Guides
Naming things when the good names are gone.
33 guides on creating, evaluating and choosing brand and domain names — written while building the generator, so most of it is about the parts that turned out to matter.
Start here
The four that answer the questions people arrive with most often.
Domain Names
Every good .com is taken. Here is what actually works.
Roughly every dictionary word is registered. The way out is not a cleverer search — it is changing the shape of what you search for.
12 min read
Domain Names
What a domain checker actually knows
Why some tools say a name is free when it is not — DNS lookups, RDAP, and the difference between resolving and registered.
8 min read
Brand Naming
What makes an invented name easy to say and spell
Why some made-up names feel like words and others feel like passwords — vowel rhythm, consonant runs, the joins between parts, and the spelling decisions you make for the listener.
10 min read
Domain Names
The complete domain naming checklist, idea to registration
Fifteen steps from a blank page to a registered domain — how many ideas to generate, when to check availability, what to research, and how to choose without agonising.
8 min read
Finding a .com that is still available, choosing between extensions, knowing what a checker really tells you, and what to verify before you pay.
Every good .com is taken. Here is what actually works.
Roughly every dictionary word is registered. The way out is not a cleverer search — it is changing the shape of what you search for.
12 min read
The domain you want is taken. Now what?
Taken means six different things, and each one has a different answer. How to find out which you are facing, then choose between buying it, renaming, and walking away.
9 min read
How to turn one word into hundreds of domain ideas
You do not need a hundred unrelated suggestions. You need one seed word and eight ways to work around it — then a filter strict enough to throw most of the results away.
8 min read
Prefix, suffix, or change the word itself
The four ways to reshape a word you already like — add to the end, add to the front, add to both, or alter the letters already there — and when each one works.
8 min read
Generating business names that are not random, deciding between a descriptive and an abstract name, and checking whether the one you want is already in use.
How to brainstorm business names that are not random
A structured way to generate business names — brief, territories, seeds, controlled variation — plus how to make a new name sound established, and how to know when to stop.
8 min read
Should your business name explain what you do?
Descriptive names buy instant clarity and cost you room to grow. How to decide which trade suits your business — and why the answer depends mostly on how customers find you.
8 min read
How to check whether a business name is already taken
Nine places to look before you build a brand around a name, why two companies can sometimes share one, and where a founder's own research stops being enough.
8 min read
What makes an invented name work — sound, spelling, length — plus the transformations that turn an ordinary word into one, and how to name a family of products.
What makes an invented name easy to say and spell
Why some made-up names feel like words and others feel like passwords — vowel rhythm, consonant runs, the joins between parts, and the spelling decisions you make for the listener.
10 min read
50 ways to turn an ordinary word into a brand name
Fifty edits — openings, endings, vowels, consonants, expansions, compressions, semantic and phonetic moves — and how to keep an invented name from sounding random.
9 min read
How to build a naming system for multiple products
When one product becomes several, naming becomes architecture. The four structures, how to choose one, and how to write rules that survive the next launch.
8 min read
Naming software: startups whose first-choice .com is gone, SaaS products, apps, and AI companies that do not want to sound like every other AI company.
Naming a startup when the perfect .com is taken
Keep the brand and change the address, or the other way round — plus how to name a company whose product you cannot yet describe, and test it against futures that have not arrived.
7 min read
How to find a short .com name for a SaaS product
From a plain description of what your software does to a shortlist of available .coms — including why category words fail, and the two tests only B2B names have to pass.
7 min read
How to name an app without putting "app" in the name
Why the word adds nothing, what to name instead, and the five places an app name must survive: the icon, the store listing, a notification, a voice assistant, a recommendation.
8 min read
How to name an AI startup without sounding like every other one
Why AI names converge on the same dozen patterns, what putting the technology in the name costs you later, whether to use .ai, and how to name the job instead of the model.
10 min read
Naming a blog, store, side project, personal brand, newsletter, YouTube channel, podcast or digital product — each with its own constraints.
How to choose a domain name for a blog
Pick a name for the thousandth article, not the first ten. Your own name, a topic, or a publication brand — and why the keywords belong in the titles rather than the domain.
6 min read
How to choose a domain name for an online store
Ecommerce names carry a trust burden nothing else does — the address sits beside a card form, on a parcel, and in a support call. What that changes about naming a shop.
8 min read
How to choose a domain for a side project (in an hour)
Naming is the most enjoyable way to avoid building. A time-boxed process for getting a good-enough domain, what to deliberately skip, and when to revisit the decision.
6 min read
How to name a personal brand without limiting your future
Your own name, a studio name, or a media brand — what each one lets you do later, what it costs, and the privacy and transferability questions almost nobody asks first.
8 min read
Try the generator — give it a word you already like and it builds readable .com candidates around it, then checks each one against live registry data.