Should Product Names Match the Company Name?

It's a fair question. And the answer is: it depends on what you're actually building.

That might sound like a dodge. It's not. The real issue isn't whether product names should carry the company name. It's about where you are on the architecture spectrum, and whether your names are pulling in the same direction or quietly working against each other.

The spectrum runs from one extreme to another.

At one end, you have the branded house. One name, everywhere. Think FedEx Ground, FedEx Express, FedEx Office. The parent brand does the heavy lifting. Products are extensions, not identities. The benefit is clarity and compounding equity. The risk is that you tie everything to one name, and if that name gets complicated, everything gets complicated with it.

At the other end, you have the house of brands. Each product has its own name, its own identity, its own market position. Procter & Gamble is the classic example. Tide and Pampers and Gillette don't need P&G to sell. The benefit is flexibility and audience targeting. The risk is fragmentation. You're essentially building multiple brands at once, which costs time, money, and focus.

Most companies live somewhere in the middle, which is also where most naming decisions go sideways.

Here's how it usually breaks down.

A company launches its first product and names it after the company. Makes sense. Then a second product comes along, and someone says "let's keep the brand consistent" so they tag that one too. Then a third. Then a fourth. Before long, every product sounds like a variation on the same theme, and the whole portfolio feels like a long, flat hallway where every door looks the same.

That's over-extension. The company name stretches until it stops meaning much.

The opposite mistake is fragmentation. Naming each product something completely different, with no visible connection to anything else you make. Customers can't tell what belongs together. Sales teams spend half their conversations just explaining the lineup. The portfolio feels like a yard sale.

Neither of those is a strategy. They're just what happens when there's no architecture guiding the decisions.

So, back to the question.

Should your product names match the company name? Maybe. Ask yourself this first: what do you want the parent brand to do?

If the company name has strong equity and your products benefit from its credibility, lean into it. Use it as an anchor. Let the product names build on that foundation.

If your products are targeting very different audiences, operating in different markets, or carrying different promises, they may need room to breathe. A little distance isn't fragmentation. It's intentional positioning.

The key is deciding, not defaulting. Most naming problems aren't really naming problems. They're architecture problems that got punted to the creative brief.

Know where you want to be on the spectrum before you start naming anything. Your product names will be better for it. And so will the brand you're trying to build.