Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? So, we asked some very sharp folks to tell us the stories of how they came up with the names of their brands.

Doris Benedith

The Inspiration for my business name and brand name came from a personal experience at home. One day, my partner was using batana oil that he had purchased online, faithfully applying it to his scalp to encourage hair growth in areas where he was experiencing balding. As we discussed the product, he turned to me and said “Doris, you’re from Honduras- why not start your own business selling authentic products from your homeland and invest in yourself?” Read more>>

Tahira Yousuf

When I was deciding on a name, I wanted something that included a common keyword people often search for online. That’s why I chose the word “Eyebrows”—because when someone is looking for services like threading, waxing, lamination, or tinting, they typically type “eyebrows” along with the specific service into a search engine. Read more>>

Heidi Gammarano

I’ve been working in interior design, model homes, and real estate staging my entire adult life. So, I’ve had a couple different company names. In the late 90’s when I was in Orange County, I just called myself Interior Design by Heidi Ingersoll for several years. Then I had a string of years when I was landing tons of custom children’s rooms including painting murals as part of the design work, and I went by The Princess and the Pirate. Then I realized I was painting myself into a corner, literally, and preventing myself from getting jobs that were not children’s rooms, and changed the name to Posh Paint and Interior Design. Read more>>

Danielle Stokes

The name “Noraa” is a tribute to my (step)father, Aaron, who passed away in 2020. He was a hardworking, family-oriented man, and his middle name, Clay, is now a key ingredient in many of my soaps. Mineral-rich clays not only add natural color but also provide skin-loving benefits, making each bar as effective as it is beautiful. Now, his name is on every product I handcraft and send out locally and nationwide, and that means everything to me. Read more>>

Kayla Johnson

It was hard at first coming up with a first because I wanted a business name that represented both my love for knitting and crocheting. After some brainstorming and giving it, some thought that is when I came up with the name Elite Royal Stitches and Thread. I never thought about turning something that once started off a fun hobby and to help with my anxiety into a business. Read more>>

Hope Mirlis

I’ve been an entrepreneur ever since I sold stickers and wire jewelry in the cafeteria in elementary school. However I didn’t create a company with a name until my 20s. I had a hot chocolate company called Two Chicks and a Chocolate Bar and a catering company named Someone’s in the Kitchen. I had a theater company called Synchronicity – because as we started, everything just magically lined in. Read more>>

Stacy Thomas

The lotus has symbology that goes way back. It is a flower that blooms from the mud. In essence, one can imagine the mud as life’s struggles, and overcoming those struggles is a beautiful thing.

I had recently lost my second husband to cancer (my first one also passed from cancer). I was burnt out of teacher after 20 years, and my son was off to college soon. I needed something new to make me happy to go to work. Read more>>

Bobby & Emily Oberports

Given that it’s the name of our business, everyone thinks that our last name is “Oberport.” This is not our last name, it’s actually a portmanteau of our real last names: Oberlander and Porter. When we began our professional photography journey many years ago, the business was then known as Emily Porter Photography, as Emily was the sole person in the company. We became a couple shortly after the formation of Emily’s photography business, so friends and acquaintances had taken to calling us “the Oberports”. Some folks tried to make Portlanders happen, but we didn’t care for that name since neither of us are from Portland. Read more>>

Harmony Varela

The name came to me during a deeply transformative time in my life. I was nearing the end of a year long recovery program and one night while sitting on the couch in the rehab home I found myself dreaming about opening a dance studio. I had also been exploring different dimensions of consciousness and came across the description of the seventh dimension where one exists in a natural state of ecstasy. That idea resonated deeply with me. Read more>>

Aniyah

I wanted something that felt like me, but also something that spoke directly to what I do. After playing around with so many ideas, I kept coming back to the fact that every time someone leaves my chair, they’ve been faced — enhanced, elevated, and confident. And since I put my personal touch on every client, “Faced by Naomi” just felt right. Read more>>

Billy Norris

I served in the United States Marine Corps as an infantry officer for 15 years. In 2013 after 5 years on active duty with multiple combat tours, I transferred to the USMC Reserves. In the reserves, you still train monthly, and I continued to go on deployments overseas, however, you also maintain a civilian job. I have college degrees in Marine Science, Oceanography, and organic chemistry, and being from Southwest Florida, I already had a solid familiarity with the oceans and our fisheries here. I decided to start my own charter fishing company from scratch. I didn’t have any savings or startup capital, but I did have a really good older buddy of mine who had recently retired from fishing. Read more>>

Andrea Gonzalez

Picking the name for my business was a rollercoaster. I went back and forth on the name for a while, but it all started when my husband and I were on vacation and he asked me, “so what’s going to be your business name?” I had no idea. As I was getting ready that morning, I remember that my friend, Sunny (a friend whose wedding I did), kept telling me during her wedding “you are my fairy godmother.” So I came out of the bathroom and I told my husband, “Fairy Godmother Events” and he said “that’s perfect! I love it! When you make your business cards you can make them like the fairy godmother in Shrek, and use the phrase “happiness is a tear drop away. Read more>>

Yiru Luo

Our brand is named Basia Mille, inspired by my undergraduate studies in Classical Studies, where I immersed myself in Latin literature. One of my favorite Latin love poems is “Da mi basia mille” by Catullus, which means “Give me a thousand kisses.” This poem is wildly romantic and full of youthful passion — exactly the kind of energy we want to express through our brand’s bold, feminine, “hot girl” aesthetic. The name felt like a perfect match: vibrant, a little playful, and rooted in a deep love for beauty and self expression. Read more>>

Gio Osso

Naming a business is extremely difficult. The name Virtù Honest Craft came from a trip to Italy back in 2005. I was going to little restaurants that were family owned and operated. They changed their menu based on what they grew in their personal garden and harvested that very morning. The same went for their protein selections. It was typical to see the fisherman’s catch that came in that morning on the menu or if the catch was limited, they might have a chicken or rabbit that became lunch for that day. These restaurants were maybe 8-10 seats, so changing daily was an incredible task but not to the level of a 40 or 50 seat restaurant. Read more>>

Maria Teresa Beam

Our name was born with the idea of prioritizing our commitment to the environment. As a sustainable and circular brand, we wanted our values to be reflected in our name, “Circle Textile”, because we respect the life cycle of a circular brand. For our products, we use leftover alpaca cones from long production runs in Lima, Peru. Read more>>

Sue Davies

Travel For Life Now was created by Sue Davies and Regina Ang in 2018. We were in our mid- and late-50s and had just quit our high-level/high-pressure jobs. We were not ready for retirement, but we were ready to find a new way of traveling through our lives. We came up with our business name while sitting around the kitchen table. We chose the name because Travel For Life Now symbolizes creating a business and life that is full of exploration, curiosity, and discovery, both geographically, personally, and professionally. Read more>>

Matt Jenkins

The area i live in has a natural saltwater spring, called “The Great Saltwell”. Prehistorically there was an inland ocean here between the northeast coast and the gulf that eventually filled in with silt, trapping salt deposits underground. Archeology has shown usage of it for a very long time for migrating wildlife as a source of salt, natural minerals, and water. And for people back to the 1300’s “but suspected usage much earlier” up into the late 18-early 1900’s for mining salt from the water. Adding into that is the importance that salt has paid throughout history, at times being as valuable as gold and used as a form of currency. Read more>>

Chey Charvis

Just Body Glow’s name came to me after I had experienced one of the most traumatic times in my life. On September 3, 2020, I lost my son at 2 weeks old. After some version of healing, I started to question life and my purpose. I had to think about what drives me. Grief began to bring me back to a space of self discovery. Trying to find the answer to “what makes Chey happy” turned into relearning myself in ways that I couldn’t imagine! That, coupled with the desire to honor my son, I leaned back into skincare. If you look at my logo, you’ll see that the letters JB are large and surrounded by wings and topped with a halo. The JB are my son’s initials. The wings and halo represent both the life and of him, the new business venture, and the beauty surrounding it all. Read more>>

Marvin Nevels II

I came up with my business name cause of my love for history and photography. Read more>>

Garland Hayes

In the beginning I struggled with my business name because I wanted it to be something that sounded mysterious and cool. As a fashion designer I wanted my name to have something involving design and fashion so I picked out “The Devisor”. It was a play on words which was meant to be the designer at first but I thought the divisor, which is someone coming up with a plan was alot cooler. Read more>>

Hailey Crawford Pattong

In the summer of 2020 I was struggling to find work but I knew I had a passion for photography and capturing those beautiful moments so that they were frozen in time for families. I kept trying to figure out a unique name that would stand out but also mean something more, this is when I decided to use the nickname my late father had given me before I was born and it’s the one that stuck throughout my life. So it was obvious at that moment that Punkin’s Photography had to be the name of my small business! Read more>>

Alexi New Peters

Naming is one of the services Noted offers, so the pressure was on when it came to naming our own company! We strove to come up with a short, simple, and memorable name that nodded to our line of work. Ultimately, we fell in love with Noted for its layered meaning. It captures the keen observation we bring to our work, reflects our messaging capabilities, and lends itself to fun wordplay—we build brands “of note” for our clients. Read more>>

Airaina Knight

I was in Humanities class in my Alma Mater Fayetteville State University. We were learning about Nubia and the Nubians when God laid it in my spirit. I could not tell you anything else about the Nubians because that word took a difference. It was given to me in an instance N U WB N S and the words rang out Naturals Unisex Weaves Braids Nails and Skin. I liked it! I saw the words Nuw Bn llike become a new being. There was another tagline born, reflect the nuw bn in u. Read more>>

Caskey Hill

We are New Mexicos only hip-hop themed restaurant. We do Burgers differently. Majority of our menu is hip-hop-themed. So we had to make sure our business name represented that also. The PHAT stands for not only how bug our smash burgers are but also P-pretty, H-hot,
A-and, T-tasty. STAX because our burgers are stacked with flavor and dependong on which burger you get, different toppings. Read more>>

Osighe Akpeokhai

So the name OsiDraws, as it sounds is simply from my first name and the word draws however, that was not the original name I had in mind. The original name was simply going to be DrawnByMe, this was going to leave the business an ambiguous name and not attached to me. However, many of my friends said why would I do that, I made the business I should be proud to put my name on it, so I put DrawnByOsi. However I realized that was way too long and coming up with a logo was too difficult, so I shortened it and also made it “present tense” by making it OsiDraws. Read more>>