Make Millions and Make Change! - Secrets to Business and Personal Success - By Mike Mann

You should also be able to trademark (TM) it via the US Patent and Trademark Office if it is not a generic descriptive industry term. Be sure someone else hasn’t placed your name in line at the USPTO before you invest in your own business with that same branded name. If you believe that you have the first rights to that expression, you could invest in counsel to fight the other parties, utilizing the trademark process to gain legal control of that expression in your market space. You can locate information on filing trademarks and review existing marks and applications from the US Patent and Trademark Office at www.uspto.gov, but you will probably require legal counsel nonetheless.

You may not find a name that you and your stakeholders like with these characteristics included, but to ensure you ultimately make the best decision, spend a lot of time studying your options. Also, get votes and opinions on your top name options from as many people as possible including from crowdsources like mturk.com.

If you find consensus in a name, then it is likely to be a great choice. In this case you could add naming questions and voting as part of your market survey process mentioned earlier in this book. At the end of the day, make sure you and your direct stakeholders feel comfortable with your final naming decision whatever it may be.

Before you go forward with the name, be sure that you can buy the “.com” Internet domain name that is an exact match. For instance, don’t name your company TotallyTwisted if you cannot buy totallytwisted.com to use for branding reinforcement. Doing so would be a failure from which you would never fully recover. Getting totallytwisted.net will not suffice because your brand would always be at risk of dilution by the primary Internet brand holder, which is always whoever owns the exact “.com” extension for any word, phrase, or company name.
In addition, the name of your business (and therefore your domain and all of your branding) should be consistent, easy to say, easy to spell, and easy to remember.