When you think of resources used by professional namers, it’s fun to imagine a room full of obscure dictionaries, out-of-print thesauruses, and dusty tomes full of Greek Mythology or esoteric industry jargon. And surely, many namers do have personal libraries full of useful, printed resources (which may include some of these books about brand naming). But namers are increasingly finding that online tools—as an augmentation or replacement for offline tools—provide efficiencies and capabilities that books alone can’t.
Below, we’ve compiled a list of online tools and software used by professional namers. Most are available for free. When naming professionals mention resources during interviews on the How Brands Are Built podcast, or when we find useful online tools elsewhere, we’ll add to this list.
List of online/software resources used by professional namers
| Online resource | Primary use | Mentioned by | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| BBEdit | Organization of name ideas | Anthony Shore | |
| Corsearch | Preliminary trademark screening | Steven Price | Subscription service |
| Dictionary.com | Name generation | Shannon DeJong | "Not the best dictionary…[but] often it gives me that base of synonyms that I start from" |
| Find Rhymes Generator | Name generation | Find German and English rhymes with settings from strict to loose | |
| Foreign-language dictionaries (online) | Name generation | Clive Chafer | |
| Forvo.com | Name generation | Clive Chafer | To hear native speakers pronounce foreign words |
| Getty Images and other stock photo sites | Name generation | Scott Milano | "[It] lets me forget the words themselves." |
| Name generation | Shannon DeJong | ||
| Google Docs | Organization of name ideas | Amanda Peterson | |
| Google Images | Name generation | Shannon DeJong | |
| Google Sheets | Organization of name ideas | Amanda Peterson, Scott Milano | |
| Microsoft Excel | Organization of name ideas | Anthony Shore | |
| MRC Psycholinguistic Database | Name generation | Scott Milano | From the University of Western Australia |
| OEDonline | Name generation | Shannon DeJong | |
| OneAcross.com | Name generation | Clive Chafer | A crossword dictionary, especially useful when length is a consideration |
| OneLook | Name generation | Anthony Shore, Shannon DeJong, Amanda Peterson | |
| Online Etymology Dictionary | Name generation | Shannon DeJong | |
| RhymeZone | Name generation | Anthony Shore | |
| Sketch Engine | Name generation | Anthony Shore, Scott Milano | "A corpus linguistics database" |
| Synonyms.com | Name generation | Shannon DeJong | |
| Text document | Organization of name ideas | Amanda Peterson | "Because anything that gets in the way, even thinking about jumping to the next cell, you can lose your ideas." |
| TextWrangler | Organization of name ideas | Anthony Shore | "A plain ASCII text editor" |
| USPTO Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) | Preliminary trademark screening | Steven Price | |
| Visual Thesaurus | Name generation | Anthony Shore | "Based on WordNet, Visual Thesaurus graphically represents semantic relations. Requires a subscription." |
| Wikipedia | Name generation | Clive Chafer, Amanda Peterson | |
| WordHippo | Name generation | Helen Gould of Brandstuff | Enter a word and find synonyms, antonyms, definitions, rhymes, sentences, and more. |
| WordNet | Name generation | Anthony Shore | "A database for exploring semantic relations. It’s free and it’s spectacular." |
| Wordnik | Name generation | Anthony Shore, Amanda Peterson | "A great resource for lists of words" |
This Useful List will be updated periodically with new list items. Please share any suggested additions in the comments section.
Related Words http://relatedwords.org
Inspiration and sources for word mapping
Thanks for the recommendation, Rachelle! We’ll check it out and may add it to the list. Keep ’em coming!
http://wordsafety.com/ to find potential international conflicts. Check a name for unwanted meanings in 19 foreign languages.
Awesome, thanks for the idea, Mark! I’ll check it out and get it added to the list ASAP.