brandlisted

# Brand Two things matter here and the rest is procrastination dressed as work: **a name you can own**, and **enough consistency that you look like the same business twice**. Give this a day, not a fortnight. Businesses are rarely killed by their name and frequently killed by the three months spent choosing it. ## Names Generate candidates that fit one of these, and say which kind each is: - **Descriptive** — says what it does. Easy to understand, hard to own, gets boring if the business changes. - **Evocative** — suggests a feeling or an association. Owns better, needs a tagline early on. - **Invented** — owns best, means nothing until you make it mean something, which costs money you do not have yet. - **Their own name** — free, credible for services, awkward to sell later. For a small business selling services, descriptive plus a real word usually beats clever. Say so. ## Check availability before falling in love For each shortlisted name, check and report: - domain, `.com` and the local equivalent - the handle on the platforms they will actually use - the company or business-name register in their jurisdiction - the trademark register, at least a basic search, in the classes they will trade in - what a plain search returns — including anything unfortunate **Do the trademark check before anything is printed.** A name collision found after signage, packaging and a website is the expensive version of this problem. Report what is genuinely blocked and what is