“It works for us internally—why not use it with our customers, too?”

Whatever you call them in your organization (code names, project names, working names), you've likely faced the challenge of starting a naming project with one tough competitor: the internal name your team has already been using for weeks, months, or even years.

Coming in fresh, it's often immediately clear why the internal favorite isn't viable.

It's usually one of three scenarios:

1. A VERY common word that's unlikely to clear trademark hurdles. (Take your pick of the classics: Project Apollo, Project Beacon, Project Lighthouse, Project Alpha...)

2. A VERY strange word that's become normalized internally through frequent use. (Imagine a team attached to something that probably started as a joke, like Project Knocky, Project Finagler, Project Grundleman.)

3. A perfectly fine word that's off strategy. (Consider Project Houseplant for ERP software, Project Angelic for an enterprise collaboration tool, or Project Shoelace for a financial service.)

Five reasons to fight for “bad” working names:

1. They signal “This is not our first or final choice”

2. They’re less likely to slip out into the market

3. Teams are less likely to get attached

4. They prevent internal favorites from prematurely winning out or short-changing a real naming exploration process

5. They fuel an eagerness to get to an actual name

Let's look at the plays

• Strategies to Rethink Your Working Names

  • Strategy 1: Go completely off-brand. Then go furth …

  • Strategy 2: Code UAF (Ugly AF)

• Risky Strategies (I don’t recommend these, but som …

• “But Caitlin, we love our working name and really …

• Still attached despite a strategic mismatch?

Strategies to Rethink Your Working Names

Strategy 1: Go completely off-brand. Then go further. Much further.

Develop working names so distinctly uncharacteristic of your brand that they will never escape internal use. For example:

• If you're a high-tech company, try baby-talk inspired names.

• If you're a baby products company, lean into technical jargon. (To quote researcher Brad Davidson from my podcast, Big Names in Naming, “You wouldn’t feed Pentium to a baby.”)

They should feel goofy and weird and you should be so, so excited to ditch it and land the “real” name.

Strategy 2: Code UAF (Ugly AF)

Create intentionally unpleasant project names with internal logic.

For instance, if it’s a liquid laundry product launching Q1 2026 from the Laundry Care Unit, it could be LCLPQ126 (Laundry Care Liquid Product Q1 2026).

It's informative, carries important info—and awful to say out loud.

That's why it's effective. 😀 

Risky Strategies (I don’t recommend these, but some big organizations use them)

• Names clearly owned by other IP holders. Examples I’ve seen: Disney, Star Wars, Marvel, Mattel, Parker Brothers. I think the intent of these is often that folks know that they “can’t actually” use the names and are willing to set them aside when the time comes, but it’s a little too tempting for my taste. One wrong move, and some of the world’s most litigious IP owners will be all over you.

• Practical naming conventions. Cities, constellations, Greek gods, basic shapes, primary colors, fast animals (cheetahs, falcons, etc.), major cities, mountain ranges, most nature stuff...these are the easiest names to get comfortable with because they’re friendly and familiar—and notoriously challenging to trademark.

“But Caitlin, we love our working name and really want to use it!”

Maybe you can! But let's walk through some practical considerations first.

Develop (or revisit) your criteria for a successful name:

• What job does this name need to do? Clarify, delight, intrigue? Stake a claim about where the brand is headed? Break into a new market?

• Who exactly is your audience? What's your value proposition for them? How will they see you versus competitors? What role does this product or service play in their lives?

• What do we most want to communicate, and how can we best say it?

• What's our risk profile for trademark clearance and protection? Does the working name fit?

Once you've answered these, ask yourself honestly: Does the working name check all the boxes?

If yes, congratulations—you stumbled onto a keeper.

More often, you'll see why it’s worth parking that name and using an intentionally ugly placeholder until the final name decision is made.

Still attached despite a strategic mismatch?

Conduct a quick round of consumer research comparing your working name against a few strategically aligned alternatives, and see if that changes things for decision makers.

Need help wrangling your working naming strategy? We do that.

We can help you come up with something perfectly awful to suit your needs 🙃 Please feel free to reach out and learn more about how we can help.

– 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.