Coming up with the right company name using a name generator

You recently had a great idea for a product or company. But what should you call it? A name generator can help you come up with the right company name. So, here is a list of 9 name generators we believe are worth checking out.

But do you want to use the best company name generator right away? Then go to our free company name generator and create an original company name that fits your brand or product perfectly.

The 9 name generators in this article:

1. Wordoid: new words with one keyword
2. Dot-o-mator: making word combinations
3. Panabee: especially for domain names
4. Name|Grep: define your industry
5. Names4brands: exotic terms without blunders
6. Naming Name Generator: a lot of choice!
7. Lean Domain Search: add words to your keyword
8. FreshBooks Name Generator: finding a company name by answering 3 questions
9. Namelix: artificial intelligence

What a product or company name generator can do for you

Finding a catchy company name will get you halfway to success. The name must provide sufficient information about the purpose of your company or product, be easy to remember and, above all, be original. Because the domain name must be available for registration, as must the associated accounts on social media.

Find a domain with name generators

Are you still struggling after a few days of pondering? Stop worrying yourself sick and take advantage of new technologies! On the Internet, you can find several name generators that will immediately offer you hundreds of suggestions that you might not have thought about before, and which you can further embellish yourself.

Keywords

Most name generators require you to use a keyword – the word you want to see in your name. The generator will then put words in front of or behind your keyword. Unfortunately, in most cases, you cannot specify which underlying idea should be included in your company or product name. But that can be solved through the use of a second keyword, like ‘green’ for instance, if you want to emphasize sustainability.

Some generators can go one step further and add rhymes, swap syllables, or even use artificial intelligence. In our selection, we focused on generators that use keywords and that have a creative approach rather than just adding an existing word before or after your keyword.

Most name generators are based on English vocabulary. But we occasionally tried to find out how they deal with a Dutch word such as ‘gluten’. Our imaginary product was gluten-free flour. Through a website with recipes, we wanted people to use this flour. After all, the proportions in traditional recipes for doughs and pancakes do not apply to gluten-free flours.

1. Wordoid: new words with one keyword

Wordoid stands out from its competitors due to the fact that it allows users to select one or more languages in which the name generated should make sense (English, Spanish, French, Italian or German). You can e.g. combine English and French. You can also determine the maximum length of the word, decide whether the word should contain a keyword and, if so, where this keyword should appear. If you leave this field blank, you will create a completely new concept. The only regret is that you cannot choose the category (tech, food, science...) to which your new product belongs.

The quality filter can be used to determine how much the generated word resembles the natural words in the selected languages. For our imaginary company, we were charmed by suggestions like ‘degluta’, ‘degluts’, ‘gluttox’ or ‘glutame’. Of course, you can also check the availability of the domain names, but only with .com and .net extensions. You can, however, decide if you want to see all possible combinations, or only those for which the domain name is still available.

2. Dot-o-mator: making word combinations

Dot-o-mator’s search engine combines two groups of words. For both the beginnings and endings, you can either pick words from a category or type some words yourself. Under ‘Beginnings’, you can specify the subject (online, web 2.0 words, colours, etc.). And under ‘Endings’, you can specify a category that can also be used as a domain extension (boats, experts, friends, etc.). Then, click on ‘Combine’ and you will get a long list of possible domain names.

If you find a name you like, click on it and select it to save it to the ‘Scratchbox’. Later on, you can check the availability of all the domain names you have saved there.

Here too, we received some nice suggestions for our ‘gluten’ test. Names like glutenguru or glutenwizard, for instance, would be great ideas for the recipe site. Feel free to play around with the categories in the ‘Endings’ section, as the search engine works very fast!

3. Panabee: especially for domain names

With Panabee, you will have to enter one or more keywords. The search engine will then allow you to choose what you want to do with these words: add or remove a letter, shorten syllables, add a prefix such as ‘on’, or add a suffix such as ‘ly’, and so on. You will also immediately be able to see if the domain name is still available with a .com extension (blue hearts) or if it has already been registered by someone else (a broken red heart). You can also explore other domain extensions.

What is interesting here is that you also get the translation into French, Hawaiian, and some other languages. By translating ‘gluten flour’, we already got inspired by the company name ‘glufarina’! If you use English terms, the site will also list a series of related terms that will boost your inspiration. And last but not least, the search engine immediately checks whether the suggested company names are still available on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr).

4. Name|Grep: define your industry

Geeks will love Name|Grep. This name generator uses sets and regular expressions.

• Sets: groups of words that are related to each other, and that you use in conjunction with your keyword. Name|grep offers a whole range of built-in sets, such as :colors (colour names), :geo/countries (world countries), :greek/gods (Greek gods in ancient mythology), etc.
• Regular expressions: these will allow you to define a search pattern using a specific syntax. This is a bit like using wildcards (jokers) when searching for a file. The instructions on how to write these expressions are provided here and are quite simple to follow.

Do not be deterred by the English language used on the website. If you search for gluten and select the words/adjectives set, you will immediately get some inspiration with gluten and glutenzero, while a search using ‘glut’ as keyword will return results such as glutago or glutanti. The generator also shows you if the domain name is still available with the .com, .net, .org, .co and .io extensions.

5. Names4brands: exotic terms without blunders

Names4brands also plays the multilingual card, but this site surpasses all the others in this respect, as you can choose from no less than 18 languages (but no Dutch!). This tool is focused on finding company names. You can enter a word as a starting word or an ending word, or go for a completely new word via the ‘Random’ option. A useful feature here is that you get the English translation of the additions in non-English languages such as Tamil or Sanskrit. This will help you avoid blunders!

So, this is a tool you can use to create a completely new name. Our ‘gluten test’ provided results like ‘glututto’ and ‘glutmenu’ for a website, and ‘glutesta’ for a product (from the Italian ‘protesta’). Unfortunately, once again, there is no possibility to choose a category.

6. Naming: a lot of choice!

Naming gives you other possibilities to expand your keyword, such as Greek and Latin prefixes or suffixes, or rhymes. For this last option, ‘Double Rhymes’ will give you the best results. Oddly enough, the word has to be an existing English word – for the Dutch word ‘passie’, you will not get any results, but ‘passion’ will give you ‘passionfashion’, for instance, which is quite nice.

This name generator also allows you to specify the number of syllables desired for the new name. Unfortunately, this choice is limited to 1, 2 or ‘3 or more’. This last option will therefore result in an extensive list of domain names that are much too long... On the plus side, you can also immediately check if the domain name is still available with a .be or a .nl extension. But the fact that you cannot select more than one domain extension at a time is somewhat inconvenient.

A search for ‘glut’ provided us with a huge list of suggestions, but only ‘glutdiet’ (hard to pronounce) and ‘glutexit’ seemed to us to be good company names.

7. Lean Domain Search: add words to your keyword

Lean Domain Search is actually quite simple: all you have to do is enter a keyword, and the tool will add a word before or after it. The list of results you get is huge, because there are 5,000 prefixes or suffixes. It is, however, a rather efficient method, because you will instantly notice how catchy some names can be using this simple technique.

Incidentally, you can filter the results by length and alphabetically, and decide whether your keyword should be placed before or after the results. You can also click on a result to check if the associated .com domain name and the Twitter handle are still available. This tool does not allow you to search for other domain extensions.

WeGluten immediately inspired us to create a logo for our company name with a capital ‘G’ in it, so that it becomes ‘weg gluten’ (Dutch for ‘gluten be gone’). And why not a ‘Glutenvideo’ domain name for a website presenting videos of the recipes?

8. FreshBooks Name Generator: finding a company name by answering 3 questions

If the 5,000 results of Lean Domain Search are a little too much for you, you should try FreshBooks Name Generator: here, you can choose an industry for your product or company, and you will get three name suggestions. If you cannot find anything you like, you can click on ‘Show me more names’. Repeat until you find your ideal name!

The number of industries is limited, but still gives very different results – ‘legal services’, for instance, will give more serious results, while ‘creatives & marketing’ will provide surprising options. The results, however, leave us a bit disappointed.

Another downside is that there is no possibility to check the availability of the domain name.

9. Namelix: artificial intelligence

This name generator also uses artificial intelligence. With Namelix, you can enter one or more keywords, determine the length of the brand name, and the style (an original brand, a word in a foreign language, multiple words, rhymes, etc.), and then click on 'Generate'.

The result works for English words and often makes you think outside the box. Our combination with the keywords ‘gluten’, ‘allergy’ and ‘flour’ generated some unexpected ideas such as ‘Vegzo’, ‘Supergrain’ and ‘Allergiq’ – inspiring results that go well beyond our own keywords.

A handy feature, however, is that you can immediately purchase a detailed logo, including visual identity. There is, however, no possibility to check the availability of the associated domain name.

Extra tips to come up with a company name

Have you not made up your mind yet? Here are some extra tips:

• Fantasy Name Generators allows you to search using more than 900 generators for clothing, fictional characters, web series, etc.
• Use Namechk to check if the name you found is available as a username on various social networks.
• Why not use a popular keyword as a domain name? Enter your keyword at Answerthepublic and you will get to see the most frequently asked questions. You can also choose the language, and Dutch is an option.
• Translating your keywords into an exotic language can sometimes lead to surprising results when naming your products or services.
• Play with domain extensions such as .it, .ly or .io to create surprising domain names, such as glo.be, redd.it or bit.ly.

Good luck finding the right product, company or domain name!

Check if your domain name is still available