Naming a product is positioning, not poetry

I used to treat product naming as poetry — find something that sounds nice, check the domain, done. Naming is actually positioning: the name is the first sentence of every pitch, forever, and it either does work or wastes breath.

The framework I use now

Say what shelf it sits on. Does the name help a stranger categorise it in two seconds? "MovieDB" tells you everything before you click. A beautiful abstract name costs you an explanation you'll pay forever.

Pass the phone test. Say it to someone, once, on a call. If they can't spell it from the sound, you've just complicated every referral. Word-of-mouth dies in spelling.

Check the meaning elsewhere. Especially for a global product from Nigeria — check what the word means in the languages of your market. An unintended meaning is a marketing problem you can't fix with design.

Own the search result. Search the name. If page one is owned by bigger entities, your product will live in their shadow in every search and every AI answer.

What I stopped caring about

Uniqueness for its own sake, clever puns only insiders get, and names that need a story. If the name needs a story, the story is doing the name's job — and the story won't fit in a browser tab.