7 Types of Brand Names: Which One Is Right for Your Business?

7 Types of Brand Names: Which One Is Right for Your Business?

Naming your business feels like naming a child, except the child has to make money, and you have lawyers and domain squatters breathing down your neck. The pressure is immense.

Most founders get stuck in a state of “Creative Chaos.” They plaster a whiteboard with random words, scroll through Latin dictionaries, and harass their friends for ideas, hoping for a mythical spark of genius. This approach rarely works. It’s chaotic, frustrating, and produces names that are often weak, forgettable, or impossible to own.

The solution isn’t more creativity. Its structure.

This guide provides the “Strategic Scaffolding” you need. It breaks down the entire universe of brand names into seven distinct categories. By understanding these types, their strengths, and their weaknesses, you can turn a messy creative exercise into a clear, logical business decision.

This is how you find a name that actually works.

Before We Start: The One Rule That Trumps All Others

Let’s get this out of the way. The world’s most creative, powerful, and resonant brand name is useless if you can’t own it.

Availability is the great filter.

Before you fall in love with a name, you must perform due diligence. This means checking:

1. Trademark Databases: Can you legally protect it in your country and class of goods/services?
2. Domain Availability: Can you get the .com? If not, you’re starting on the back foot.
3. Social Media Handles: Are the corresponding usernames available on the platforms that matter to you?

A name isn’t yours until you’ve secured the real estate. Do this check first, always.

The 7 Categories of Brand Names You Need to Know

Every effective brand name falls into one of these seven buckets. Understanding them is the first step to choosing the right one for you.

1. The Eponymous Name (The Founder’s Legacy)

This is a brand name based on the name of a real person, usually the founder. It’s the oldest trick in the book.

Think of companies like Ford, Disney, Boeing, or Adidas (a portmanteau of the founder’s name, Adi Dassler). The brand is inextricably linked to the individual.

Pros:

• Rich in Story: It automatically gives the brand a human story and a sense of heritage.
• Highly Defensible: Personal names are typically easy to trademark.
• Feels Authentic: It communicates a personal commitment and sense of accountability.

Cons:

• Limits Saleability: Selling a business that bears your name is harder. The new owner is buying your legacy.
• Reputation Risk: The brand suffers directly if the founder has a public fall from grace.
• Can Sound Dated: Depending on the name, it can feel old-fashioned or small-scale.

This type is best for: Businesses where the founder’s personal reputation, craft, or expertise is the central selling point, such as law firms, high-fashion labels, or consultancies.

2. The Descriptive Name (The “Says What It Does”)

This is the most straightforward approach. The name describes the product, service, or function—no guesswork is required.

Examples include The Home Depot, General Motors, and British Airways. You know precisely what you’re getting before interacting with the brand.

Pros:

• Maximum Clarity: The name is self-explanatory, which reduces the need for a big marketing budget to explain what you do.
• Good for SEO: A name like “Dallas Website Design” will rank for that exact search term with minimal effort.
• Unpretentious and straightforward: It communicates a direct, no-nonsense value proposition.

Cons:

• Nearly Impossible to Trademark: Generic, descriptive terms are notoriously difficult to protect legally.
• The Descriptive Trap: This is a major pet peeve. A name like “Austin Dog Walker” makes it almost impossible to expand into cat sitting or open a second location in Dallas. It cages your business.
• Boring: These names have zero personality and offer no room for creative brand storytelling.

This type is best for: Hyper-local or single-service businesses where immediate clarity is more critical than long-term brand building. Use with extreme caution.

3. The Acronymic Name (The Initialism)

Acronymic names are formed from the initials of a longer, often descriptive, name. They are a common way for legacy brands to shorten a clunky, old-fashioned name.

IBM was once the International Business Machines Corporation. KFC was Kentucky Fried Chicken. HSBC was The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.

Pros:

• Shorter and Modern: It simplifies a long name, making it easier to say and fit on a logo.
• Global-Friendly: Initials can be easier to use across languages than a descriptive name.
• Creates a “Big Company” Feel: Acronyms often sound corporate and established.

Cons:

• Requires a Massive Budget: Acronyms are empty vessels. You must spend a fortune on marketing to infuse those letters with meaning.
• Cold and Impersonal: They lack personality and can feel intimidating or bureaucratic.
• Hard to Remember: A random string of letters is much more complex for the human brain to recall than a real word.

This type is best for established companies evolving away from a cumbersome descriptive name and already having brand recognition to make the transition work. Startups should rarely use this approach.

4. The Suggestive Name (The Evocative Idea)

Suggestive (or evocative) names are real words that hint at a key benefit, feeling, or quality of the brand. They don’t describe the business; they allude to its essence.

Nike doesn’t sell Greek goddesses; it sells victory. Amazon doesn’t sell a river; it sells a vast, all-encompassing selection. Patagonia doesn’t sell a region in South America; it sells ruggedness and adventure.

Pros:

• Creates an Emotional Connection: These names tap into deeper feelings and aspirations.
• Highly Memorable: They are far more interesting and easier to recall than descriptive names.
• Rich Storytelling Potential: They provide a powerful theme for your brand identity.

Cons:

• Can Be Misleading: The connection might not be evident to everyone, requiring some marketing to bridge the gap.
• Harder to Secure: You’re using a real word, so finding an available trademark and domain can be challenging.

This type is best for: Brands that want to build a strong culture and emotional identity. It’s a fantastic middle ground between boringly straightforward and confusingly abstract.

5. The Associative Name (The Metaphor)

This is a subtle but essential cousin of the suggestive name. While a suggestive name hints at a benefit (Nike -> victory), an associative name uses a direct metaphor for a function or quality.

Greyhound uses the metaphor of a fast, sleek dog to describe its bus service. Firefox uses the image of a quick, agile animal for its web browser. The metaphor is the function.

Pros:

• Clever and Creative: A strong metaphor can be incredibly powerful and memorable.
• Builds a Strong Brand Image: It gives your design team a clear visual concept.
• More Distinctive: It often stands out in a crowded market of literal names.

Cons:

• Can Be Too Clever: My first pet peeve in action. If the metaphor is too much of a stretch, it creates confusion instead of clarity.
• The Connection May Require Explanation: You need to connect the dots for your audience.

This type is best for: Brands that can be defined by a single, powerful, and easily understood metaphor.

6. The Neologistic Name (The Invented Word)

A neologism is a brand-new, invented word. It has no prior meaning until you give it one. These are often created by combining parts of other words (a portmanteau) or modifying an existing word.

Kodak and Xerox are classic examples of completely invented words. Verizon is a combination of veritas (Latin for truth) and horizon. These names are a blank slate.

Pros:

• Almost Always Available: You have a high chance of securing the trademark and domain.
• Truly Unique: Your name will be unlike any other, giving you maximum brand distinction.
• Becomes Your Property: Over time, the name can become synonymous with your product category (e.g., “to Xerox a document”).

Cons:

• A Blank Slate Is Expensive: It has no inherent meaning, so you must spend heavily on marketing to teach people what it is and how to say it.
• Can Sound Strange: An invented name can be challenging to spell, pronounce, or recall.
• The Suffix Trap: Too many founders slap “-ify” or “-ly” on a word. This is the laziest form of neologism and instantly dates your brand.

This type is best for: Visionary, global-minded companies that want to build a truly unique and highly defensible brand and have the budget to back it up.

7. The Abstract Name (The Empty Vessel)

Similar to a neologism, an abstract name starts as an empty vessel. The key difference is that it uses a real word with no logical connection to the business.

The most famous example is Apple. Computers don’t grow on trees. Slack has nothing to do with being lazy. And Rolex is just a word that founder Hans Wilsdorf thought sounded elegant and was easy to pronounce in many languages.

Pros:

• Highest Potential for Distinction: When backed by a great brand, an abstract name is incredibly memorable and iconic.
• Easy to Trademark: The lack of connection to the industry makes it highly defensible.
• Offers Ultimate Flexibility: The name will never limit your company’s future growth into new areas.

Cons:

• The Most Expensive: This type of name requires the most significant marketing investment to build meaning from scratch.
• Can Feel Random: Without a massive budget, the name can feel arbitrary and confusing to potential customers.

This type is best for: Extremely well-funded companies playing the long game and aiming for iconic, global status from day one.

How to Choose the Right Type of Brand Name

There is no single “best” type. The right choice depends entirely on your business goals, budget, and vision. Consider these trade-offs:

• The Clarity vs. Creativity Spectrum: Descriptive names offer 100% clarity but 0% creativity. Abstract names are the reverse. Suggestive and Associative names sit in the sweet spot in the middle, offering a blend of both.
• Your Marketing Budget: The further you move away from a descriptive name, the more money you must spend to educate your audience and build meaning. An abstract name like “Apple” required decades and billions of dollars to become what it is today. A descriptive name requires almost nothing.
• Your Long-Term Vision: If you plan to expand your services or locations, avoid a descriptive name at all costs. An abstract, suggestive, or neologistic name gives you infinite room to grow.
• Trademarkability: Descriptive names are the hardest to protect. Eponymous, Neologistic, and Abstract names are generally the easiest.

Your Name Is a Starting Point, Not a Destination

A great name doesn’t build a great brand. It’s just an empty container.

Your brand is built through your actions: your product quality, your customer service, your company culture, and your visual identity. The name refers to the hook on which customers hang all those experiences. A brilliant name attached to a terrible business is a wasted opportunity.

If you’ve landed on a name and are ready to build a world-class identity around it, that’s what we do. The name is just the first step. Explore our brand naming services to see how we build the rest of the story.

Stop Searching for Genius, Start Thinking Strategically

Stop waiting for a magical name to fall from the sky. That’s not how it works.

Use this framework of 7 types to guide your thinking. Analyse your business goals, your budget, and your long-term ambitions. Make a strategic choice based on that reality. Turn the chaos of brainstorming into a logical process of elimination.

A good name gets out of the way and lets your business do the talking.

Frequently Asked Questions About Brand Names

Ready to move from a name to a brand?

The correct name is just the first conversation starter. The real work begins by building the identity that brings it to life. We can help with that.

➡️ Request a quote here

Want more no-nonsense branding insights? Check out the Inkbot Design blog.