Naming taxonomy
The four main lanes for inventing a name: say what it is, hint at the benefit, coin a new word, or borrow an unrelated one.
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What it is
A naming taxonomy sorts candidate names by how they carry meaning. Descriptive names say the job directly, suggestive names hint at a benefit, coined names invent a word, and abstract or arbitrary names borrow a word unrelated to the category. International Business Machines, Netflix, Kodak, and Apple show those moves in roughly that order.
Reach for the taxonomy before a naming sprint so the team explores more than one comfortable lane. Generate candidates in every category, then judge them against the brief, pronunciation, memorability, domain constraints, and proper trademark review.
Gotcha: the category does not predict whether a name is good or legally available. Descriptive can be clear but hard to own; coined can be protectable but expensive to teach. A domain lookup or a quick search is not trademark clearance, and a clever spelling still has to survive being heard once on a phone call.
Ask AI for it
Run a naming sprint for [OFFER] using [POSITIONING], [AUDIENCE], [MANDATORY IDEAS], [FORBIDDEN WORDS], and [MARKETS]. Generate 15 descriptive, 15 suggestive, 15 coined, and 15 abstract or arbitrary candidates. Label every name by category and explain the construction. Reject confusing pronunciations, forbidden terms, and pairs above a Levenshtein similarity threshold of 0.8 within this candidate set. Return a scored shortlist of 12 for human domain, linguistic, and trademark review; do not claim legal availability.