Ask them what each slogan conveys to them. If they don’t get it, or if they get a negative message or one you weren’t intending, that’s a big minus for that slogan.

Sometimes we have to nix options that almost make it but have something tricky or wrong about them. If one of your candidates communicates positively and clearly to all your testers, you have a winner.

Third, Use It!

Now it’s time to use your chosen catchphrase everywhere. Put it on your web site, on T-shirts, on pens, in ads, on invoices, on sales material, on shop windows, even on the walls of your rest rooms. If you’ve chosen well, your catchphrase sticks in people’s minds and reminds them over and over again why you’re the one they want to buy from.

— Marcia Yudkin is Head Stork of Named At Last, a company that brainstorms creative business names, product names and tag lines for clients. For a systematic process of coming up with an appealing and effective name or tag line, download a free copy of “19 Steps to the Perfect Company Name, Product Name or Tag Line” at http://www.namedatlast.com/19steps.htm

When I interviewed a gardening specialist years ago for a story unrelated to gardening, she used a phrase to illustrate one of her points that I just couldn’t understand. It sounded like “squash vine bores,” and I had to ask her to repeat it three times because I couldn’t settle the unfamiliar sounds in “vine bores” into words. I wrote it down, then later emailed to check the spelling, and learned that it should have been “vine borers.” She was happy to help me get it right, but if that had been a company name or product name rather than just a phrase, the company behind that name would have been in deep trouble.

If customers, referral sources and media people can’t correctly translate the spoken version of your business name into writing, or if they can’t make sense of it when they hear the name, word of mouth publicity hits a major snag.

1. Foreign sounds. In 1915, California farmers banded together to rename the ahuacate, a pear-shaped fruit with pebbly skin and an oversized pit inside. They knew this Aztec word was hard for Americans to pronounce, and the Spanish name, aguacate, was just as difficult for them. The new made-up name they agreed upon, avocado, sounds vaguely Latin American but does not give English speakers any problems.

If you are looking to a foreign language for your company name, beware of names with sounds that English doesn’t have. For example, Xiao Palace would be a terrible name for a Chinese restaurant in the U.S., while Ming Feast would be perfectly fine.

2. Unusual letter sequences. Zion National Park in Utah was originally called Mukuntuweap – its Paiute Indian name. Local Mormon settlers successfully lobbied for its official name to be changed to Zion on the grounds that people feel more comfortable visiting a place when they can pronounce its name.

Here it’s not so much that the component sounds don’t occur in English. Rather, trouble occurs when the syllables don’t follow English-language patterns. That’s also why Internet startup names like GlibJix, Kazalpa and Blaxnort (which I made up, but without exaggerating) inevitably sound like characters in a science fiction novel, not like companies. Nonexistent words are much easier to hear when they have a closer resemblance to existing ones.

3. Awkward word breaks. With a two-word name, the ending sounds of the first word can interfere with understanding the second word. This is most likely to occur when the first word ends with a sound very similar to the way the next word starts. For example, when I once told someone over the phone that my book was called Six Steps to Free Publicity, he asked me to repeat the title and told me he’d initially heard it as “Six Debts.” Try to avoid multiword names that require a careful space between the words in order to be heard correctly.

Mishearing especially affects song lyrics, where people can hear the Beatles line, “The girl with kaleidoscope eyes” as “The girl with colitis goes by.” Likewise, someone who’s not from California can mishear PG&E, a big utility company, as “Peach Eating.”

To make sure your favorite proposed new name doesn’t fall victim to incomprehension or mishearing, subject it to what I call the Telephone Test. Answer the phone with your possible name and if there’s either a stunned “What did you say?” or hysterical laughter from the other end, discard that option. Keep trying, for a name that gets passed along easily and accurately.

— Marcia Yudkin is Head Stork of Named At Last, a company that brainstorms creative business names, product names and tag lines for clients. For a systematic process of coming up with an appealing and effective name or tag line, download a free copy of “19 Steps to the Perfect Company Name, Product Name or Tag Line” at http://www.namedatlast.com/19steps.htm