If you find yourself tasked with naming a company, product, or service—or making sense of a labyrinth of existing names—you don’t have to face the great void alone. There are a number of naming companies who will face it with you.

But how do you decide which one? Start with their naming portfolio and client roster. Then ask yourself: which of their names resonate with you? Do they work with companies you respect? What’s their process?

Another thing to consider is a company’s level of specialized expertise. Are they a dedicated naming firm? A lot of branding, design, and advertising firms will offer naming as an added service, but what you gain in convenience you often sacrifice in quality. A top-tier naming firm, on the other hand, with a process honed over years of successful naming, will usually offer a level of in-house expertise and resources you won’t find elsewhere.

At Catchword, we’re constantly refining our naming process and tools. (We even have Innovation Week off-sites three times a year.)  And we’re equally driven to transform the experience of naming, so it’s more engaging, more inspiring, more fun—for our clients and ourselves.

As for our capabilities: we specialize in all aspects of brand name development. This includes company naming (and renaming); product naming; service naming; umbrella, master and sub-brand naming
; feature and ingredient naming; line-extension naming; crossword puzzles; Boggle™; Scrabble™; engaging repartee. We do not, however, name children. Except our own.

Is there anything else we offer? Glad you asked. We also offer services that complement brand name development, like naming architecture (including naming protocols), internal and competitive name audits, positioning workshops, and name story development. We lead the industry in linguistic and cultural research and analysis of names. We negotiate and procure domain names, and conduct preliminary trademark screening. We provide tagline development and a spectrum of design services. We also offer customer validation research, and free balloons and pony rides for the kids.