Brand Name: Meaningful vs Meaningless – which is Better?
Brand name should be meaningless, catchy and fanciful. The name of a business should not be descriptive, generic or meaningful.
Through the progress of human civilization, words got meaning only through their use. So, a meaningless wordmark (protologism) today will become meaningful (neologism) tomorrow – as in case of the wordmarks Yahoo or Sony. The word ‘laser’ had no meaning before 1960.
Meaningless business names are also called fanciful and distinctively strong brand names.
SEO Advantage of Meaningless and Invented Brand Names
Unique and meaningless brand names perform better in search than common generic business names.
It should not be based on keywords or generic words. Keywords based name can be a short-term strategy but in terms of SEO and powerful futuristic branding it is not a good strategy
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Examples
Apple Inc. is a big and famous tech brand, and its name is based on generic common word. Although it is popular, even then search engines may be confused on the intent of searcher whether one is searching for Apple tech company or apple fruit. Similar is the case of Time Magazine – you will have to mention magazine after time, for the search engine to decipher your true search intent.
Please note that Apple Inc. and Time magazine get some search advantage due their popularity. A less known descriptive business name will not appear well in search results. For example, Unlock is a San Francisco based business about home equity agreements. When you search ‘unlock’ the search engine will confuse and the result about unlock.com will not appear on top.
On the other hand, if you search any other meaningless fancy brand name in search engine – such as Toyota, IKEA, Bing, Microsoft – the search engine will promptly understand the search intent and results about the specific brand will show up on the top of the search page. The search engine will also show other online sources about the brand, for example social media pages, because search engine is clearer about the intent of the user, due to the fanciful nature of brand name.
Have you ever thought, why many brands create unique hashtags in their social posts? Answer is simple - Just to create some uniqueness so that their followers can easily find them. So, a unique and fanciful (meaningless) name inherently serves the function of a strong hashtag. Invented or meaningless words or brands are always unique such as Google, Nokia, Dozro or Yahoo.
Meaningful Name for a Local Business too Offer Little SEO Advantage
You can decide a meaningful name for your business name, if the business is only limited to a city, for example, London Real Estate. It may draw some benefits for local search visibility, but it is not suitable (nor scalable) for national level search appearance. However, in my opinion, with advancement in algorithm, there are little SEO benefits for even local descriptive businesses.
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For example, when I searched the term ‘London property’ in Google Maps the top result was not some descriptive/meaningful business. The top result was ‘Living London’ which is a suggestive business name – not a descriptive name.
The result for my search ‘London Property’ appeared further down on the results page.
So, we can conclude that meaningful names have little advantage if any for search engine visibility.
Case Study of Brand Name of Amazon (Meaningful Name)
Many people will argue that Amazon.com is also an evocative or generic name but a successful business so other meaningful names can also succeed.
The simple answer is that then was 1994 at the time of launch of Amazon when internet was in early days and now is the third decade of 21st century.
Future Expansion was in Mind of Bezos at Time of Naming the Brand
Jeff Bezos had a futuristic mind and a business approach. Though his chosen name is not fanciful or meaningless, but the amazon word has a vast connotative meaning and inclusiveness through which it can be applied for any type of business. He took this symbolic name from the Amazon River. He had not named his business as ‘AmazonBooks’ because according to Encyclopedia Britannica, Bezos from the very start had in mind that Amazon will not just sell books, but it will expand to multiple types of other products. [RD]
Amazon Brand Name Chosen to Take Advantage of Yahoo Listings
In fact, Bezos had chosen Cadabra.com but renamed the company to Amazon after the famous voluminous river.
At that time, Yahoo was the biggest search engine which had listed entries alphabetically during those early days of the internet. [RD]
Of course, a name starting with ‘A’ letter will show up earlier in listings than ‘C’ if he would select Amazon over Cadabra.
The naming strategy Amazon by Jeff Bezos was quite rational and pragmatic at that time in 1994. Choosing Cadabra.com was not right at that time.
However, as you know that now Google or other search engines do not display listings alphabetically, so Cadabra name would have been better option than Amazon name, if he had to choose the name now.
Similarly, Apple was chosen as brand name in 1976 because Steve Jobs, the co-founder liked apples and worked at that time in an orchard of apples. [RD]
In 1976, there were no websites. The first website created 1991. [RD]
It is highly unlikely to popularize a descriptive or meaningful name – such as apple, mango, orange – in third decade of 21st century.
Meaningful Brand Names Are Not Scalable
Another disadvantage of meaningful business name is that it cannot be scaled. For example, it will look odd if Booking.com website start selling goods.
Blue Ribbon Sports established by an athlete, was a plain meaningful business name. So, after seven years of inception the company renamed as Nike – although a dictionary word but still less-used and unique.
Imagine, if original name ‘Brad's Drink’ continued to exist the cola beverage, Pepsi could not be so popular as it is today.
It was a wise decision of InMotionNow (consisting of dictionary words of ‘in’, ‘motion’ and ‘now’) to rebrand as Lytho in October 2021, which is a single and short wordmark. [RD]
Therefore, business or brand name should be preferably meaningless, short, and unique instead of being descriptive and meaningful.
Meaninglessly invented brand names are more scalable than generic names for business.
Brand name should be scalable to meet the expanding line of products or services of a business.
Meaningful or Descriptive Domain Names Are More Expensive
In the early days of search engines, generic names reaped benefits of better search positions in alphabetically sorted search listings but now this is not the case. I wonder why still people run after the generic names – maybe just riding the old tide.
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Generic (literal or meaningful) names are unbelievably expensive. For example, Voice.com domain sold for $30 million, Place.com domain sold for $3 million, Whisky.com sold for $3 million. [RD]
In 2007, R.H. Donnelley Corporation acquired Business.com in $345 million and after two years in 2009, R.H. Donnelley Corporation filed for bankruptcy – also reflecting the inherent weakness of generic business names. [RD]
Similarly, in 2022, Galaxy.com domain sold for $1.8 million, and Unlock.com domain name sold for $1.2 million. [RD]
But even then, I don’t recommend a generic (meaningful and non-distinctive) business name due to SEO disadvantages and the fact that these are non-brandable in most cases. Descriptive names may have some short-term advantage in certain circumstances but those are negligible. For example, when I searched ‘galaxy’ in search engine, there was no entry of Galaxy.com on the first page of results.
Most meaningful brand names are limited in scope – for example someone purchased WordPlay.com domain in $0.1 million but this name can only be used for word game. Be mindful that your business name should not be limited to a specific niche. Who knows that in a noticeably short time you must expand your business from a specific niche to other diverse aspects of business?
On the other hand, with little effort, you can find and register a short, unique, and meaningless domain name in under 10 dollars. Google Domains and GoDaddy are a great starting point for domain search.
Brand Identity is Automatically Established with Passage of Time
Most people always focus on the meaning of a word before choosing it a as business name. It is not necessary for a brand name to have a meaning or identity, from the very start. You can choose a meaningless name and let the users define its meaning by building an imaginative visual image in mind – drawn through perception or actual function of the brand.
So, what was the meaning or identity of the names of Bing or Yahoo?
Nothing.
With the passage of time the outstanding work and service of Yahoo, Google and Bing automatically provided the name an identity and meaning of being search engines.
Therefore, instead of wasting time in finding meaning of a brand name, choose any short, unique, and easy on the tongue word and then focus on building goodwill of the brand name by creating trust and providing quality services. Believe me, gradually, a meaningless or invented fanciful name will establish its own meaning – the only condition is your hard work, passion, and dedication.
Example of Booking.com – a Meaningful Business Name
Although Booking.com is successful business – it is second to Airbnb. However, it cannot hold its distinctiveness without mentioning the ‘.com’ extension due to its descriptive or meaningful brand name.
In US law, generic terms are not registrable at all whereas descriptive business names must prove themselves as distinctive source identifier in the eyes of public, before being registrable. It also highlights a subtle difference between descriptive and generic names.
USPTO had declined to register it but United States Supreme Court in its 2020 judgment, decided in favor of Booking.com BV. The decision held that although ‘booking’ and ‘.com’ are generic in isolation but as domain extension (.com) is essential part of a generic word (booking) which makes it distinctive and eligible for registration. However, it cannot claim monopoly and exclusive rights over the ‘booking’ word.
Please keep in mind that it is not necessary for other countries to follow the decision of US Supreme court in terms of descriptive and generic business names.
When I searched the keyword ‘booking’ in search engine the top result was for ‘booking.com, however, however, other results on the first page also included ‘ebooking.com’ (their competitor) which makes it clear that meaningful business names should be avoided.
EBOOKING.COM is taking on some business of Booking.com and it is registered and protected mark of ‘Get It Now SL’ company in many countries including Japan, Australia, Israel, Singapore, New Zealand, WIPO, USA. [RD]
Some other similar websites such as realbooking.ro, and halalbooking.com also exist.
There are many similarly named registered business around the world, such as One Booking, Campground Booking, Orion Booking, Bi Booking, Sky Booking, Booking Luxury, Booking Adventure, Booking Dokter, Green Booking and many more.
Descriptive and meaningful business names face more legal battles to save their brand distinction. The users of generic brand names are also more prone to phishing attacks.
So, I can conclude that a fanciful, non-dictionary, and meaningless brand name is always a better decision than a meaningful and descriptive brand name.
More Resources
Get insights from the Dozro case study to find why Fanciful company names are more successful.
Find out the Importance of Vowel Letters in a Business Name.
Should you use Acronyms or Initials in a Business Name?
Importance of Choosing a Inclusive Name for Rebranding.
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