Nobody sets out to pick a forgettable name. Most of us pick one because it feels safe. “Best Services LLC.” “Acme Accounting.” It says what you do, nobody will argue with it, and you can move on to the fun parts of starting a business.
I get the appeal. But a generic name has a cost, and the tricky part is that it never shows up as a line on an invoice. It shows up quietly, in a few places.
It’s harder to find
Search for a plain phrase like “bookkeeping services” and you’re not looking for one business. You’re looking at a crowd. If your name is made of the same words everyone else uses, you’re asking people to find you in that crowd.
A distinctive name gives people something to type that only leads to you.
It’s harder to pass along
Think about how a friend recommends someone. They say the name, or they try to and can’t quite remember it. “She’s the bookkeeper, something with ‘Books’ in it.”
When a name blends in, word of mouth gets fuzzy at exactly the moment it should work best.
It’s harder to own
Common words tend to be taken. The .com is gone, the social handles are used by someone else, and the trademark picture is murkier when lots of businesses use similar words. You can still work around all of that, but you’ll spend extra time, money or compromise doing it.
I can’t tell you how a given name will fare, and I’m not a lawyer. I’m just saying generic names tend to run into this more often than distinctive ones.
It makes you sound like everyone else
This one is hard to measure, but you can feel it. When a name sounds like ten other businesses, you spend your marketing explaining why you’re different. When the name already has some personality, it does a little of that work before you say a word.
To be fair
A descriptive name isn’t always a mistake. It tells people what you do at a glance, and that’s worth something. The sweet spot is usually a name that hints at your work but has a twist: a short, ownable word that people can say and spell.
Compare “Bookkeeping Services” with “Tidy Tally.” Same business. One is a category, the other is a name.
A quick way to move away from generic
- Cut the filler words. “Services,” “Solutions” and “Group” rarely earn their spot.
- Pair a plain word with an unexpected one.
- Try a shorter, invented-but-pronounceable word, then run it through the five tests in my first post.
Where I come in
This is the thinking behind my naming sets. I use AI to generate the options, then I review each one myself and keep the ones that don’t read like everyone else’s.
If you’d like a starting point, the free generator on the homepage gives you three names. If you want a full set of seven, that’s $30.