supakeen's weblog

How to name a project?

There's only two things hard about computers, naming things is one of them. We think for ages and sometimes it might put us off doing something entirely. This is especially annoying if it's a project name!

When I worked at a design agency a very long time ago I noticed that they had a specific way of naming brands. Something I've since forgotten the name of but still roughly remember the methodology. A methodology I use for naming all my projects, even if their names might say otherwise.

Think about your project. What does it do? Write down a few words that remind you of what the project does or what the project name should say. Maybe your words are:

Now for each of these words we will do the same, think of a few words for each of the chosen words that remind you of those words.

We can repeat this process another time, I usually do this until I'm at least two removed from the original list of words. You'll have a huge list of words and it's time to start striking away at those words you don't like or the feeling you get thinking about that word.

You can then make combinations between those words, pick words directly, or use the words from different languages as your choice of project name. For fun let's do a few with the words above: