Achtung. News flash. May I have your attention please. Namespace competition is not a buyer benefit. Businesses looking to name themselves *do not* agree that widespread usage of the name they select is a great idea.

In fact, virtually all serious buyers avoid such a scenario. The exceptions I am able to imagine are those with unlimited funds, limited foresight, or perhaps a rare combination of both.

This means that when a domain investor applies metrics of namesake concentration by the logic that it increases their buyer pool, scores of potential buyers will for the very same reason quite simply remove it from their potential list of options. In this regard, standard domainer acquisition strategy and standard brand name strategy don't get along.

This is something that orthodox domainers rarely seem to consider. In their aim to not bet on the “wrong horse”, they tend to rely on the horse with the best track record. There is safety in this crude method; names that have already found traction may already possess demand among the ones that use them, and may perhaps be more likely to elicit novel demand as well.

But if domain investing is to ever equate to something more than a robot programmed to buy the top stock, it is important to understand why the race horse analogy is incomplete.

In the organic world of business and the organic world of expression, the variables change with each throw of the dice. Every name is different, which means that every race, every horse, and every jockey is different, every time.

This does however not mean that the variables are random and unpredictable. It merely means that they are significantly more complex than a few popular metrics are able to account for.

To stay true to this realization, we can’t start with particulars. We need the big picture. We need to gauge the limits of circumstance; not what may have happened yesterday. We need theory before we can know what may prove useful to observe.

Treating usage as the arbiter is an example of the opposite. As a consequence it leads to domainers not learning much substantive about name quality per se. What’s the use of understanding general name appeal if the deciding factor is explicit usage?

The argument that it “works” is not really much by way of proof for the overall adequacy of the model. A lot of things passably “work” by means of partial correlation to circumstance.

Droves of neglected buyers

Here’s another wild claim further down the same stream of thought. The neglected buyer pool that are or will be looking for a new name in general is potentially bigger than the buyer pool currently using specific names.

The main reason is that established businesses are for the most part already content with their current setup, while future ventures to the contrary are all in need of one. (This is incidentally part of the explanation for the traction on brandable domain marketplaces, that has been and is wildly confusing to legacy domainers.)

In other words, not only do domainers in general pick their inventory based on metrics that are not able to be a complete account of the nature of demand, but they also in the process alienate a significant market.

This significant market for brand names can be further realized if we briefly consider a few things.

Firstly, the number of businesses online today are more numerous than yesterday. Now imagine 10 years from now. The total market will likely have expanded due to an increase in the total number of businesses, which means that total demand for viable identities will rise. Scores of currently active businesses will also have ceased to be and scores will have replaced them. Even though their preferences will overlap significantly, they will not be identical.

It is probably the case that even in a zero global growth environment, the decreasing time and effort it takes to go to market at current and future automation levels will still increase the number of contestants for name identities. Diminishing global growth overall may perhaps decrease the speed of IP appropriation, but halting or reversing it would likely require a catastrophe of a magnitude where the question may become irrelevant anyway.

In other words, change as well as growth in the field of identities will likely ensure future opportunity.

It is important to underline that demand for names does not inherently limit itself to the number of established businesses alone. The number of businesses that fail are for instance 100 to 1, give or take, but all of them still need a name. Some of them may be hellbent on prying a specific identity loose no matter the cost. Most will not be. Acknowledging this increases the number of viable investment opportunities.

Furthermore, some strategically minded businesses acquire viable options early on - before settling for a particular one. This is not properly addressed either if you allow inventory to be dictated by the currently established and explicitly discernable buyer pool alone.

To understand the nature of demand on the shifting but certainly not random market for names, it is obviously not enough to reactively manage to metrics of questionable merit. There must be proactive action and theory that supports it.

The data superstition trap

Sometimes it feels like mere use of the word “data” is license to stop thinking. In reality, the merit of data proxies is famously treacherous, something that is apparent to those that have seriously tried to evaluate them. One example is the god-father of the “data-driven” approach to business himself, Jeff Bezos, who noted that “it’s very common to manage to metrics that you don’t really understand, and that you don’t really know why they exist.”

Of course, metrics are not the spawn of the devil. It’s just imperative to understand what the metric shows, and that it’s not mistaken for what it purports to measure.

If something is searched for is for instance a measure of the interest in the search term, and used that way, it may be useful. It is however not a measure at all of how businesses prefer to name themselves. Nor is it a measure of which names may resonate with consumers.

On the same note, that a certain string has many registered domain extensions may merely be a measure of the propensity for brand protection of one or few entities - and perhaps the corresponding foolishness of the domainers attempting to tap the deceptive data-points this creates.

In conclusion it is quite possible to credibly argue that only looking at the static snapshot of current usage and other even more dubious metrics, amounts to alienation of a great proportion of the market, since you ignore the great number of businesses that take care to avoid confusion, the great number of businesses that will come into existence, the great number of businesses that perish, and the great number of businesses that may make a purchase even though their identity decision is not yet final.

The best way to avoid neglecting this substantial buyer pool revolves around understanding names and their circumstances.

Naming is creative

This is an even more foundational reason that some existing names may lose their explicit data points and fall out of grace, all while explicitly more under-applied names may percolate up and find traction. It constitutes the conditions for the space in which all domain investors operate.

Naming is like language is at large, an infinite use of finite means only in miniature. Similar to DNA, language is commonly classified as a “discrete combinatorial system”. This is a defining feature that virtually all linguists come to realize and marvel at, other seemingly insurmountable differences of opinion aside. Since everyone from cradle to grave are instinctively experts at using language, this is not something that people in general consider.

Common knowledge often takes for granted that language is a lot of things that it is not. But It is not a finite and static dictionary and it is not the linear sequence of words in this sentence. It’s “correctness” is not dictated by table manners, or your grammar school English teacher. It is not even something you predominantly memorize or learn from experience, the way other subjects may be apprehended. It is at its core a computational system that humans are born with, and that no other species possess. This is why Linguistics today is no longer the taxonomic science it used to be, but part of cognitive science, and the study of mind.

Since language determines the guiding principles for the universal pool from which all names are born, this learning about what language is, is more profound than the comparably trivial one that competition and confusion is not a benefit in business.

For readily available data that supports the idea that language is a moving target, you just need to look at the dictionary over time. Stop for a second and listen to the younger generation. Look at the state of English in Beowulf which could just as well be Greek to modern man. Overall, on the surface, it's a constant and creative flux, and not the pretty static picture it’s made out to be. (Deep down however, it’s remarkably consistent, but that may be too far into the weeds to expand on).

This cycle of expressional life and death is furthermore orders of magnitude faster in a creative setting, such as brand naming, where novelty and salience are overarching ideas.

Distilling name quality, bottom-up

Along these foundational lines, let’s start with the full set of all possible combinations of letters. You will hopefully find that not much in this context is viable name material. Only a limited set of possible options are within reasonable expectation for a "nameness" that is solid enough to be likely to surface and find appeal.

After removing all options that are not even remotely viable from the superset of every possible variation, we must now further decimate it and attempt to find the very best options. Removing everything that is not feasible is not nearly good enough.

But if we are not to sneak-peak at explicit signals such as namesake concentration or search-oriented metrics, where do we start?

There needs to be a limit to the number of characters. Most business names are short. Both in terms of characters but also in terms of syllables. The shorter the better is a good rule of thumb, even though competing factors consistently can and do topple that factor in the individual case. But let's regard brevity in terms of character economy a valid principle.

Appealing business names are rarely lengthy, even though exceptions exist.

"Bana" is better than "Banado" which is better than "Banadoro".

Eureka! So do we now have the holy grail; a formula for brand name appeal? Certainly not.

The goal is to keep sifting the wheat from the chaff until no further distinction can be made in terms of likelihood to become an appealing name that may find adoption. Margins can be slim between first and second place, but the effects on selection may differ like night and day, so a draconic mindset is crucial to avoid the pitfall of wishful thinking as often as possible. Close but no cigar effect is real.

Next, let’s consider something that we may call "Form". In this case, let’s consider “Form” to be the equivalent of all the linguistic principles that do not directly relate to meaning.

Here we may, pleasantly surprised, discover Phonology; the study of speech sounds. The sounds we produce are at their core an effect of the way our speech organs are designed, and these speech organs limit and govern the way that speech is voiced in action. In a way it is a combination of physics and speech economy. It is safe to assume that a viable name conforms to these limitations and the inherent requirements they create.

This sets the stage for convention to take form around preferred combinations of sounds, and the study of this is called "Phonotactics", a discipline that attempts to statistically gauge the "acceptability" of new phonological specimens.

Appealing business names are pleasant to say and listen to.

"Exen" is better than "Exre" which is better than "Xreum".

This is not the same thing as “correct spelling”. A name can be creatively spelled and still be phonetically pleasing and perfectly in line with expectations. (Legacy domainers often conflate conventional spelling with this prerequisite, even though one prevalent convention within a brand naming context on the contrary is unconventional spelling.)

Writing and therefore spelling is also an extremely novel invention in the big picture. Users of language, which means all of us to the very last one, understand this well. We are generally not stopped in our tracks by a letter in the wrong place. (The most likely side-effect may be that a self-appointed language police officer desperately feels the urge to write you a ticket.)

On top of this, there are in the context of brand names many conventions, customs and traditions native and exclusive to that category and its subcategories. Common notions of what may be correct or incorrect for various reasons, need not apply.

We may add to "Form" our internal system of Syntax, that like an invisible hand steers how lexical units relate and are composed, completely out of conscious control, through imperceptible operations of your mind. In a brand name context, this may be limited to the way that two or a few words relate to each other to capture the intended meaning.

"Form" may passably equate to the notion of "sounds right", but underneath the hood that notion consists of an intricate web of instantaneous and automatic assessments.

It deserves to be repeated that the peculiar thing about language is that we intuitively know how to use it, but that the inner workings are not available for introspection like it was a bug or an atom in a laboratory.

What may often be derogatively dubbed "subjective" is at the core of language, like it or not. It is the object of study. We do not know how language works at an explicit level. That is the scientific consensus about our knowledge about language. The cool thing, however, about this particular "subjective", is that it is very uniform and lives within all of us, which is why ignoring its existence on grounds that we are unable to make sense of it will amount to throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

On the borderline between “Form” and “Meaning”, another discipline that’s called Morphology exists. If Syntax determines the way phrases are strung together, morphology determines the internal structure of “words”.

In any way it is clear that words obey principles and contain constituents just like a phrase does. They are partly memorized and partly rule governed.

In Linguistics, there is consequently no universal definition of what a word is, and this is easily illustrated by looking at languages that are not “analytical”, the way English is. In other languages there may be no word boundary, and a phrase can be expressed in a single word.

Word boundaries may *seem* straightforward when looking at text, but that's an illusion. Is for instance "motor boat" one word or two? In Swedish it would be a closed compound, but the meaning and structure would be identical. Only superficial writing convention differs.

"Homonyms", different words that sound the same, further blur the distinction, and an ensemble of other issues crave your attention as soon as you attempt to define "word" in absolute terms.

When we have come this far, the most dreaded hydra of Linguistics and Philosophy starts rearing all of it's seven heads. Meaning.

Appealing brand names prompt suggestive meaning or avoid meaning.

"Open Sea" prompts meaning of width, breadth and resources, but it is figuratively descriptive, not literally.

"Prognova" prompts meaning from the morphemes found in words like "program" or "progress" and words like "novel" or "renovation".

"Mavona" is more semantically sparse and is therefore more inherently distinctive and versatile,. This becomes it's key selling point.

In virtually any name there are some layers and trace elements of meaning even though there is no corresponding dictionary entry where you can conveniently find the “correct definition”. There is sometimes sound symbolism even at the level of the individual phoneme (the unique sound constituents in a language). "Mavona" for instance is distinctively feminine in gender. For less abstract names there is also meaning in morphemes (word parts), which is why we can gauge the intention of a neologism such as ”cognitech”, even though ”cogni” per se is not acknowledged as a word.

It is for instance a matter of semantics when the meaning of one word or the meaning of two words combined in context create a new singular meaning that could describe something new or unknown in the terms of something known. This is called metaphor, and it’s a universal feature in all languages and therefore likely a universal means of thought.

Meaning is expressed through an infinite stretch of possible instantiations, and is arguably the most important aspect in brand naming. Some may like to simplify and say that ”Apple” doesn’t sell apples and that the meaning of ”apple” is completely irrelevant. That would mean that Apple could just as well have been named ”Cutlery” or ”Sports” or ”i4waopn” for that matter. None of which would probably have lended themselves well to appropriation, positive association, recognition or metaphor.

The different aspects of how meaning may add value to a name are too extensive to discuss at length, but one key learning is that figurative meaning trumps literal meaning in the context of brand names.

Appealing business names embody some kind of novelty

"Identyx" is novel in terms of spelling, and there is no corresponding dictionary entry.

This requirement applies to all names that intend to be the primary reference to something specific, and ties into many things of value. Firstly, to be the primary reference, you need to be unique and to be unique you need to be novel. Novelty also facilitates memorability in that there is something new to remember. Only when the name is memorized, often as the result of a combination of salient and evocative impressions and context, the brand building will have something to stick on and work with.

A valuable side effect of novelty is some degree of trademarkability.

Appealing business names embody some kind of familiarity

"Identyx" is familiar in terms of morphemes, and even if there is no corresponding dictionary entry, there could tentatively be one along these lines: "Identics": The technology of digital identity.

It is not a benefit to have such an alien name that it does not fit into general conceptualization and context at all. Some familiarity is required. This can be achieved in different ways.

The drinks and water brand “Liquid Death” is another type of example where a combination of novelty and familiarity creates an intriguing concept. It is not the legacy way to describe the product, but filtered through temperament and attitude to produce a distinctive but very intuitive way to conceptualize thirst and the remedy for thirst. It aligns with existing ways that we express ourselves about thirst, but will not be found in a dictionary. It’s a brand name natural.

Appealing business names create a coherent and attractive overall impression.

"Liquid Death" is better than "Water Murder" which is better than "Fluidy Kill".

"Valanto" is better than "Smagado" which is better than "Klabalro".

This step is not a separate review of each and every ingredient in a dish. It’s the actual end result. There may be a way to passably imagine approximately how the dish will turn out, but to really know you need to taste it. How did the combination of the constituents of the name in effect turn out? Could there be even better options or is this one the best one possible in the individual case?

Brand names tend to have some "one-wordedness" to them. They fit the mold of a name or a word even though they may not be in use as such. For compound words, the collective meaning can not be indecipherable or complete word salad, or an option evidently inferior to a better one along the same lines.

You can cut and paste frequently used “keywords” for a night and a day, and the answer to the question of whether it’s a good name or a bad name will remain unanswered. To assess that, we need to involve the parts of the brain where meaning is created and processed; the entire thingamabob at full throttle. Statistical shortcuts may prove to lead to blind alleys.

Appealing business names have application

"DestructionBread" contains two readily decipherable dictionary words, but have no utility in combination.

"Destructo", "Breadboy", "Daily Bread" would all conversely have prospective real world application.

After these maneuvers, each one carefully catered to the nature of the example, the final step and the most daunting obstacle is still not overcome. Who would want this name? Where would it find appeal and why? Is there potential demand?

This final and all important assessment requires extensive explicit knowledge about the size of different industries, their available funding, and the naming conventions within these spheres, and not merely name- and language sensitivity.

The market

It is a popular notion that domain names like the ones we just tried to triangulate only sell due to already “existing” demand. If there is a process leading up to name selection, it is considered best left alone since it is not available for interpretation or influence anyway. All that you can do as a domain investor is to acquire domains with a high likelihood to convert an already existing demand, and the only way to reliably do that is to buy domains that match what a lot of end users are already using, or to rely on generic and literal search terms and their search volume. As a consequence of this train of thought, there is really no point in listing your domain on a marketplace. (Which begs the question why they exist.)

In summary, if domains sell they will do so irrespective of promotion and exposure. Any commission charged by a marketplace is therefore highway robbery since the item sold itself. This is of course nonsense.

Looking at the target domains for brokerage firms and the domains that sell on brandable marketplaces, they do not conveniently align with domainer lore, neither in terms of price nor in terms of type. In fact, naming briefs more often than not go to lengths to explain that keywords too literally related to the business are strictly off limits within the name.

All serious businesses need a name that is not merely descriptive. Saying that there is no way to tap that demand is the same thing as saying that business is impossible.

Business is hard, but it’s not impossible, and it’s a matter of finding a viable model to tap the demand for names in a way that transcends merely waiting for someone to come along.

Even though the domain name industry is reactionary and sluggish, I don’t think that development along these lines is possible to avoid in the long run. The question may be how long the run is.

Summary

Alright, so let’s reiterate and try to boil down what we are talking about even further. If legacy metrics are not the word of god, what’s the alternative?

It is of course not the case that you can register any domain and it will find traction eventually. The risk that you will fall into the trap of fooling yourself that anything goes will however decrease if you internalize the following.

A serious business wants to build a brand.
Brand names are more or less distinctive.
Everyone needs a name.
A name can not be anything. ("Ihrewoiuw" anyone?)
If a name can not be anything, it has to be something.
The something that a name has to be is limited and anchored by design.
Names don't appear out of thin air.
The name that is settled on has value.
There is no reason to believe that aftermarket supply is auto-magically geared to demand.
All good names are not taken. (It's built in by design that names are not a static zero-sum game.)

Every name that eventually "sold itself" inevitably ran through these prerequisites first. Some of them can be learned or apprehended, others can be found in our shared intuitions and conventions.

At the end of the day, it’s about the name, and the name is either about what it is able to evoke in your mind - or that it is wholly or partly devoid of that ability and not tied to conceptual specifics kicking in.

If you stick to the conceptual highways for names with meaning; keep close to the heartbeat of human conceptualization, you actually can’t go helplessly wrong. If you stick to the formal highways for names with less meaning; similarly true.

The only thing difficult about this is letting go and trusting your "gut", which at its core is the same gut that fuels and runs everyone else as well. That is definitely difficult enough though.

Naming is part a derivate of a generative instinct that we can learn more about, but that even in the age of “AI” defiantly resists definition. This is why metrics are treacherous; based on current knowledge there is no way to find out how appropriate they really are.

Also, if the entire aftermarket inventory is based on dubious legacy metrics promoted to the unquestionable word of god, then the sales reported are also a result of that, and there is nothing that says that a different approach would yield similar or better results if it was equally adopted.

The gist of all of these recognitions could be used to design services that offer help along the way, before the name that is eventually settled on, is settled on.

For some reason though, this is not what domain name "marketplaces" in general give a flying heck about. They don't interpret or even address the circumstance and needs of buyers. Instead they erect a warehouse stacked with unknown items of unknown availability and let any potential customer that happens to stroll by find their own way and help themselves. They gladly harvest whatever comes out of the upstream processes required to arrive at a name. But they do not help buyers unearth their preferences and find their options. They just collect the bill at the end of the line. Pay toll ahead.

Sure, if domains in general really did "sell themselves", why pay commissions? But in reality, even domains that may by some standard "sell themselves" may benefit from targeted exposure, marketing and sales as well.

"Brandable" domains are the default standard

"Brandables" are not the weird compromise that finds traction only when the alleged "best" options are unavailable. They are not the sloppy seconds that the cat dragged in. They represent the main center of gravity for moneyed interest in domains.

It sometimes seems like domainers think that all businesses want and need to use literal search keywords for their domain. If they sell furniture they want to be "furniture.com". If they sell accounting they want "accounting.com". It's the most "memorable" option, it brings credibility, and it helps with search engine positioning.

In reality, virtually no brand names are literal one trick-ponies. Not everyone, in fact almost none, would want to build a brand around something that is in effect un-brandable. A brand name requires ambiguity because ambiguity allows some of the associative power to be connected to the business, which is arguably the main purpose of a brand. To be somebody.

The definition of “memorability” used in the argument that the top literal words for the business, service or product are the "best" options, does not have much basis in science. Memory kicks in when memory is prompted or required. Describing yourself in generic and literal terms prompts nothing of the kind.

Brandable domains correspond to the complete set of names that may find appeal as prospective brand names, and the range and scope of that appeal is infinitely richer than popular belief or domain investor folklore is able to account for.

This does not mean that anything goes. Anything in fact rarely even crawls.

-Sten Lillieström-

Next Venture acquires taken domains, or helps you find a new name identity with the domain available for immediate purchase.

Practice and circumstance on the market for names

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