Attribute names
Attribute names primarily convey what a company or offering is like.
As competitive markets became more crowded, companies couldn’t just name themselves after the product they made any longer. And as the field of marketing grew more sophisticated, founders realized that just naming their company after themselves might not be the most effective strategy for acquiring customers.
Enter the attribute name, used early on by companies like Prudential and American Express to say, not what they offered specifically, but what it was like.
Famous examples
Many companies have named themselves after differentiating values, such as Wise money transfers, Truist bank, The Honest Company, or Progressive insurance. These names work well because all the offerings these companies have will stem from that shared ethos.
This can also be used to capture shared product qualities: Mini cars are uniformly small, Surface computers all have touch screens and, 7-Eleven stores open early and close late, and Uber indicates that its offerings are better (if not German, since it’s not Über).
A more esoteric application of attribute names is to establish a tone. Warby Parker is a made-up human name that doesn’t really mean anything, but evokes a sort of hipster personality that fits the glasses they make. Orange and Red Bull and Bing all provide this sort of vague vibe-based energy to their portfolios.
But where attribute names really shine, and where you likely see them most (and notice them least), is at the very bottom of a portfolio, distinguishing one product variant from another. The way you can tell an iPhone 14 Pro Max from an iPhone 12 Mini is thanks to attribute names telling you their relative recency, power, and size. This also works when you have a lot of product lines, such as Wrigley’s gum brands Juicy Fruit, Big Red, and Doublemint.
Why you might use it
You’re naming an organization that shares a unique ethos or definition of “good”. Google, derived from a very very large number, evokes size and scale, but also playfulness—attributes that have remained relevant throughout the company’s growth from search engine to all things electronics and tech.
You’re naming offering variants — lots of things with the same definition message, but variations on things like flavor, performance, size, form factor, or delivery method. Enshrining those attributes in product names will help customers immensely when they’re choosing between items in your portfolio.
You want to spice up an otherwise bland name, especially one based on a definition or origin message. Turbotax feels a lot more exciting than just Tax Software, and also gives customers a sense of what makes this specific tax software desirable.
Why you might avoid it
You’re naming a product line that will contain a lot of variants. Microsoft Surface works well for touchscreens, and Lenovo Yoga works well for fold-around laptops, but a line trying to encompass both form factors wouldn’t be able to use either name. Though there may be a shared attribute, it’s safer to anchor on what the offerings actually are, or perhaps their benefits, since you’ll likely want to reference attributes in the variant names that will eventually live next to the product line.
You’re naming a company that aims to span a range of audiences with different tastes. If you aim to provide a comprehensive suite of offerings, you’re likely to span the gamut of high-performance and low, expensive and cheap, cherry-flavored and banana. In those instances, you’ll be better served by naming for the actual type of product you’ll be offering every variant of, or the benefits you think you can provide.
Your unifying attribute also leads to a unifying benefit. If you can tell people what benefit they’ll derive from an offering, that might be more effective than just telling them what an offering is like.
Up next:
Want to better understand the other messages a name might convey? Move on to read about audience names.
Think you’ve found the right message for your name? Time to think about the right method, starting with intuitive.
Or, for a general overview of naming topics, head over to our naming crash course.
Have ideas? Have questions?