Both options have produced iconic brands. Both have produced forgettable ones. The choice isn't about which type is better. It’s about what your brand needs and what you're willing to invest to make the name work.
Let me break down how we think about this at Tanj.
The short answer: Invented names (coinages, shavings, blends, portmanteaus…) are easier to trademark and own, but require more marketing investment to build meaning. Real-word names carry existing associations that can accelerate perception, but are harder to protect and often already claimed. Neither is inherently superior — the right choice depends on your category, your budget, your competitive set, and how distinctive you need to be.
What invented names do well
A coined name can start as a blank slate (the degree of that depending on how heavily coined it is). It carries less of the existing baggage of real language, which means you get to define what it means through brand experience. There are fewer accidental associations to manage.
Coinages are also significantly easier to trademark. Because they don't exist in the dictionary, they can be registered across a wide range of categories without the conflicts that plague common terms.
The cost: you have to build the meaning. The name doesn’t have a defined meaning until the brand makes it mean something. That's a marketing investment — in time, in budget, in repetition. For a bootstrapped company, that can be a real constraint.
What real-word names do well
A real word (Apple, Stripe, Asana) arrives with semantic weight already attached. The word carries connotations, feelings, and images that the brand can channel without building from zero.
Done well, a real-word name creates an instant resonance that a coinage can't match early on. The name already lives in the audience's vocabulary.
The cost: trademark complexity and potential conflicts. Common words are often already claimed in adjacent categories, limiting protection. And the existing associations cut both ways — if the word carries connotations that don't fit your brand, you're fighting them rather than leveraging them.
The factor most people skip: competitive distinctiveness
The question isn't just "what do I want this name to feel like?" It's "how does this name land relative to every other name in this category?"
If your competitors are all using descriptive, real-word names, a well-constructed coinage stands out immediately. If your category is full of coined words, a sharp, specific real word does the differentiation work.
Category context shapes naming strategy. A name that would be distinctive in one market can disappear in another.
Our take
Neither type automatically wins. What wins is specificity — a name that was built for this brand, in this category, for this audience, at this moment.
The decision between invented and real-word is a downstream question. The upstream question is: what does this name need to accomplish, and what's available to accomplish it?
If you want a framework for that evaluation, read How to Evaluate Brand Name Ideas Objectively. It applies to either type.