How do you name an app in a way that it becomes forever etched into people’s brains? App names like “Google” and “Photoshop” have become so popular that the words are now used in common language. Instead of saying, “I’ll search that online,” people say, “I’ll Google it.” On the other hand, Photoshop is a common term to describe any kind of editing, not just the one done on Adobe Photoshop.
Naming an app is an enduring task. Either you’d have a spark of inspiration and find the perfect name, or you’d be sitting for days to find the perfect name that fits your brand, its functionality, and is also memorable.
To sort that out for you, we have some tips!
1 – Ask Friends and Family
Discussing your ideas with your friends and family allows explore undiscovered lands. Get them together and ask them to suggest as many names as they can think of. They can either suggest what feels right to them, or you could give them guidelines of what you want the name to be like.
You could inform them of
- Purpose: What does the app do?
- Vision: What problem does it solve, and what is its vision for the future?
- Value: What are the values for your app?
- Mission: What will the app accomplish and how?
2 – Be Creative
Some of the most popular names in the industry are abstract and somewhat unrelated to the brand. The co-founder of Twitter—now X—began with a working name, which was Status. This was soon changed to Twitch, which did not sit well with their vision. They picked up a dictionary to find another word with tw, where they came across Twitter.
He says, “And ‘twitter’ means a short inconsequential burst of information, chirps from birds, and we were like, that describes exactly what we’re doing here.”
Similarly, you can start with a working name and idea, and explore what names—even if they are abstract—suit your purpose best.
3 – Short, Simple & Memorable
Remember, it’s a name, not a tagline. For instance, if you were to name a food app that only had healthy food options from the area, how would you go about it? Wordplay is a great opportunity to be creative with your app name.
We can pick a few words, such as health, local, fitness, food, eat, etc. Instead of naming it the Healthy Food Fitness App, you can choose letters from the phrase and go with something like:
- FitFood
- LocaFit
- EatFit
- GreenFinds
Adding high-volume and relevant keywords to your app name and optimizing your app with a few generic keywords. This will help improve search ranking and make it easy to search.
4 – Keep Foreign Markets in Mind
Make sure to not pick a random word from another language, and also make sure that when you make up a word, it does not mean something in a foreign language.
Some brand names in the past have been offensive or funny in a certain language as compared to their language of origin.
Also, make sure that the name is easily pronounceable for most people and doesn’t turn into a tongue-twister.