I was actually a fruitarian at that point in time. I ate only fruit. Now I'm a garbage can like everyone else. And we were about three months late in filing a fictitious business name so I threatened to call the company Apple Computer unless someone suggested a more interesting name by five o'clock that day. Hoping to stimulate creativity. And it stuck. And that's why we're called Apple.
When I was starting out, I thought about how the Internet is global and that we should have a global name, a name that's interesting. At that time, the best name was Yahoo! Suddenly I thought, 'Alibaba is a good name.'
Company naming is a key part of the branding process, but it's subject to contrasting tastes and an illiquid domain name market that results in startups wasting their time during the branding process.
It took me a long time to put it to use in things, but the name of my publishing company is Nine Music, and "Red" became my theme song.
Not only is a good name catchy and memorable, it should help people understand what your business does. If your name reflects your products or services you'll have a much better chance of being found [via Google search], so it's important to choose wisely.
We had just recently moved to California from Italy, and while we were driving around, we saw a billboard ad for McDonald's on Olympic Boulevard in Los Angeles. The word 'guess' was in the ad, and my brother decided that that would be the name of our company!
The more we thought, the more they all sounded boring compared to Apple. You didn't have to have a real specific reason for choosing a name when you were a little tiny company of two people; you choose any name you want.
When we started Appaloosa, we were going to name it Pegasus because everyone was using Greek names. We filed the name. We paid $300, and they said you cannot use it because it is taken. Pegasus Funds. Then we said Pegasus is kind of a horse. We did not want to be the Unicorn Fund. So we pulled out a horse book.
Company names without clear pronunciation or spelling won't last.
I often get questioned about how we came up with the name 'Weebly.' We all know that all of the good domain names are already taken, and we had neither the desire nor budget to try and fit our business into a pre-existing word - so we made one up.
I name my companies things that are intentional, that are specific, that are worthy of ridicule if you are anything other.
