“To get quality and quantity, you have to commit blocks of time to naming.” You’ve got your naming strategy, your computer, your dictionary, whatever other books and resources that inspire you.
You’re ready to name. So get to it.
Ultimately, within the actual name generation phase of a naming project, the only piece of advice you need to remember is this:
It’s about quantity as much as it’s about quality.
A lot of people think that if you create five to ten names, you’re good to go. But you’ll soon see that based on your strategy, and ultimately based on the screening we recommend you carry out after you develop a batch of names (see Chapter 13), you will need to ramp up the number of ideas you explore well beyond a simple dozen or two.
This may require exploring anywhere from 200 names to 1,000 names at the early stages of the development process. We’ve even gone up to 4,000 names for projects.
Yes, 4,000.
So to get quality, you need to be focused. Use a thesaurus, books, articles, ads, blogs, out-of- category name examples and brainstorms to inspire your thinking.
Continue to jump off the naming strategy and explore it from all sides.
To get quality and quantity, you have to commit blocks of time to naming. So dedicate pockets of your schedule. Carve out an hour here, an hour there, over the course of a week or two and make sure you are focused.
Set goals on volume (e.g. say “I am going to create 50 names right now”), bury your head in the strategy and get inspired. Once you reach your goal, go do something else, and come back to naming later.
So, why do we need 100, 1,000 or even 4,000 ideas just to get to one final name out of this process? Check out our new FREE naming guide to learn about the screening process and get lots of other tips.