Overheard at The Business of Naming

So there I was—in Brooklyn at The Business of Naming, surrounded by people from all over who make their living off names. They create names, test them, legally screen them, defend them, and sometimes decide whether a thing gets a name at all. Once a year, namers and namer-adjacents get together to learn, swap stories, and share in the feeling of “low ego, high generosity”—the event’s unofficial tagline. Inspired, I came home with a notebook full of lessons and lines worth repeating.

The lessons:

• The best name doesn’t always win. Why naming is a lot like Survivor.
• Hyper-descriptive names fall short. A lesson from the birds.
• The right name won’t jump out at you. You have to dig for it.
• Small kindnesses go a long way. Overheard in the restroom, of all places.
• Confidence beats fear. One question that changes how clients decide.
  

The lines:

1. “Naming is like Survivor.”

Name architect, James Mueller, made the connection in conversation: getting to the final chosen name is a lot like deciding who wins Survivor. In Survivor, the first half of the game is about weeding out the weaker players who can’t contribute as much to the tribe’s success. In naming, the goal is to create the strongest shortlist possible, so you eliminate the weakest names. But both have a turning point. Once the tribes merge in Survivor, the strategy becomes voting out the strongest players, which gives the people who played the middle a better chance of winning. In naming, the trademark pre-screen infamously kills at least half of the strongest names. Either way, the one left standing didn’t win by being the strongest. It won by outlasting everything else: the true sole survivor.

2. “If the name only tells you exactly what the thing is, it will always fall short.”

Independent namer, Tyler Doyle, dropped this while walking us through what namers can learn from the names of birds. Take the Red-bellied Woodpecker. Its most striking feature is a bright red head, while the red on its belly is a faint blush you’d barely notice from the ground. The name isn’t wrong, exactly. It just picked one detail and missed the point. Purely descriptive names tend to fail the same way: they lock onto a single trait, usually whatever seemed most obvious when the thing was named, and leave no room for what it is or could become. Clients often ask for a name that “says what we do,” but a name’s job is to make you want to know more, not to tell you everything. Names are stories, not maps.

3. “What would make you 5% more confident?”

Naming experts, Rachel Metter and Jed Rendelman, showed us how to look at decision-making through a therapy lens, focusing on the fear that creeps into the room (and into our own heads) when it’s time to choose. It sounds like “What if nobody gets it?” or “Should we just go with the safer name?” One of their recommended antidotes is to ask the client: what would make you 5% more confident? It surfaces the fear before it takes over and puts you and the client on the same team: us vs. the fear. We couldn’t agree more. It’s why Beardwood builds Confidence Checks into round one of every project, so data and honest consumer sentiment can back up our gut instincts.

4. “Love your hair color.”

This was said to me while I was washing my hands in the women’s restroom. I’d recently dyed my hair orange, so it meant a lot to me, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t regularly think about it. Thank you, kind stranger. Loved your dress.

5. “Diamonds don’t jump.”

Nameman, Steve Cecil, shared this quip while talking about his experience naming some of the most recognizable brands out there. Before Figma, Subaru Crosstrek, and Coursera became iconic, they all lived on massive long lists of names, diamonds in a sea of coal. We tend to expect that the right name will be so obvious it might as well jump out at you, and Steve suggests that expectation sets us up to fail. After all, “diamonds don’t jump.”