Why Naming Your Tech Company In 2026 Is Harder Than You Think

Grail names are over (or insanely expensive) 

Almost everyone coming into a naming project wants the holy grail: a five-to-six-letter real word name and a nice clean .com to go with it.

The reality today is that almost all those types of names are long gone, from both a domain and IP perspective. Over 400 million domain names are registered right now*. 

So landing a grail domain really is like finding a needle in a haystack in 2026 (the .ai suffix is a little better, but grail domains are pretty much gone there now too - those that remain are sadly getting snapped up as you read. Trump’s .si suffixes are also flying off the shelves)

Spoiler alert: even if you do manage to find the domain of your dreams, IP availability will almost certainly poop on your party down the line. 

So, if this is your brief (and it’s fixed), be ready to spend time getting there, be as open as you can to different possibilities, and expect to churn through hundreds or even thousands of hopeful contenders in the process.

If you’re dead set on a .com you’ll also need to be ready to shell out big on the domain.

If you’re dead set on a .com you’ll also need to be ready to shell out big on the domain too. We’re talking tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and even multimillions for the most sought-after domains (want to be the owner of flux.com? Yours, for a cool $4.6M)

Getting creative 

Most companies will, therefore, need to get a little creative with their naming today. There are plenty of approaches you can explore. Esoteric single-word names with a smart connection back to the business can work well, if you can find them. Coined portmanteaus - where two words are combined to make a pleasing new word. The out there and absurd is a bold but increasingly smart approach. And hunting for strong two-word names is also still a good option. 

Esoteric names

Work because they signal to an in-crowd who might get the allusion. ‘Palantir’ is a good example of this. The word was originally coined by J.R.R. Tolkien as part of his Quenya language. It means “far-seer” or “those that watch from afar” and appeared later as the palantíri, seeing stones in The Lord of the Rings – perfect for a tech company focused on analytics, surveillance, and security (worth noting that the Tolkien universe has now been mined clean by tech firms who want to appear to be part of Peter Thiel’s brotherhood). 

Portmanteaus

Work really well to signify deeper meaning. We worked with the largest occupational health provider in the Netherlands to rename their company. Their core belief and brand idea was ‘Collective Betterment’. From this, we got to the pleasing portmanteau ‘Colbe’ - friendly and approachable, almost like a person’s name, but with a deeper meaning hidden inside. 

Absurd names

Work by standing out, slapping you round the face, and therefore getting remembered. The peer-to-peer rental marketplace ‘Fat Llama’ immediately springs to mind. Absurdity is reserved for the truly bold, but it can be an incredibly smart strategy in the right context, particularly for B2C companies that need to stand out in a crowded marketplace. 

Two-word names

Work for a couple of reasons: there are more possibilities, and those possibilities have been less well-mined. We worked with a Parisian alternative dairy company to rename. They use precision fermentation to make incredible cheese that has the texture and taste of the real thing without using any dairy at all. A feat genuinely worthy of applause. We renamed them ‘Standing Ovation’; a two-word name that felt entirely apt.       

Getting creative applies to domain endings too. You might not be able to get the .com you dream of, but workarounds like adding the affix ‘get’ or ‘try’ are now well-established options for getting around this. Other URL endings like .co and .io are worth considering too.

Can't I just use AI?

Like with many things, Claude and ChatGPT are useful… up to a point.

AI is great for generating volumes of names... but in our experience they are lacking in the taste department.

They are fantastic at generating volumes of names or helping to excavate rare and esoteric words or providing rationale, but in our experience they are very much lacking in the taste department. They can help you go wide - uncovering lots of mainly average possibilities quickly - but they won’t help you to select the best option for you. And they definitely won’t help with the trickiest challenge - funnelling back in and getting to full team alignment around a shortlist of really strong names.

They can give an indication of how busy the trademark picture is on a particular name, but again they’re far from foolproof on this and are only as good as your ability to prompt. They will almost certainly remind you that they are not an IP lawyer, and you would do well to heed that reminder. Indicative, but not to be fully trusted. Worth noting that trying to run deep IP checks using Claude or ChatGPT burns through tokens fast, and the results are, more often than not, questionable. At this stage, AI is a very helpful aid in the process, but it’s probably best not to attempt to ‘just AI it’. 

Subjectivity is the enemy

So, you’ve got a shortlist. How do you decide on a single name? 

At the top level, you’re looking for two things: a strong name that will work well for your company and is relatively clear from a legal perspective.

At the top level, you’re looking for two things: a strong name that will work well for your company and is relatively clear from a legal perspective. The latter is reasonably black and white (though no IP lawyer will ever tell you any name is completely clear). The former is more of a grey area, riddled with subjectivity and personal bias.

For this reason, getting to a strong name gets harder the more people are involved. If you are a solo founder, it should theoretically be easier, but usually founders come in pairs or more. Here, the challenge isn’t coming up with names; it’s getting everyone aligned around which ones are good.

The alignment process has multiple challenges:

• Everyone wants to fall in love with the name. This rarely happens; don’t expect to.
• People expect the name to do far too much. It can only solve one or two problems. Don’t ask too much, and remember, it’s an important part of the brand but not everything. 
• It’s incredibly easy to shoot down names. Any name can be shot down. Resist the instinct - instead, try to think of reasons to keep it alive.
• Strong names tend to feel strange when they’re first heard. Familiarity comes over time. Let unusual contenders sit with you before you reach your verdict (it’s a household name now, but try to imagine being in the room when ‘Google’ was first suggested)

You need everyone to stay as objective and open as possible throughout the process, but you must accept that subjective preferences and prejudices will almost certainly come into play. Names and visual design seem to be the two things that everyone and their dog has an opinion on. 

It’s also important to sit with the name and think about how it will play out in different contexts; let it become more familiar, and you might find you feel remarkably different once the feel of newness starts to rub off.

What makes a name good?

There's lots to think about when it comes to evaluation. Here are some tips and advice from our years of experience:

Length

Can be a bit of a red herring - yes, an easy-to-remember five-letter word is great, but most of the good ones are gone, and there are some wonderful two-word names out there too (Bending Spoons comes to mind). As a general rule one-to-three syllables is better than four or more, but I’m sure there are exceptions out there (Onomatopoeia.com might be pushing it, but it has a certain ring to it…) Rhythm and pronounceability are often, in my opinion, more important than length.

Meaning

Another tough one. The obvious descriptive names are gone. The single real-word evocative names are mostly all gone.

We are programmed to try to elicit associated meaning from words even when they’re made up, so coining a new word doesn’t fully get around the question of meaning

And it seems like we are programmed to try to elicit associated meaning from words even when they’re made up, so coining a new word doesn’t fully get around the question of meaning. It’s worth remembering that a different type of meaning accumulates over time as your success and behaviour as a business adds to the name (again, I refer back to the Google example) so going for a name that doesn’t actually relate to your line of business is most certainly an option.

If you have an international audience, don’t forget to check the meanings or associations a word might have in other languages too. Translations often turn up some unwanted results that render names unusable in that territory. 

Sound

Super important. The name has to be easy to pronounce and ideally feels nice to say and hear; you want the name to be euphonious. It will live off the page aurally, so if people trip up over the pronunciation it won’t travel well. We came up with ‘TrueTribe’ for a Dutch workplace wellbeing app - the meaning worked incredibly well but the real draw was the feel of the name, the alliterative ‘tr-tr’ sound is very pleasing to say and hear. Again, if you’re international, you also need to think about how other language speakers might fare with the name. Softened ‘j’s’ in Spanish, etc.

Memorability

Underrated and hugely important. The easiest way to get remembered is, of course, by being completely different or distinctive. The aforementioned Fat Llama is a great example of this; absurd and unforgettable. But of course, branding is always a balance of standing out and fitting in, especially in B2B circles, so being too out there can feel very uncomfortable for a lot of businesses. A slightly safer way to think about it is to find a name that jars in your context (rather than feels outright ridiculous); then you’re hitting the sweet spot. ‘Granola’ is a great example of this. Naming a productivity tool after a breakfast cereal jars because it isn’t obvious, but all the right associations are there and somehow it works.

Time to make it legit 

So, you’ve finally got a shortlist of really great names that you think could work? 

Congratulations. But don’t get too excited, because other people will most likely have already come up with the names you’re now falling for. They will most likely have taken the domains and registered the trademark in your area of business too. There’s a good chance you’ll have to go back to the drawing board - unless you’ve gone really out there with your approach.

It’s critically important not to just ignore the IP legal side of naming.

Despite this, it’s critically important not to just ignore the IP legal side of naming. If you do, you’re opening yourself up to risk - potential cease and desist letters from the trademark owners of the name you’re trading on. At best, that means a hasty rebrand, and the loss of any equity you may have built up, with all the associated costs. At worst, it could mean legal action.

Like with all industries, IP lawyers come in different shapes and sizes. Some are very good and reasonable; some not so much. We have experience with quite a few and can guide you in the right direction. The IP checks process itself shouldn’t take too long, a week or two max, if you’re only taking a few names through for final checks, which is what we’d recommend.

If you do find a name that you all think is strong, great; if you all like it on a personal level too, that’s a bonus; and if the IP landscape is reasonably clear around it, you’ve hit the jackpot. Register the name and trademarks in your areas of business across the relevant geographies as quickly as you can, and don’t forget to register the domain fast too. Domain prices seem to fluctuate wildly in response to interest.

In conclusion

On the face of it, naming might seem like a pretty simple exercise. How hard can it be? The reality in today’s marketplace couldn’t be further from that.

The biggest pitfall is getting lost in a never-ending labyrinth of possible names, unable to move forward.

Perhaps the biggest pitfall is getting lost in a never-ending labyrinth of possible names and never being able to move forward with one. Our process has been designed and refined to ensure you find a shortlist of strong names and actually move forward with one of them. 

As you can see, there is a lot to think about. It’s not easy in 2026, but it’s not impossible. You will almost certainly need to get creative. We’ve been through the process many times now and have secured a wide range of great names for clients (‘Unwritten’, ‘Aplo’, ‘TrueTribe’, ‘Standing Ovation’, ‘Colbe’ to name just a few). If you’re exploring a potential upcoming naming project, get in touch; we’d love to discuss how we can help.      

* https://www.dnib.com/ Oct, 2026