再次检查打印机名称并确保

by Dawid Cedrych

通过戴维德·塞德里奇

我们的公司名称糟透了。这是确保您没有的方法。 (Our company name sucked. Here’s how to make sure yours doesn’t.)

It is harder than one might think to find a good business name. Paul Graham of Y Combinator in one of his famous essays puts emphasis on the importance of having a .com domain for your company name.

很难找到一个好的企业名称。 Y Combinator的Paul Graham在他的一篇著名文章中着重强调了为公司名称拥有.com域的重要性。

I concur with him.

我同意他的看法。

Nevertheless, buying a proper domain should not hold you back from rethinking the name itself to get the bigger picture.

但是，购买适当的域名不应使您重新思考域名本身，以获取更大的前景。

I’m not going to cover the process of finding a good name for your business. There are tons of excellent materials available. What I am going to do instead is show you how to validate the name and avoid common pitfalls.

我将不介绍为您的公司寻找好名字的过程。有大量优质材料可供选择。相反，我将向您展示如何验证名称并避免常见的陷阱。

This is a story of a lack of preliminary research and unshakable optimism for our own naming skills.

这是一个缺乏初步研究并且对我们自己的命名技巧不容乐观的故事。

尤里卡过早的时刻。 (The premature eureka moment.)

We started our software development company in late 2014. As we wanted to target an international audience, having an English name was a no-brainer.

我们于2014年下半年成立了我们的软件开发公司。由于我们希望面向国际受众，因此拥有英文名称是理所当然的事情。

We all spoke English but none of us was a native English speaker.

我们所有人都说英语，但是我们谁都不是说英语的人。

The process, that took us no longer than 15 minutes, to find our brand new perfect name looked pretty much like this:

找到我们全新的完美名称的过程花了我们不到15分钟的时间，看起来非常像这样：

We are starting a company!

我们正在建立公司！

We are coding!

我们正在编码！

Code + Company = Codepany

代码+公司=代码库

That’s going to be our company name. ?

那将是我们的公司名称。 ？

We checked domain availability, and the .com was free. You can only imagine our happiness when we found out that all popular social media handles were available too.

我们检查了域名的可用性，.com是免费的。当我们发现所有流行的社交媒体功能都可用时，您才能想象我们的幸福。

We asked a few friends (3 Polish speakers and one native English speaker as I recall) for feedback. The answer was clear: great job guys, Codepany is a clever name that communicates well what you do.

我们询问了几个朋友(我记得3位波兰语使用者和1位英语母语人士)提供反馈。答案很明确：干得好，Codepany是一个很好的名字，可以很好地传达您的工作。

Codepany - that’s brilliant.

Codepany-很棒。

From that day on, our official name was Codepany.

从那天起，我们的正式名称是Codepany。

您好，Code Pany。 (Hello, Code Pany.)

After a few months, we realized that we had overlooked how the name sounds in Polish. Both our clients and friends called us Code Pany (as two separate words). It was easier to say both words separately instead of trying to mimic the English accent.

几个月后，我们意识到我们已经忽略了波兰语中这个名字的发音。我们的客户和朋友都称我们Code Pany(两个单独的词)。分别说两个单词比尝试模仿英语口音要容易得多。

Unfortunately, “Pany” in the Polish language is a tacky way of saying “gentlemen”.

不幸的是，波兰语中的“ Pany”是俗称“绅士”的一种方式。

We ignored this connotation as irrelevant.

我们忽略了这一含义是无关紧要的。

Sometimes people asked us to repeat the name because depending on the accent applied it sounded different. Not to mention that even we, the founders, didn’t feel entirely comfortable while saying it out loud.

有时人们要求我们重复这个名字，因为根据所使用的口音，它听起来有所不同。更不用说即使是我们的创始人，在大声说出来时也没有完全感到舒服。

We reached the tipping point while speaking with American clients. What we took for granted turned out to be a major disappointment.

与美国客户交谈时，我们到达了临界点。我们理所当然的感到非常失望。

They pronounced it Co-depany or Copany.

他们将其发音为Co-depany或Copany。

您要花一分钱吗？ (Are you coding for a penny?)

We decided to post on Quora to ask the broader audience for feedback. As anticipated, it was far from positive.

我们决定在Quora上发布信息，以征询更多受众的反馈。正如预期的那样，这远非积极。

The funniest answer we got:

我们得到的最有趣的答案是：

If you are coding for a penny, then it’s a way to go.

如果您要花一分钱，那是一种方法。

We had learned the hard way that this name was basically terrible and needed immediate change.

我们已经学到了很难的方法，这个名称基本上很糟糕，需要立即更改。

查找新公司名称的清单 (A checklist for finding new company names)

To avoid past mistakes, we came up with a strategy for finding a new name. Our framework included the following actions to check for potential pitfalls:

为了避免过去的错误，我们提出了一个寻找新名称的策略。我们的框架包括以下操作，以检查潜在的陷阱：

Check .com availability (of course)
检查.com的可用性(当然)
Social Media handles availability
社交媒体处理可用性
Check the urban dictionary for the non-obvious meaning
检查城市词典中的非明显含义
Check how TTS (Text To Speech) online tools pronounce it
检查TTS(文本到语音)在线工具如何发音
Encourage your English native speaking friends to share thoughts on the name.
鼓励您的英语为母语的朋友分享对该名称的看法。
Repeat point 5 but online and with a broader audience
重复第5点，但要在网上进行并吸引更多的受众

Although most of the points are obvious, I think urban dictionary requires explanation. The English language contains a multitude of slang words or weird meanings for regular words. Although many of them are less common or known only to a small group of people, don’t underestimate it.

尽管大多数观点都很明显，但我认为城市词典需要解释。英语包含许多s语单词或常规单词的怪异含义。尽管它们中的许多不那么普遍，或者只有一小部分人知道，但是请不要低估它。

To give you an example - one proposition of name did not make its way through because it meant “fecal” according to urban dictionary. ?

举个例子-一个名称命题没有解决，因为根据城市词典，它的意思是“粪便”。 ？

差点撞到家了。 (Almost hit home.)

Following these simple rules, we completed the first batch of names and posted them to Quora.

按照这些简单的规则，我们完成了第一批名称并将其发布到Quora。

We also attached a survey to enable users to vote for the best name. The distribution of votes was quite even. Hence it did not provide much valuable information. Nonetheless, we got honest feedback on each given name:

我们还附加了一项调查，使用户可以投票选出最佳名字。票数分配相当平均。因此，它没有提供太多有价值的信息。尽管如此，对于每个给定名称，我们还是得到了诚实的反馈：

Up to this point, we had spent around 50 hours in total on new name finding. It made us feel overwhelmed and powerless, so we almost decided to pick “Altarise”. Still, we wanted to be 100% sure, so we opened yet another Quora thread dedicated to that very name.

到目前为止，我们总共花了大约50个小时来寻找新的名字。这让我们感到不知所措和无能为力，因此我们几乎决定选择“ Altarise”。尽管如此，我们还是希望100％确信，所以我们打开了另一个Quora线程，专门用于该名称。

The feedback was relatively good, but one thing struck us - “Altarise” might sound like a verb from the noun “Altar”. This implies religious connotations. Also, people were not unanimously sure of the correct pronunciation.

反馈相对不错，但有一件事情令我们震惊：“ Altarise”听起来像是名词“ Altar”中的动词。这意味着宗教含义。同样，人们也不是对正确发音的肯定。

We knew one thing. If we don’t limit the realm of possibilities, we will start over and probably never finish.

我们知道一件事。如果我们不限制可能性的范围，我们将重新开始，并且可能永远不会结束。

The decision was clear - we want “Alta” as the prefix.

决定很明确-我们希望“ Alta”作为前缀。

Why? It sounds powerful and derives from Latin “Altus,” which stands for “High” or “Great”.

为什么？它听起来很强大，源自拉丁语“ Altus”，代表“高”或“伟大”。

年代学 (Altalogy)

Eventually, our final choice was Altalogy. Let’s break it down:

最终，我们的最终选择是Altalogy。让我们分解一下：

Alta + Technology = Altalogy

Alta +技术= Altalogy

.com domain available
.com域名可用
Social media handles available
提供社交媒体功能
No negative connotations found on urban dictionary
在城市词典中未找到负面含义
Pronunciation is not ambiguous
发音不am昧
“Logy” suffix makes it sound a bit like a science discipline
“ Logy”后缀听起来有点像一门科学学科
No negative feedback among friends and family
朋友和家人之间没有负面反馈
No negative online feedback
没有负面的在线反馈

We are proud of our new name. People who knew us as Codepany before adopted it quite smoothly too.

我们为我们的新名字感到自豪。以前把我们称为Codepany的人也相当顺利地采用了它。

You may disagree and think it’s bad or worse than Codepany. That’s perfectly fine, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. ?

您可能会不同意，并认为它比Codepany糟糕或糟糕。很好，情人眼中情人。？

The key thing is that we did our homework to lower the odds of an unfortunate decision.

关键是我们做了功课，以降低不幸决定的可能性。

To see how we are doing right now, check us out here.

要了解我们现在的状况，请在此处查看我们。

重要要点 (Key takeaways)

I did not mention one of the crucial parts of searching for a new name - defining what you do and what you are good at - to convey the right meaning. I deliberately skipped this part as some of you prefer abstract names over explicit ones.

我没有提到寻找新名称的关键部分之一-定义您的工作和擅长的领域-以传达正确的含义。我特意跳过了这一部分，因为其中有些人更喜欢抽象名称而不是显式名称。

So, the key takeaways are:

因此，关键要点是：

Do lots of research. If you are trying to come up with a name in a language that is not your mother tongue, do twice as much research.
做很多研究。如果您想使用非母语的语言来命名，请进行两倍的研究。
Ask for feedback. Ask explicitly for connotations and associations.
要求反馈。明确要求内涵和关联。

Ask friends, family, clients, enemies, random people online.
在线询问朋友，家人，客户，敌人，随机的人。
Use all available tools like Text to Speech online apps, urban dictionary, and good old Google.
使用所有可用的工具，例如“文本到语音”在线应用程序，城市词典和不错的旧Google。
Start with no limits then gradually introduce some. Just like we did with “Alta”
从没有限制开始，然后逐步引入一些限制。就像我们对“ Alta”所做的一样

Be prepared to spend up to 100 hours to find your perfect business name.

准备花费多达100个小时的时间来找到您理想的商户名称。

And remember: if you decide to settle for a name that just popped to your head without further research because you think it’s excellent and the .com is free - do it at your own risk.

请记住：如果您决定接受一个名字而无需进一步研究就突然冒出来，因为您认为它很好而且.com是免费的-这样做的后果自负。