Some names are easier to pull from memory because they break their category's pattern and because the mind retrieves real words more reliably than invented ones.
The naming mistakes that cost the most pass on launch day and send the bill months later. Here is each one, and the cheap check that catches it first.
Run 5,000 DTC names through a phonetic sieve and one average name falls out. It does not exist, and it would sit unnoticed on any shelf. Here is the read.
Most names that fail were not bad names. They passed every test at launch and broke later, in one of four ways. Each mode, and the signal that predicts it.
Processing fluency is how easily a name moves through the mind, and the mind quietly trusts what moves easily. The science, and the levers that set it.
An invented word that means nothing became a verb for a category. The reason is in the sound, three soft L sounds, a doubled lu, and a name effortless to say.
Most naming advice says invent a word. Across 5,018 real direct-to-consumer brand names, only about a quarter are, and the most common move is borrowing a word that already exists.
A plain-English glossary of the science that decides how a brand name lands, sound symbolism, processing fluency, optimal incongruity and the rest, each defined with the research behind it.
Run a 60-second test on yourself, see why the effect has held for almost a century, then turn the two phonetic dials a founder actually controls.
Most naming guides chase the wrong target. Fifty years of linguistic research says polarizing beats memorable, and the sound a name makes does more work than the meaning. Here's what to do instead.