Giant Comet: Origins

Coming up with a name for your company is hard, it's like naming a band. It seems like everything good has already been taken, and while you're brainstorming, everything sounds stupid. You don't want to be too ridiculous, or you won't be taken seriously. You don't want to try to be too clever, or it comes off corny (take any dog grooming/supply store, "Hair off the dog", really?). As I'm always curious about how companies come up with their names, I thought I'd share how I came up with Giant Comet.

I've thought for a long-time about what I would name a company if I were to create one. I saved list of words I liked, tried to combine them in interesting ways, come up with clever puns and metaphors. I hated all of them. I decided I just wanted to make something simple and fun. But first, a few more practical requirements I had:

• Domain - you have to be able to get a good domain, preferably a .com. Sticking a madebyname.com or getname.com isn't too bad, but not ideal. This is much harder than you would think. Everything is taken—mostly by squatters— and that's why so many companies resort to nonsense, made up words. Half the "Web 2.0" companies sound like they came from a Dr. Seuss book.

• Repeatable - Being able to say the name without a lot of trouble, which rules out the made up words and word hacks - removing vowels, changing a 'c' to a 'k', etc. So you don't have to go through "Yeah, it's cheezzee.com, just like cheesy, but with no s or y, and then two z's and two e's". This probably doesn't come up that often, as most of the time you'll share the URL over the web/email/twitter, but you never no one when you'll have to verbally tell someone your company.

• Appropriate - This depends a bit on your market. Mac/iPhone software company names are usually a bit odd. If I was a financial advisor on Wall Street, I might think about something a bit more serious.

• Logo-able - Ok, that's probably not a word. And this one was the least of my concerns. A good designer could come up with something, but I liked the idea that the comet would be a perfect representation for favicons, twitter avatars, stickers, etc.

It's pretty hard to satisfy these all today. I had the word comet on my list of words I liked and might want to use. Then I thought I'd have the best chance using a formula a lot of companies use "adjective noun". I tried a few combos of adjectives and liked "Giant Comet" the best. I liked it, it was fun, simple, and almost most importantly, I could get giantcomet.com. Admittedly, I also just thought it was cool, a Giant Comet could destroy the world, let's see an Apple do that. And, if a giant comet ever did strike the earth, I'd have the small comfort of record sales before the end of days.

One last note. Sometimes you just have to go with your gut. Anything you come up, someone can turn around and make fun of. I guarantee if I was friends with Steve Jobs when he was naming Apple, I would have said sarcastically, "Oh yeah, why not Banana or Pineapple, or maybe Kumquat". But, once the company is established it won't matter, so try not to over think it too death (see everything above).