Choosing the Perfect Name for Your Startup

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” — Romeo & Juliet, 2.2.43–44

When William Shakespeare wrote Juliet’s well-known words of longing for her new love, Romeo, the famous playwright surely wasn’t thinking about startups. However, like so many other things that make Shakespeare’s plays timeless commentaries on the world, Juliet’s couplet on her private balcony in Verona is as applicable today and to your tech startup as they were to Elizabethan audiences 400 years ago. Do you know why?

Wait! Stay with me a few minutes longer!

I know you’re eager to click the “back button” and avoid what seems likely to be a dull, pretentious article about “literature.” But humor me for one more paragraph to explain what Shakespeare’s quote means. If, after you’ve read the next paragraph, you still don’t believe Shakespeare’s point could be relevant to naming your startup, then, by all means, stop reading. Deal?

What Shakespeare is reminding us is that names don’t mean anything by themselves. In the example offered by Juliet, no matter what you call a rose — even if you call it a “steaming pile of horse manure” — it’ll still smell just as wonderful. That’s because the letters R, O, S, and E aren’t the things that make roses desirable. Roses are desirable because of…