One of the most creative parts of starting something new is finding a name and it’s also one of the most challenging. Below, you’ll find the stories of how various successful brands, creators and entrepreneurs came up with their names.

Sophie Pullen

I wanted my company name to have a direct reflection on work I do as a registered interior designer. HSW stands for Health, Safety, Welfare, which is what we as registered Interior Designers are tested on to become licensed. Read more>>

Grace Snyder

I rebranded almost two years ago, and I was struggling to come up with a name for my business. I wanted something that was personal, but wasn’t exactly just my first and last name (I don’t feel like “Grace Snyder Photography” sounds very inviting). I was thinking about using my middle name somehow, too, but I know there are several “Grace Marie” or “Gracie Marie” photo businesses out there. And then my dad’s nickname for me popped into my head: Grae Marie. It’s cute, it’s short, it’s unique, it’s meaningful. It’s felt right since I thought of it. Read more>>

Victoria Cerise

As a Catholic Wedding Photographer, I wanted to choose a name that honors Our Lady and one that embodies romance and joy! When my husband and I started looking at ideas, we looked at the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Read more>>

Liberty Grant

Community is so important to me, because I truly believe “together” is the best way to thrive and to integrate healing. The community we live in can heal or hurt. I believe in the power of community to help heal addiction, cycles of domestic violence, death from mental illness, ptsd, postpartum depression and help us to live long and happy & healthy lives. Read more>>

Noah Ungar

Homes are a passion of mine & are a necessity for most people. I want to share my knowledge & make your Real Estate goals come true! Read more>>

Ireshia Brown

My company name is actually my initials to my first name, middle name, and my madien last name which is “Young”. Ireshia Shanelle Young =Isy (pronounced Icy) Read more>>

Joel Basco

J&D Cakes is a partnership between me and Daniela Borquez. I’m the J and Daniela is the D, hence J&D was born Read more>>

Stephanie Naftal

Bitterroot is the state flower of Montana, a beautiful flower, and with a root that is and has been for a long time, a very important food staple of indigenous people of this region. I really love this flower and the story of this flower. It seemed fitting that an important medicine should be the name of my business. Read more>>

Sean Phillips

F.A.C.E.S stands for, For All Chasing Endless Success is a clothing brand that captivates ones inner drive, determination, and ambition. We at F.A.C.E.S seek to help “Dream Chasers” present and carry themselves in a way that shows the world they are different by the merit of their desire to obtain success. F.A.C.E.S is not just a clothing line. F.A.C.E.S is a brand representing the Dream Chasers of this generation. We believe in the chasing of a dream or striving to accomplish a goal. Read more>>

Domonique Danielle

Mydas Advanced Esthetics LLC was a name fitting of what I like to provide. In Esthetics my main focus was and always will be skin health and with great healthy skin comes and awesome golden glow. Although it’s spelled differently it means the same. Mydas was the name of a King who had the golden touch; everything he touched turned to gold. Hence why I chose Mydas Advanced Esthetics LLC. Read more>>

Everlea Bryant

“P.H.D.” stands for all of my passions: Pilates, Health and Dance. The Company’s full name is Pilates, Health & Dance by Everlea. The Company was named by my late friend Stephanie Torres in 2009, shortly before her passing. She was able to see me legally establish the business and attended my first class in South FL. The business has grown from our 2009 early days into a beautiful Classical Pilates, dance, barre, wellness and personal training facility in the Ghent Square district in Norfolk, VA. Read more>>

Stacy Valner

Launching Meadow has been an 18 month journey. We finally launched our website in mid November. Meadow is a home gifting atelier experience with focus on life style and making your home feel like a sanctuary. We are focused on bring to your home sweet feelings of time spent while you are guest at a hotel. In digging deep into what to call our company, one day it just hit me to return to my roots and to use my maiden name as the company name. Meadow is my maiden name. Read more>>

Sabrina Branderhorst-Rogers

The name of my company, BR Weddings and Events, was actually my husband’s idea. When we got married I hyphenated my last name instead of just taking his because my maiden name has so much history behind it. I’m also the last person to have my maiden name on my paternal grandfather’s side. That’s where the BR comes in, Branderhorst-Rogers. It’s very uniquely mine and it’s a name that makes me proud to have. Read more>>

Shauna Duncan

Waking up every morning, and sipping coffee on the back porch, we get to watch the sun rise, bringing warming bright yellow and lavender rays across the lochan and through our farm. Read more>>

Melpo Mankin

I actually had a really hard time coming up with a name when I started my business! I kept brainstorming, researching, thinking through catchy names, etc. and I finally decided that I needed help. I asked my husband and a few friends to come over and do a brainstorm together. We talked through my vision for the company, what I want to be known for, what my philosophy was for my business, and after several iterations, we came up with Intentional Interiors Home Staging & Design. It seems so simple on the surface, but the exercise was really beneficial because it forced me to really define who I wanted my company to be, and the name perfectly represents that. Read more>>

Danielle Jefferson

Its funny because a few years ago, I would’ve never thought this would be the name of our natural hair care business. Naturally Oranj is an expression for me now. Its. me getting to be naturally me. “Orange” is my maiden name and what some friends have nicknamed me over the years. “Jefferson” is my husbands last name. Put that together and it explains everything: “Oranj”. Our original name for our business was HoneyCurlz. When we were young in the industry in 2018, we never thought we’d be chased out of our name. Read more>>

Emily Haan

I was actually researching names for our fourth daughter who is named Iris. I was born and raised in Chicago and moving to Michigan was a big leap of faith for me and my family. Since Iris was our first Michigan born baby we wanted her name to mean faith or have something to do with following God’s call to Michigan. We ended up purchasing a home on Plaster Creek so we were looking into names tied to that meaning and location. Remington means a place on a riverbank. Read more>>

Dylan Lowery

Well the old saying, there’s no I in team, holds true here. My business partner, Adam, and our brand consultant at the time (now employee) Jess, were tasked with that project. There were certainly many name iterations and having to steer clear of the trap to name something canna-xyz was a challenge. Read more>>

Adrian Ferguson

It was Junior year. Atlanta was a wide open town bursting with nightlife and entertainment. The music scene in the early 2000s was building on the legacy established by the likes of Goodie Mob, OutKast, and Pastor Troy to name few, and artists like Lil’ Jon, T.I., and Young Jeezy were gaining national acclaim. With the rise of Crunk, Atlanta still had pockets where you could hear the hip-hop classics and beyond. One night I was in my dorm room listening to the radio. Read more>>

Cori Dyer

I started Collection of Threads on accident. Well, kinda. It was a bit of divine intervention… There’s a bit of a cool story in there but ultimately, the perfect encounter led to me being invited to do my first ever pop-up at Soho Chicago. I accepted the offer which meant I had to start a business from scratch in less than 30 days so I could be ready to sell my pieces. The name is a literal reflection of the business. In its rawest form, it is a collection of threads and fibers, which comprise the pieces of clothing accessories and apparel that I sell. Each piece is a collection of threads, and the collection as a whole is a collection of threads. Read more>>

Keith Josiah

“Second Kings” my last name is Josiah and in the Bible Josiah is introduced the book of 2nd Kings. But it also represents the new emerging of legends in the industry we wish to pursue Read more>>

Qui Daugherty

Echelon Residence was birthed from a joke or taunt that I heard about me a few years back. I grew up in a single-family household. My siblings and I lived in everything from “the projects” to the homeless shelter. We moved often and had little to no stability. I remember being joked about where I lived and even what I smelled like. There were times we didn’t have heat so my mom would heat the house with a kerosene heater. That shi*t stinks!! Fast forward to now… My life is now looked at as “you made it.” Read more>>

Cheyenne Cooper

I came up with ATL Big Kids 4 years ago when I realized at the time that adults didn’t have much of their own . Most things (then and now) are catered to kids and if not catered we have to share any and almost everything. I thought the name fit my business because alcohol is only for adults and also because I wanted adults to remember that we’re still kids at heart and can still have fun , despite us having responsibilities now. Read more>>

Nicole Evans

In 2006 Utah had created a new slogan, ‘Utah: Life Elevated,’ and it was something I really liked, and stuck with me.Utah wasn’t going to be known just for its “Greatest Snow on Earth” anymore. We aren’t just about altitude, Utah is about attitude. Being a little edgy. Read more>>

Penny Park

Kandy Seoul was inspired by Korean treats and culture. I thought it would be unique and bold to use a K instead of a C for the word candy. Not only that but the K could also represent K for Korean candy. Seoul is special because it is the heart of Korea, and the heart of every human is their own soul. Ironically Kandy and Seoul are both cities. Kandy, a city in Sri Lanka, even has a Buddhist temple known as the Tooth Temple. Instantly I thought of the phrase “having a sweet tooth”. Essentially alot of creativity, play on words, and potentially coming up with some children book characters led to the name Kandy Seoul . Read more>>

Riley Galvin

The Unbecoming Journey came to me in a dream, I woke up in the middle of the night and wrote it down. The following day, I created all social media platforms with that name and bought the website address Theunbecomingjourney.org. I had no idea what it was going to be for, but I knew that it would come to me. A month later I enrolled in a trauma-informed somatic body-based certification program after leaving my teaching career. Read more>>

Carly Olds

It’s mostly just a play on words! I was between a few ideas but honestly it just came to me because I wanted something that would stick and be easy to remember but also relate back to sewing. I loved the idea of it being a catch phrase like “Oh – that’s SO Nashville!” instead – “That’s SEW Nashville”. I also wanted to incorporate the use of “Sew” in my business slogan – which became “Sew Happy. Sew Fun.” Read more>>

Lady Lavender

The name ‘Luminous’ came to me in meditation. The word bubbled up from some place inside of me and into my awareness. The word felt so full of light, love and power that it just seemed right for what I wanted to do with my spiritual based business. It encapsulated everything I was feeling – an inner luminosity, a connection between myself and something greater, a journey of personal growth, healing and self-empowerment. Read more>>

Kirsten Geter

Our story originates with Bessie Bagwell Andrews, 1917. Daughter of parents born in slavery, a cotton sharecropper in Georgia until the late 1960s, a domestic worker until her “retirement”, and a lover of all things luxurious. Although outside the realm of her reality she always dreamed fearlessly, a quality that shines through her entire family. Kirsten Geter a twenty year public educator, the founding partner and designer of Bagwell Collection, witnessed her grandmother’s adoration for fashion, and purses that accentuated her style. Read more>>

Kirstie Reese

My Grandma actually came up with the name Sugarface after my aunt Jennifer Erin “Sugar” Reese. I was searching for the perfect business name that was catchy, short and sweet so when she said “Sugarface,” I knew that was perfect. My Aunt, Sugar, passed away from Schleroderma in 2000 so naming my business after her is great way to keep her memory alive and give a deeper meaning to my brand. Read more>>