Brand Naming Glossary: 50 Terms Every Founder Should Know

Why a Glossary?

Brand naming sits at the intersection of marketing, linguistics, law, and design. Each field has its own vocabulary. Understanding these terms helps you make better naming decisions and communicate effectively with designers, lawyers, and strategists.

Brand Strategy Terms

Brand Architecture — The organizational structure of a company's brand portfolio. Defines relationships between parent brand, sub-brands, and product brands.

Brand Equity — The commercial value of a brand name, built through customer perception, recognition, and loyalty.

Brand Extension — Using an existing brand name to launch products in a new category.

Brand Identity — The complete system of visual, verbal, and experiential elements that define how a brand presents itself.

Brand Positioning — The unique place a brand occupies in the customer's mind relative to competitors.

Brand Refresh — Updating a brand's visual or verbal expression without changing its core identity or name.

Co-Branding — A partnership where two brands appear together on a product or campaign.

House of Brands — A brand architecture where the parent company owns multiple independent brands (e.g., Procter & Gamble).

Branded House — A brand architecture where one master brand name is used across all products (e.g., Google).

Endorsed Brand — A sub-brand that carries its own identity but is linked to a parent brand for credibility.

Sub-Brand — A brand that exists under a parent brand, with its own identity but connected to the parent.

Naming Types

Acronym — A name formed from the initial letters of a longer name (IBM, BMW, NASA).

Compound Name — A name created by combining two words (Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube).

Descriptive Name — A name that directly describes what the company does (General Electric, PayPal).

Evocative Name — A name that suggests a feeling, experience, or metaphor rather than describing the product (Amazon, Nike, Uber).

Founder Name — A brand named after its creator (Ford, Bloomberg, Chanel).

Invented Name (Coined Name) — A completely made-up word with no pre-existing meaning (Kodak, Xerox, Spotify).

Metaphorical Name — A real word used symbolically (Apple for computers, Shell for oil).

Portmanteau — A word created by blending parts of two words (Instagram = instant + telegram, Pinterest = pin + interest).

Suggestive Name — A name that hints at a benefit or quality without stating it directly (Airbus, Slack).

Linguistic Terms

Cognitive Fluency — The ease with which the brain processes information. Names with high cognitive fluency (easy to read, say, and understand) are perceived as more trustworthy.

Mere Exposure Effect — A psychological phenomenon where people develop preference for things they encounter repeatedly. More exposure to a brand name = more positive feelings.

Onomatopoeia — A word that phonetically imitates the sound it describes (Snap, Buzz, Zoom).

Phonestheme — A sound cluster associated with a particular meaning (gl- often relates to light: glow, glitter, gleam).

Sound Symbolism — The idea that certain sounds carry inherent meanings or associations (hard sounds feel strong, soft sounds feel gentle).

Von Restorff Effect — Items that stand out from their surroundings are more easily remembered. Applied to naming: distinctive names are more memorable than conventional ones.

Legal Terms

Cease and Desist — A formal letter demanding that a person or company stop using a particular name or mark.

Distinctiveness Spectrum — The legal classification of trademark strength, from weakest to strongest: generic → descriptive → suggestive → arbitrary → fanciful.

Genericization — When a brand name becomes so common it's used as a generic term (aspirin, escalator, xerox as a verb). Brands must actively prevent this.

Infringement — Unauthorized use of a trademark that creates a likelihood of confusion with an existing mark.

Madrid Protocol — An international treaty that allows trademark registration across 100+ countries through a single application.

Prior Use — The legal principle that the first entity to use a trademark in commerce has rights to it, even without registration.

Service Mark — A trademark used to identify services rather than physical products. Functionally identical to a trademark.

Trade Dress — The overall visual appearance of a product or its packaging that serves to identify the brand.

Trademark — A legally registered word, phrase, symbol, or design that identifies and distinguishes the source of goods or services.

Trademark Class — The category of goods or services under which a trademark is registered. The Nice Classification system includes 45 classes.

TESS — Trademark Electronic Search System, the USPTO's online database for searching registered and pending trademarks.

USPTO — United States Patent and Trademark Office, the federal agency responsible for granting trademarks and patents.

Domain and Digital Terms

ccTLD — Country Code Top-Level Domain, a domain extension associated with a specific country (.uk, .de, .ca, .jp).

DNS — Domain Name System, the internet's system for translating domain names into IP addresses.

Domain Hack — A domain that uses the TLD as part of the name (del.icio.us, bit.ly, instagr.am).

EMD — Exact Match Domain, a domain that exactly matches a search query (best-running-shoes.com). Once gave SEO advantage; now largely neutralized.

gTLD — Generic Top-Level Domain, a non-country domain extension (.com, .org, .net, .io, .app).

ICANN — Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the organization that manages domain name systems globally.

Registrar — A company authorized to register and manage domain names on behalf of customers.

WHOIS — A public database containing ownership information for registered domain names.

WHOIS Privacy — A service that replaces the domain owner's personal information with proxy data in the WHOIS database.

Use the Language, Make Better Decisions

Understanding these terms puts you on equal footing with naming professionals, trademark attorneys, and branding agencies. You'll ask better questions, evaluate recommendations more critically, and make more informed decisions.

Ready to put your knowledge into practice? Use BrandScout to check your brand name's availability across domains, social media, and trademarks.