What’s in a name? A lot apparently, as entrepreneurs, artists, and makers of all kinds spend enormous amounts of energy searching for the right name for their business, project, organization, or creation. Below, you’ll find the stories of how various successful brands, creators and entrepreneurs came up with their names.

 Justin Hand

Back in 2006 my son and I went to a car dealership and the plan was to buy this brand new blue pickup truck. Unfortunately, I couldn’t afford it! Fortunately, they had a brand new red pickup truck with no bells or whistles! My son named the truck James, after his favorite Thomas the Train character. When I started working for myself, I quickly learned the advantage of branding your company. I started out with different variations of a guy and his truck, but the “red truck” stuck out from the rest. The customers would call and ask if I was the guy with the little red truck. My folks surprised me for Christmas with magnets to advertise the business. I may have waited longer than some to upgrade to a box truck…I was determined to find a red truck! I settled for a white box truck, but I was constantly on the look-out for a red one! I found one a year later. Right time, right town and good branding. Over the last 4 years, I’ve purchased red flannels for our fall/winter moves, and red compression shirts for our spring/summer moves. Always keeping my eye on promoting the brand. Sometimes when I look back, I wonder what if I could’ve afforded the blue truck instead!? Read more>>

Colleen Gray

The business name “Bellagio” is derived from the Italian language and is associated with the famous Bellagio resort and casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. The resort itself was named after the picturesque town of Bellagio in Italy, located on the shores of Lake Como. Read more>>

Sandy Donnelly

My daughter was the start of my legacy. I first started a t-shirt printing company back in 2016 called Royale Custom T-Shirts, she was 1 years old. I take pride in being a mom and I absolutely loved taking photos of her, making her t-shirts or anything custom. and I believe having a legacy for my child to grow up on and knowing she was apart of that is beyond motivating for me. I then started Royale Studios where I started doing photography, at the time I did combine both businesses together all under one roof. But my passion for photos were taking over and I sold my t-shirt business after 5 years and focused on being an inspiring photographer in 2021. Read more>>

Mo Pittle

As a copywriter/creative director, you’re trained to look for the truism in your product that will lead to a narrative people are not only interested in, but willing to share. Especially with the rise (some would say dominance) of social media, and especially when it comes to marketing a local, small business, creating the narrative is key. Initially, I saw Jewboy Burgers as not only a way to create my own brand, but a way to generate a case study I could use moving forward as a creative consultant. The idea was to open a food truck as a vehicle (sorry for the pun) for developing both of these things. Initially, I expected to work a few days a week and make it a novelty. I was gonna work for a year or two, build the social media presence and then move on. A funny thing happened along the way. Turns out I like making burgers more than I like making ads. To come up with a name, I pulled from the two biggest cultural influences in my life, my jewish upbringing and the Border culture where it happened. What would seemingly be opposite influences are actually quite similar in a lot of ways. Jewboy had been used as a derogatory term in the past, but I chose to look to my elders, specifically Kinky Friedman and his band the Texas Jewboys for inspiration. While a Jewboy may be a Jewish cowboy to Kinky, to me, it’s a spin on the term “Homeboy” a common colloquialism used on the border. As a wannabe cholo pretty much my whole life, a Jewboy in my world is just a jewish cholo. Might not make sense to some, but to me, it’s my brand and I try as hard as possible to always make sure that story is told. From the decor to the cuisine, you’ll going to see influences from both.Read more>>

Arismendy Jr Montero

Note this is a rough cut of the story some detail I can’t remover but for the most part I do. It was me and a friend one night in an apartment in Philadelphia, jamming sharing ideas, and the thought had accord to me…huh I think it’ll be a good time to start printing some photos so as we went on we struggled to find a name for the business, we shared great ideas just no name. it wasn’t till the next morning I asked for some water and he handed me a yellow mug; there it was I told him this is it yellow cup, that same week or two I had shared the idea with another friend, we bought the domain and the rest was history I moved down here to Austin and started printing ! I’ve loved it ever since Read more>>

Madison Collins

I have a book full of thoughts and ideas. What I wanted is when people to hear and see my brand name they know what my product is associated with. I started playing around with the word sleep and looked up synonyms for it. Restless? Coma? Snooze? Slumber? Doze? I wrote down each word until I found a fitting word. Doze stood out the most to me and was the perfect option as it regenerates to sleeping but I wanted to add my flair to it. Adding the three Z’s indicating sleep I thought would set me apart. So when you hear Dozzzed you know it’s a product related to sleep and relaxing. But when you see my logo and the name of the brand you instantly know as well and will be intrigued. Read more>>

Tara McClellan

Bearcat Sewing is named after my cat, Bear. My husband kept telling me to do a name that was an alliteration with my name, which I absolutely hated. So I went to a business name generator and came up with this! It has ended up opening up interesting stories when I am in-person markets. Read more>>

Summer Foggie

I didn’t launch my business until July of 2020, But i came up with my business name years before that. Me and one of my old friends at the time were talking and she was like let me look up how to say Summer, which is my first name in spanish. We looked it up and it said Verano, so we added an A on the end just to spice it up a little bit and just added Shop in front of it. I love my business name so much. To me, it rings bells! Read more>>

Alexandra O’Sullivan

I thought about the name of my company a lot before landing on Chroma Studios. I think the most common name for photography companies is the name of the photographer with “Photography” after it. I thought about doing it that way but Alexandra O’Sullivan Photography was way too long of a name. I considered Alexandra Photography but the name “Alexandra” felt too common to build an entire brand around. There are plenty of other photographers named Alexandra. I thought of O’Sullivan Photography but that felt too formal to me. I wanted something shorter with more of a punch. My favorite part of photographer is the colors. From coloring the images during the editing process to how warm the colors are in camera to what colors people are wearing and how the match the location. Because of that I thought I had to pick a name that had to do with color. I thought of names using the word “color” or “rainbow” but they didn’t sound professional. Eventually, I remembered the term “chroma”. According to the dictionary, there are two definitions of “chroma”– one, “the purity of a color, or its freedom from white or gray” and two, “intensity of distinctive hue; saturation of a color.” I love how the word sounds and it means color. It means my favorite thing about my job, how could I not use it? “Studios” just felt like it fit after the main name, I didn’t want to limit myself to the singular “studio” mostly because I dimply did not think it sounded as nice. Read more>>

El Ryce

Initially Ownly was an acronym which stood for Owning the waves next level youth. This was derived from understanding that the youth are the future and are always owning and creating the next big wave of things. As our company grew the name still stands but with more purpose. Ownly Brand is now more focused on branding what you believe, whatever that may be. When you believe in something your owning it, stamping it and making your mark. That is the mission.. Ownly Brand What You Believe Read more>>

Shari Vilchez-Blatt

Before naming my own business, I was fortunate enough to be part of the “Name Generating” group of my advertising agency. This wasn’t a title or formal group – just a small group of creative twenty-somethings that seemed to have a knack for it. How do you know if you have a knack for it? You try. Our client was Hasbro. And as a full service agency, part of introducing a new toy to the market also included naming it. Read more>>

Norine Dworkin