What’s in a name?
Recently, a friend decided to make the move from a job to becoming an independent consultant. We were catching up about how the transition has been for her so far and she shared her struggle to find a good name for her consultancy. Our team smiled because we remembered how hard it was for us to arrive at ‘Xeno Co-lab’ as a name. There are so many pressures and concerns going through the head while coming up with a name -Is it going to be relevant in 10 years? Is it going to be memorable? Does it describe our identity precisely? Is it going to be understood by our audience? — amongst so many other things!
We offered to share the document that we had used to list options when we were finding a name. When we opened the document after March 2017, that is after almost 2 years, we discovered the document actually represented our process of finding the name! A process that we had not intentionally created or followed but organically and naturally adopted. And surprisingly or not, the process overlapped with the design process that we follow for our projects too. So we decided to document it in this blog to share it with anyone who is trying to find a name for a product/service/ company or is just curious to know about where did we start from and how did we end up with Xeno Co-lab.
When we were looking for names for the consultancy, both of us, the co-founders, were in different locations so the first step for us was to find a collaborative platform that allowed us to work together and we chose Google Docs. Both of us wrote a short blurb on the qualities and values that the name should ideally represent. Along with that, we also shared our unique ways of thinking and what might be our weaknesses for this exercise so we could keep a look out for it and help each other overcome it. For example, the document has a line in it that says “I might tend to think of words with deep, philosophical meaning and a logical explanation. I need help with thinking of words that might not be directly related to our offerings or might be quirky.” ‘Logical’ and ‘practical’ are good qualities most of the times, but you also need fun, quirky names that might not be the first thing that pops into your head but might be memorable and fresh for that same reason. While many would start with a brief on values that need to be reflected in the name, not many would start by sharing their thought process and their weaknesses. We think it really helped us align and push each other to bring out the best outcome.
And in the end of that blurb, we had the most important line written and something that we tell most of our clients to practise -
‘Let’s not hold back and judge, let’s focus on getting the names out on the document, without any judgement, to have more options to play with’.
This is what we ask our clients to practise for creative brainstorming to be able to come up with creative, blue-sky ideas to be more innovative in their process. 2 years later, we had completely forgotten that this is what we had told ourselves too.
We spent the next few weeks writing names that came to us at random times of the day or night. We ended up with a long list of some names that got us thinking and some that got us laughing. Beside each name were two lines that explained - A. what inspired us to think of this name (because remember, we were doing this exercise all from a long-distance) and B. the other person’s comment or feedback on it. But then we started thinking when do we stop? We were waiting for an ‘aha!’ moment — when we think of a word or see it on the document and know that this is it! But that never happened or it happened for multiple names and not just one. So we stopped when we started to bring up the same few names that we believed would work. We built a list of top 5 names and discussed it to discover overlaps or commonality. Xeno was a name that both of us liked because it literally means — the smallest measurable unit of emotion between two passing strangers. Other than the poetic quality of the word, we were also drawn to the fact that it described the connection between people. Its dictionary meaning was ‘strange and foreign’ and we loved that because through our work in user-research we were in pursuit of the strange and foreign (context/concepts/people/ideas) to embrace it by forming connections or by making sense of it.
Once we had that, we spoke to a few friends who would understand our offerings & values and would be willing to build on the ideas through feedback. We made notes of the feedback in the same Google Doc and discussed it amongst ourselves to decide how to act on it or what do we disagree with (also very important). So even though this wasn’t a real user-test because they might not be our audience necessarily, we did get feedback with a focus group for an outside-in perspective. We heard from a few people that unfortunately the first thing that comes to their mind when they hear Xeno was Xenophobia and that is definitely what we were not aiming for, in fact literally the opposite. So we decided to pronounce Xeno as a ‘ze-no’ instead of ‘zee-no’ to create a separation from Xenophobia. We decided to take a stand and stick with Xeno because we felt it held more importance especially because it is the opposite of Xenophobia and is extremely relevant in this age of polarisation.
This is where we had arrived at Xeno and not Xeno Co-lab yet. To make things more real, and apply the practicality lens we then started looking for domain names. Again, to draw parallels to the design process that we run with our clients, this is where we ask them to put their realistic hats back on and work with their crazy ideas to make them feasible in their context. We did not like the idea of calling it Xeno Agency, Xeno Designs (because we are not a design agency and wanted to make that clear) and Xeno Studio didn’t seem to hit the mark with us. Xeno Co-lab came into being as that ‘aha!’ moment that we were expecting with the name.
‘Co-lab’ describes the collective model in which we would work and also emphasises on our value of collaborating effectively with people. And combined with ‘Xeno’ we feel in love with the idea of embracing the strange through collaboration. Ta-da!
So, what the document looks like is this — it had a blurb on top from both the co-founders on the values, qualities along with personal process & strength/weakness, then there is a long list of names with feedback on some, a shortlist of 5 names, notes from the feedback session, domain name options and finally ‘Xeno Co-lab, www.xenocolab.com’ written in bold and blue.
We can’t say this process of coming up with a name is the best way amongst others. We are sure there maybe other entrepreneurs out there who went with their gut on the first word that came into their head and it felt right which worked well for them. But for us, these steps made sense and it was what we acted on instinctively. It may have been so because of the process that we follow at our work or just our personalities at play here. We now realise that we ended up finding a name that was less common, therefore memorable, and had a story that we believed in. We were confident that it would work for our audience because of the focus group discussion that we had.
So if there’s someone like our friend trying to find a starting point for finding a name for a company/product/service we would recommend —
A. Free yourself from judgement and write as much as possible. Write down every word that inspires you or appeals to you at the moment without focusing much on the why or how.
B. Push your team mates to be overcome their inhibitions and go beyond the first names that come to their mind.
C. Talk to people at the right moment to get their feedback. Ask a lot of questions to understand the ‘why’ — why is something working or not working.
D. Look into what’s possible or feasible. Check for availability of domains or company name for registration.
So what’s in a name? The name is what made it real for us. It was a short exercise that became one of the first times that we as a team collaborated on seamlessly. This is the story of what went into our name.
Here is the open source file for you to look at where we brainstormed for company names.
