Should the CEO’s office own naming? Nah, they’re too busy for the day-to-day work of making naming happen.

The product team? Maybe... but what if what you’re naming isn’t a product? And what if you have multiple product teams—how do they ensure they’re developing names that tell the right story together in the market?

Marketing leadership? We’re getting closer—but how can they support the sometimes staggering range of naming needs a big organization might have?

Despite the importance of naming in shaping customer understanding and loyalty, there’s often a lack of clarity about who should own naming within an organization—and what that ownership should entail.

(By “own,” I mean acting as the central force in deciding what gets a name and how it should be named. The final decision re: which name candidate is used might belong to another group.)

Should naming sit with a central team, be handled collaboratively, left to individual product or regional teams, or handed off almost entirely to an outside partner?

Let’s look at the plays:

Table of Contents

• Centralize Ownership

• Federate It

• Distribute It

• Externalize It

• Who shouldn’t own it? Everyone.

• Who owns naming in your organization?

Centralize Ownership

Many of Wild Geese Studio’s clients fit this model. They might have names like “Central Marketing Group” or “Global Brand.” You might even find the odd “Creative Services” in the mix (classic!).

This central team is usually multidisciplinary, with a marketing focus, and may include brand or marketing senior leaders, strategists, writers, designers, and program managers.

What the central team might do (though not always all of this):

• Strategize: Tie the brand’s strategy to its naming strategy, establishing guidelines or frameworks from there.

• Educate: Make sure people know at least the basics of how the brand names, and why it matters.

• Document & manage: Maintain a living knowledge base of everything that has ever been named.

• Filter: Decide whether a product, service, feature, or initiative even warrants a name.

• Shepherd: Manage the end-to-end naming process, including writing naming strategies, developing names, collaborating with legal for risk evaluation, securing stakeholder buy-in, and planning for go-to-market use.

Why we like it:

• Consistency and clarity: The brand’s names sound like they come from the same place, reducing confusion before it reaches customers.

• Risk mitigation: A well-coordinated team can secure the right approvals from the right approvers at the right time.

• Efficiency: A “Wild West” approach to naming can cost organizations a lot (a topic for a future newsletter). A structured workflow saves both time and money.

Why it’s hard:

• They can become a bottleneck: I know central brand teams that are just a few people yet face hundreds of naming requests a year. They barely have time to review the requests, let alone develop names for all of them.

• No one likes the brand police: Teams across the organization may feel constrained by centralized control.

• Constant choreography: They must stay engaged with potential name requestors and coordinate closely with legal to ensure smooth approvals.

It’s not without challenges, but for most large brands that prioritize consistency, this is the best model.

Federate It

In this model, a central team drives overarching naming direction and may handle high-visibility naming projects. However, naming ownership is (mostly) distributed, empowering teams across the organization to make their own naming decisions based on their audience and business needs. These might include product teams, as well as less-expected groups, like HR.

What the central team might do:

• Facilitate: Help teams develop naming guidelines aligned with the parent brand, allowing them to work autonomously or with minimal support.

• Socialize: Support teams when name candidates require executive or board approval, or legal review.

• Coordinate documentation: Even if they don’t document every final naming decision, they should share access to a central repository where teams can provide updates about which names are in use, and how.

Why we like it:

• Owners everywhere: In some company cultures, distributed teams understand their audiences and business better than the central marketing group would—they just need tools and channels to align with the broader brand direction.

Why it’s hard:

• Coordination: There still needs to be a connection between the central and independent teams, especially for high-visibility brands. This can be annoying at best and disastrous at worst (e.g., a product launches with a name completely misaligned with the parent brand).

• Getting the talent part right: In-house naming talent is rare, and many organizations underestimate naming complexity. Teams often task program managers or engineers with naming—on top of their existing work—when a dedicating naming lead would be the most helpful.

Distribute It

In this model, a central team provides a single source of naming guidance, along with tools to help teams develop their own names.

What the central team might do:

• Educate, educate, educate: Everyone needs to understand what types of names align with the brand and customer expectations.

• Socialize: Support teams when name candidates require executive or board approval, or legal review.

• Provide DIY tools: Offer naming guidelines, brainstorming techniques, and decision-making tools, or conduct regular training sessions to keep naming skills sharp.

Why we like it:

• A pressure-release valve: The central team ensures quality for key projects while empowering other teams to manage simpler ones.

• Regional respect: Sometimes a central brand team is far from the markets where names will be used—a distributed model lets regional teams make the best choices for their audiences.

Why it’s hard:

• Vague decision-making: Without clear criteria, determining which projects need central involvement can frustrate everyone.

• Team tensions: Teams unfamiliar with naming may struggle to meet brand standards and feel like they’re being micromanaged.

• Quality concerns: Legal vetting is often skipped.

This model requires clear boundaries and strong guidelines. I’ve seen it work best where the only names that are in-play are highly descriptive (think names like “Tax Operations”). Some brands are incorporating AI tools to generate initial name ideas or filter options, while human teams handle final curation and decision-making.

Externalize It

Some organizations outsource naming to agencies or consultants. They may have a central marketing team that acts as a single point of contact or liaison between name requestors and external agencies, but most of the intake, filtering, development, and due diligence is handled externally. (And, yes, external partners are often brought in to support efforts in all of the other structures above, too, but some organizations externalize huge swaths of their name development to external agencies that act as an extension of their marketing or product teams.)

Why we like it:

• All-in on expertise: Many in-house brand and marketing roles juggle multiple responsibilities. Outsourcing naming to experts can lead to better and more efficient outcomes, and increases the odds that critical steps, like due diligence, won’t be missed.

• Frees up internal resources: Helps manage high-stakes projects when internal teams are stretched.

Why it’s hard:

• It can be expensive: High-quality naming services don’t come cheap.

• Knowledge gaps: External teams may lack historical context or insight into the naming pipeline, which can impact decision-making, and they may not always have live access to any internal knowledge systems or central naming repositories.

This model can be a transitional one while a central team builds its own capabilities, but some organizations continue using external partners long-term, and, as a naming agency owner, we love and appreciate these relationships.

Who shouldn’t own it? Everyone.

Some organizations turn to employees or customers for naming ideas, but… it’s fraught with challenges.

Why we don’t like it:

• Quality control: Crowdsourced ideas often lack strategic rigor.

• Pressure to choose from the pool: Most people don’t name often, and their ideas tend to mimic existing names—leading to legal risks or weak messaging.

Who owns naming in your organization?

Sometimes, it’s not clear.

That’s okay.

In fact, it’s pretty common.

Wild Geese Studio often steps in just as an organization—sometimes a very established one—is figuring out who should “own” naming. Other times, a naming team exists but wants to strengthen its process, engagement, and impact.

If you’re at the helm of a team that manages internal naming requests and you wish things ran a little smoother, 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.