Origin names
Origin names primarily convey who is behind a company or offering.
The reason names exist in the first place is to identify people, and for millennia, that’s just about all they were used for. When companies were invented, the natural way to name them seemed to be to identify the person or people behind the brand. This was once a dominant approach, and though it’s not so common day, it’s important for those whose personal identity is a core aspect of the thing they're naming.
In this article we’ll go through some well-known examples that take different approaches, and talk about why this might (or might not) be the right message for whatever you’re naming.
Famous examples
Think of almost any company that was founded before 1950, and it’s probably the name of its founder. John Pierpont Morgan named his bank after himself, as did Marcus Goldman and Samuel Sachs, or Henry Wells and William Fargo. Same with Louis-François Cartier's jewelry business, Claude Moët's champagne business, Henry Ford's car business, and Walt Disney's animation business. Consultancy EY, ad agency TBWA, and candy brand M&M's are all based on founder initials. Adi Dassler merged his name into one word when naming his shoe brand, similar to Sam Walton's approach to naming his mart. Think of a brand in apparel, professional services, or heavy industry, and odds are better than not you're thinking of a founder name.
Founder names account for the large majority of origin names, but they’re not the only option. Sometimes they’re family references, like Maybelline (named for the founder’s sister) or Danone (named for the founder’s son). Others are named for an important geography, like Kentucky Fried Chicken, Marlboro, or Cisco (from San Fran).
Some companies take an arbitrary name from an existing brand symbol: Mitsubishi translates to “three rhombus,” a reference to the company’s logo, and it's the same story with Circle K. Iconic square snack Chex is named for the checkerboard-shaped logo of their original maker, Purina.
A small few, like Kodak or Spotify or Noom, create a new word not meant to convey anything at all, but merely to designate “there is a company called this.” This is the last bastion of people who have run out of time or ideas.
It's important to note that not every human- or place-based name conveys the company’s origin. Tesla, Lincoln, Victoria’s Secret, and Bluetooth all use names of real people uninvolved with the company, as metaphors for something about what they aim to provide. Companies like Oscar, Venus, Nike, Robinhood and Popeye’s do the same with the names of fictional characters.
Why you might use it
Historically, this has been the name of choice for endeavors built around an individual’s established identity. If you’re already well-known in your field, naming a company after yourself might be a good idea, or if you think there’s something about you personally that would be relevant to your audiences, for instance if you are a Black person starting a DE&I consulting business. That approach isn’t common today in most fields, although it’s still pretty standard in consulting, advertising, and law, where individual reputations are major business drivers.
This might also be right for you if you’re starting a one-person or family-run business that you don’t expect to outgrow that remit, because it’s just such a simple and efficient approach. This is pretty common for small local businesses like construction contracting and home maintenance, which often take their founders’ last name.
A final reason to go with an origin name is that you want to sound more established than you are. Because origin names were the de facto choice up into the 50s, but have dropped off substantially since then, these names make a company feel old, and therefore well-established and seasoned: if you sound like a 50-year-old company, you sound like a company that’s survived for 50 years. This equity can be extremely hard to come by, so taking a naming approach that automatically builds that through sheer tone can be an extremely effective approach, if that’s the reputation you’re going for.
Why you might avoid it
Though it can be an ego hit to admit, the identity of a founder may not be relevant to the majority of their customers. A founder’s story might be an interesting tidbit, but outside of very hands-on service jobs, it’s rarely a primary buying criterion. The nature of your offerings, or the benefits they provide, are much more likely to be criteria your audiences are looking for when they make their decisions.
If your personal identity does really turn out to be relevant and differentiating, an important consideration is whether such close association with you personally will work in the long term. If you plan to grow your business beyond what you personally can deliver, then your audiences may feel disappointed or even misled when you personally don’t show up for the meeting — if they sign a contract with Abe Lincoln Inc., they’ll expect Abe himself to be doing the work.
One other hurdle might be that your organization might not have a single human to identify with. If a company is founded by, say, five partners from around the world, shared heritage is likely just a coincidence, not a key brand message. The more people are involved, the more diluted the name will be — companies like VMLY&R, the result of decades of mergers between origin-named companies, have completely lost any connection to the identities of their founders, to the point of eliminating their actual names in favor of an initialism.
There’s also a logistical consideration when you think about your name in your local market: will your name be easy to remember, spell, and pronounce? Many human names have multiple variants of pronunciation and spelling, and even names with only one spelling will only be known in certain geographies—if people have to guess how to spell your name, they may never find you in search, or find someone else. And it may well be that your name isn’t going to be ownable, either because it’s so common, or so associated with a famous person you’ll never be able to outshine.
Up next:
Want to better understand the other messages a name might convey? Move on to read about definition names, or check out our other message deep dives.
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?