It's the oldest naming convention in business. Law firm. Consulting firm. Architecture studio. Accounting practice.
You take the founders' last names, put them together, and you're done. Smith & Associates. Hollander Klein. Marchetti Consulting.
It's understandable. The firm's reputation is the founder's reputation, especially early on. The thinking goes: lead with the people, because the people are the product.
But in a world where firms compete at scale, across digital channels, often without a single conversation before a prospect decides whether to engage — that logic has real limits.
Why founder names made sense (and increasingly don't)
The founder-name convention emerged from an era where professional services were sold almost entirely through personal relationships. Your name was your credential. Clients hired you, not the firm.
That's still partially true. But it's less true than it used to be.
Today, professional services firms compete in search. They publish thought leadership. They build audiences on LinkedIn. They show up in procurement processes where they've never met the buyer. In all of those contexts, a founder-name doesn't carry the personal weight it's supposed to. It just looks like a name.
And in those contexts, a founder name actually loses something: the ability to communicate a point of view. What does Smith & Associates stand for? What problem do they uniquely solve? What kind of clients do they work best with? The name provides no signal.
The talent and succession problem
There's a longer-range issue, too: what happens to a founder-name firm when the founders step back?
For some, the name becomes a legacy — recognizable enough that it carries value beyond the individuals. For most, it creates a transition problem. Hiring senior talent is harder when the name signals this is someone else's firm. Building toward acquisition is harder when brand equity is tied to people who may not stay.
A name built around the firm's method, philosophy, or the specific problems it solves ages better than one built around its founders.
What strong professional services names actually do
The professional services firms that have built the most enduring brands — McKinsey, Ogilvy, Wieden+Kennedy, Accenture — are an interesting case study. Some are founder-named; many are not. But the ones that scaled most effectively all share one quality: the name became about the idea, not the person.
Accenture was a deliberate reinvention, chosen to signal a new era. Ogilvy became shorthand for a philosophy long after David Ogilvy was involved. McKinsey became synonymous with enterprise transformation..
The question to ask isn't "should we use our name?" It's "what do we want the name to stand for in ten years — and does our current name get us there?"
If the answer is yes, keep it. If you hesitate, that hesitation is worth taking seriously.