A good name should either say what the thing is (or what benefits it offers) or it should at least be memorable somehow–it be easy to say and talk about. There’s a lot more than that, but that’s a big one (and even that one has some exceptions…Haagen Dazs anyone?)

Names tend to change from horrible to awesome based just on people’s perspectives of the brand though. Imagine you were on the board at what is now Google, and one of the board members says, “OK, we’ve narrowed it down to 2 potential names for our company: WebSearcher or Google.” I’d say at least 9 out of 10 people would’ve gone with “WebSearcher” and said “what a ridiculously stupid name!” about Google. Admittedly though, we have heard some names that just leave us speechless…usually those are names that people have come up with themselves for their own business/product.