A product team is gearing up to launch something—a new feature, a tool, a workflow, a dashboard. At some point, a statement is uttered that triggers a series of events that have a major impact on your business, brand, portfolio, and customer experience:

“We need a name for this.”

Do they?

Before you take on that naming request, take a breath.

In 2016, I wrote a booklet called Does It Really Need a Name? It has remained my most-downloaded little book. This is a pain point for so many naming leads across so many organizations: We know we’re naming too much. We know not everything needs a name.

At Wild Geese Studio, we spend a lot of time working with teams to develop custom filters that line up their business ambitions, brand strategy, product pipeline, audience drivers, and customer journeys to help them make more effective naming decisions.

But if you need something yesterday to help stem the tide of naming requests your team feels stuck approving, here’s a quick gut-check list to separate the needs from the noise:

Table of Contents

• The Simple “Does-It-Need-a-Name?” Checklist

  • 1. Will people need to ask for it by name?

  • 2. Is this a relationship builder, or a utility?

  • 3. Would it be more helpful to just talk about wha …

  • 4. Would naming this help our audience—or is this …

• Other criteria we’ve used when helping clients dev …

The Simple “Does-It-Need-a-Name?” Checklist

1. Will people need to ask for it by name?

If no one will ever say, “I’d like to add [X] to my order” or “I can’t say enough good things about [Y]—you need one too,”  you might not need a name. A clear description or label might serve the purpose better.

Work with the requesting team to understand whether there are real-world scenarios that truly require a name for the offering to succeed.

2. Is this a relationship builder, or a utility?

It often makes sense to name the things people will form a relationship with: products, services, programs — the things we want people to feel attached to. (Not a hard-and-fast rule, but a starting point.)
It’s usually best to describe the utility stuff: internal tools, add-ons, features, ingredient technologies, background processes — the things that quietly make everything work better.

3. Would it be more helpful to just talk about what it does?

Sometimes, the best thing you can do for a new launch is not give it a name. Let it shine through benefit-driven messaging, clear UX, or compelling storytelling.

4. Would naming this help our audience—or is this about winning points internally?

The larger the organization, the more this shows up: naming as a signal of internal progress. But meeting internal demands for names-as-milestones can create external confusion. If most of your naming requests are being approved to satisfy internal visibility goals, it’s worth pausing to reassess.

Other criteria we’ve used when helping clients develop naming filters:

• Will people buy it?
  Can it be added to a cart? Will it have its own SKU or line item?

• Is there already an industry-standard descriptor?
  And if so, what’s the case for not using it?

• Is there an existing brand or named offering it could sit under?
  If so, what’s the cast for not using it?

• Is it trademarkable?
  And if it’s not tied to commercial use, is it worth the multi-team effort to develop and defend?

What works for your organization may vary, but I hope this gives you a solid starting point—a moment of discernment before diving headlong into a naming process that may lead to a name that doesn’t truly serve your business, your brand, or your customers.

And if you’d like some expert help on building better naming filters into your naming operations, let’s talk. Reply to this email, and we’ll set something up.

– Caitlin Barrett
Founder and naming expert, Wild Geese Studio
Your strategic naming partner for development, operations, and evaluation.

P.S. If you manage naming in a large organization (1,000+ employees with a robust portfolio of names or frequent naming requests), I’d love to interview you or share our naming operations benchmarking survey. Reply to this email, and I’ll send you the details.