Nomen est Omen: How to Choose a Perfect Name for Your App?

Finding a great name for a product is one of the most difficult parts in the development. The name means a lot and can influence the fate of your business. We may recall a song by Johnny Cash “A boy named Sue”, which tells us how a female name turned the man’s life into a living hell, despite the fact that Sue was a good guy. The same story can happen to your app. Even the best of the kind application may end up on the sidelines of global network because of a silly, overcomplicated, plain or misleading name.

A technology touch to naming apps

Fortunately, there are lots of tools to help you with creating a unique and memorable brand name nowadays. For example, our app name generator. Let’s take a closer look.

A quite simple, kind of minimalistic design, one function and nothing extra - it’s really that easy. You just put in a keyword that relates to your app or somehow characterizes it and the generator creates the most relevant name variations.

At the bottom of the page, there are industry-specific naming tools, aimed to provide suggestions exclusively for education, real estate, finance and other areas. If your product fits into one of the catagories, it’s better to use a specific business name creator, to get more accurate app name ideas.

Alternatively, use the ChatGPT AI language model. It can help generate app names based on the information you provide about your app. The more details you give about your app’s purpose, target audience, features, and values, the more specific and relevant suggestions you get. Some useful information that can help ChatGPT generate app names includes the unique selling points or features of the app, any relevant keywords, tone or style of the app (e.g. playful, professional, minimalist), and competitor app names.

Tips for choosing the right app name

Here is a checklist to consider when selecting a name for your web or mobile app:

1. An app name should attract attention

A catchy name is capable to intrigue and encourage the user to learn more about your product. For example, many people were hooked by the title “Fifty Shades of Gray”. However, it evokes thoughts about blurry boundaries between good and evil and many people expected some reflections on this topic, rather than what they actually got. As for successful examples, we may recall Viber. This name stands for something that creates a convivial atmosphere. It induces a desire to figure out what’s this. Inside you find an excellent replacement for Skype, mobile operators and other communication tools.

2. An app name has to be informative and meaningful

Prisma - what associations are triggered by this word? “Let’s look through a prism”, “an image looks like being passed through a prism” - there are dozens of similar phrases. Now, in addition to the abstract meaning, we have a quite specific one - an artistic processing of photos through Prisma. Perhaps, there is no better name for this app.

3. An app name needs to be short and easy to say

App Store limits app names to 75 characters. But even aside from this, how would people tell each other about “a chatting app with short-lived and self-deleting messages, stickers, news, themed masks, emoticons and ability to record video, for iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, free, without registration and sms”? It’s much easier to say or write: “Have you heard about Snapchat?”.

4. An app name has to be intuitive

If people always ask what’s your app about when they hear its name, it’s a sure sign of a poor choice. The name shouldn’t explicitly describe your app functionality or scream about its style. However, it’s a good thing if it provides at least some hints. Facebook - a book of faces. The first association that comes to mind is a photo album. The name of this social network suggests the right line of thought. On the contrary, a name like SPSeed tells nothing.

5. An app name needs to be memorable

This is the most difficult part and a pure tour de force in naming apps. It’s one thing to simply attract attention, quite another - to stuck in memory for years to come. Instagram is one of those cool app names that everyone knows and remembers because of its uniqueness. Nobody can tell what would happen if the creators left its initial name “Instant Telegram”.

Certainly, there is a chance that your application will gain recognition for an outstanding functionality or design. You may expect that the users will eventually learn the name and will start associating it with the content. But this may not work out the way you hope. I’m sure, at least once in your life you’ve been in a situation like this: “What a lovely song! Which band does it belong to?” or “What book is this magnificent scene from?” or “Jack Nicholson masterfully portrayed a detective, but what was the name of the film?”. This happens even to classical well-known things, even to those which are studied at school! Good and original name will not let your brainchild to be forgotten.

The power of words

Living in the information age, we have to understand the value of words and treat them tenderly. Behind the words, there is a universe of meanings, visual impressions, associations and emotions. That’s why choosing the name is a very important step which defines whether it will be pronounced with honor, admiration or with shame. In such a responsible task, there is no limit to perfection. Perhaps, this is our business names generator that will help you find the right term or association. Give it a try and find lots of catchy name ideas!