再次檢查打印機名稱并確保

by Dawid Cedrych

通過戴維德·塞德里奇

我們的公司名稱糟透了。這是確保您沒有的方法。 (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.

很難找到一個好的企業名稱。 Y Combinator的Paul Graham在他的一篇著名文章中著重強調了為公司名稱擁有.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，購買適當的域名不應使您重新思考域名本身，以獲取更大的前景。

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.

我將不介紹為您的公司尋找好名字的過程。有大量優質材料可供選擇。相反，我將向您展示如何驗證名稱并避免常見的陷阱。

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

這是一個缺乏初步研究并且對我們自己的命名技巧不容樂觀的故事。

尤里卡過早的時刻。 (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.

我們于2014年下半年成立了我們的軟件開發公司。由于我們希望面向國際受眾，因此擁有英文名稱是理所當然的事情。

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

我們所有人都說英語，但是我們誰都不是說英語的人。

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

找到我們全新的完美名稱的過程花了我們不到15分鐘的時間，看起來非常像這樣：

We are starting a company!

我們正在建立公司！

We are coding!

我們正在編碼！

Code + Company = Codepany

代碼+公司=代碼庫

That’s going to be our company name. ?

那將是我們的公司名稱。 ？

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.

我們檢查了域名的可用性，.com是免費的。當我們發現所有流行的社交媒體功能都可用時，您才能想象我們的幸福。

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.

我們詢問了幾個朋友(我記得3位波蘭語使用者和1位英語母語人士)提供反饋。答案很明確：干得好，Codepany是一個很好的名字，可以很好地傳達您的工作。

Codepany - that’s brilliant.

Codepany-很棒。

From that day on, our official name was Codepany.

從那天起，我們的正式名稱是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.

幾個月后，我們意識到我們已經忽略了波蘭語中這個名字的發音。我們的客戶和朋友都稱我們Code Pany(兩個單獨的詞)。分別說兩個單詞比嘗試模仿英語口音要容易得多。

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

不幸的是，波蘭語中的“ Pany”是俗稱“紳士”的一種方式。

We ignored this connotation as irrelevant.

我們忽略了這一含義是無關緊要的。

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.

有時人們要求我們重復這個名字，因為根據所使用的口音，它聽起來有所不同。更不用說即使是我們的創始人，在大聲說出來時也沒有完全感到舒服。

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

與美國客戶交談時，我們到達了臨界點。我們理所當然的感到非常失望。

They pronounced it Co-depany or Copany.

他們將其發音為Co-depany或Copany。

您要花一分錢嗎？ (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.

我們決定在Quora上發布信息，以征詢更多受眾的反饋。正如預期的那樣，這遠非積極。

The funniest answer we got:

我們得到的最有趣的答案是：

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

如果您要花一分錢，那是一種方法。

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

我們已經學到了很難的方法，這個名稱基本上很糟糕，需要立即更改。

查找新公司名稱的清單 (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:

為了避免過去的錯誤，我們提出了一個尋找新名稱的策略。我們的框架包括以下操作，以檢查潛在的陷阱：

Check .com availability (of course)
檢查.com的可用性(當然)
Social Media handles availability
社交媒體處理可用性
Check the urban dictionary for the non-obvious meaning
檢查城市詞典中的非明顯含義
Check how TTS (Text To Speech) online tools pronounce it
檢查TTS(文本到語音)在線工具如何發音
Encourage your English native speaking friends to share thoughts on the name.
鼓勵您的英語為母語的朋友分享對該名稱的看法。
Repeat point 5 but online and with a broader audience
重復第5點，但要在網上進行并吸引更多的受眾

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.

盡管大多數觀點都很明顯，但我認為城市詞典需要解釋。英語包含許多s語單詞或常規單詞的怪異含義。盡管它們中的許多不那么普遍，或者只有一小部分人知道，但是請不要低估它。

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

舉個例子-一個名稱命題沒有解決，因為根據城市詞典，它的意思是“糞便”。 ？

差點撞到家了。 (Almost hit home.)

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

按照這些簡單的規則，我們完成了第一批名稱并將其發布到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:

我們還附加了一項調查，使用戶可以投票選出最佳名字。票數分配相當平均。因此，它沒有提供太多有價值的信息。盡管如此，對于每個給定名稱，我們還是得到了誠實的反饋：

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.

到目前為止，我們總共花了大約50個小時來尋找新的名字。這讓我們感到不知所措和無能為力，因此我們幾乎決定選擇“ Altarise”。盡管如此，我們還是希望100％確信，所以我們打開了另一個Quora線程，專門用于該名稱。

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.

反饋相對不錯，但有一件事情令我們震驚：“ Altarise”聽起來像是名詞“ Altar”中的動詞。這意味著宗教含義。同樣，人們也不是對正確發音的肯定。

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

我們知道一件事。如果我們不限制可能性的范圍，我們將重新開始，并且可能永遠不會結束。

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

決定很明確-我們希望“ Alta”作為前綴。

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

為什么？它聽起來很強大，源自拉丁語“ Altus”，代表“高”或“偉大”。

年代學 (Altalogy)

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

最終，我們的最終選擇是Altalogy。讓我們分解一下：

Alta + Technology = Altalogy

Alta +技術= Altalogy

.com domain available
.com域名可用
Social media handles available
提供社交媒體功能
No negative connotations found on urban dictionary
在城市詞典中未找到負面含義
Pronunciation is not ambiguous
發音不am昧
“Logy” suffix makes it sound a bit like a science discipline
“ Logy”后綴聽起來有點像一門科學學科
No negative feedback among friends and family
朋友和家人之間沒有負面反饋
No negative online feedback
沒有負面的在線反饋

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

我們為我們的新名字感到自豪。以前把我們稱為Codepany的人也相當順利地采用了它。

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

您可能會不同意，并認為它比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.

關鍵是我們做了功課，以降低不幸決定的可能性。

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

要了解我們現在的狀況，請在此處查看我們。

重要要點 (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.

我沒有提到尋找新名稱的關鍵部分之一-定義您的工作和擅長的領域-以傳達正確的含義。我特意跳過了這一部分，因為其中有些人更喜歡抽象名稱而不是顯式名稱。

So, the key takeaways are:

因此，關鍵要點是：

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。如果您想使用非母語的語言來命名，請進行兩倍的研究。
Ask for feedback. Ask explicitly for connotations and associations.
要求反饋。明確要求內涵和關聯。

Ask friends, family, clients, enemies, random people online.
在線詢問朋友，家人，客戶，敵人，隨機的人。
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“文本到語音”在線應用程序，城市詞典和不錯的舊Google。
Start with no limits then gradually introduce some. Just like we did with “Alta”
從沒有限制開始，然后逐步引入一些限制。就像我們對“ Alta”所做的一樣

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

準備花費多達100個小時的時間來找到您理想的商戶名稱。

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.

請記住：如果您決定接受一個名字而無需進一步研究就突然冒出來，因為您認為它很好而且.com是免費的-這樣做的后果自負。