Creating Names with Emotional Appeal

I’m working with clients who want to change their startup’s name, in part because the company’s focus has shifted. But my clients cited another, equally important reason for a name change: the current name isn’t inspiring. It lacks an emotional charge.

My mission: to develop a set of names that meet this “more emotion” objective while also being appropriate, authentic, memorable, and legally available. Here’s how I’m approaching the challenge. Feel free to borrow these suggestions for your own naming project.

First, define the emotion you want to evoke. Chances are it will be a positive emotion like joy, wonder, admiration, or love. But not always: a pest-control or home-security company may want to evoke fear or worry.

Next, define your brand personality. (You should have done this already, when you wrote your naming brief.) If your desired emotion is joy and your brand personality is youthful and antic, you’ll be searching a different vocabulary than if you’re pairing joy with sophisticated and elegant.

Now start creating word lists. Here are some categories of words that elicit an emotional response:

Old words. In English, that means words with Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, or Norse (as opposed to Greek or Latin) roots. Consider, for example, the different responses evoked by home (Old English) and residence or domicile (Latin): home makes us feel warm and welcomed; its Latin-derived synonyms sound chilly and bureaucratic. Many successful brand…