How to name a startup
Naming feels like the creative part and behaves like the boring part. Almost every name that works clears the same handful of mechanical hurdles, and almost every name that causes problems fails one of them in a way the founder noticed and talked themselves out of. The checker above runs those hurdles so you cannot talk yourself out of them.
What makes a name work
You can say it, and they can spell it
The real test is not how it looks in a logo. It is whether somebody can hear it on a podcast, in a meeting, or over a bad phone line, and then type it correctly on the first attempt. Names with silent letters, unusual spellings, or a choice between two plausible spellings leak traffic every single day, and you never see the people who gave up.
This is also why hyphens and numbers cost more than they look. "Get-App-2" is fine on a business card and impossible to say out loud without spelling it.
It is short
Three to twelve characters covers almost every name you can think of that stuck. Short names are easier to remember, easier to type on a phone, and much easier to fit into a logo, an app icon, and an email address. Length is the one constraint that quietly makes everything downstream simpler.
You can own it
An invented word is easier to protect, easier to rank for, and easier to buy the domain for. A dictionary word means competing in search against every existing use of it and, usually, a registrar quoting five figures for the .com. Generic prefixes — get, try, my, the — are the same problem with extra syllables.
You do not need to invent nonsense. Compound words, deliberate misspellings, and short real words used in an unexpected context all give you something distinctive enough to defend.
Does the .com still matter?
Less than it used to, and less than founders fear. A large number of products people use daily sit on .io, .app, .dev and .ai without anybody noticing. What genuinely matters:
- You are not one letter from somebody bigger. If the .com belongs to a company in a related space, you will spend years correcting people and losing traffic to them.
- People can find you. Being findable when somebody half-remembers your name beats owning every extension.
- Email looks right. An address on your own domain is table stakes; which extension it ends in barely registers.
Buying every extension is a renewal bill rather than a moat. Buy the one you will use, and the .com only if it is cheap enough not to think about.
Where the domain data comes from
This tool queries the registries directly using RDAP — the JSON protocol that replaced WHOIS — so the answer comes from the same place a registrar gets it. There is no affiliate in the middle nudging you toward whoever pays most, and when a registry does not answer we say so instead of guessing. An "available" domain can still be reserved or premium-priced when you go to buy it; that is the registrar's decision, not the registry's record.
A sane naming process
- Write twenty names in one sitting. Do not filter. The good one usually arrives after you have run out of the obvious ones.
- Run each through the checker. Anything scoring badly on spelling or length goes, however much you like it.
- Say the survivors out loud to somebody else. Ask them to spell it back. This kills more names than any other step, and it kills them cheaply.
- Check the domain before you get attached. Falling in love with a name you cannot own is a week you do not get back.
- Search it. Look for an existing company, an unfortunate second meaning, and what comes up on the first page.
- Sleep on the last two. The one you still like on Monday is the one.
When to stop
Naming has a strong pull toward infinite deliberation because it feels consequential and costs nothing to keep doing. It is consequential, but far less than shipping. A decent name on a product people use beats a perfect name on a product that never launched.
Once you have one, the next problem is that nobody has heard it. That is what AlphaShot is for — put the product on the board, hold it for a week, and get it in front of people who go looking for new tools on purpose.