Generating That Perfect App Name: Tools and Tricks

Table of Content

Coming up with an app name is always challenging. First off, you’ll need to think of something that is going to make a lasting impression. Secondly, you can’t knowingly or unknowingly be using the same name as any of the three million apps that are already available in the market today.

In this article, we will be talking about generating names for your app. By the end of it, hopefully, you will have the perfect name idea for your next application.

Image Credit: timeshighereducation.com

How can I name my app?

There are two approaches for naming your app:

Thinking of an App Name by Yourself
Using a Random App Name Generator

You can also combine these two, i.e., use software to generate a few random, catchy names and then shortlist and edit them to get the best one.

What should I name my app?

It is your call. Remembering these points will help you come up with a great name for your app:

Reflect on your brand’s core functionalities

A good app name gives people an idea of what it does immediately.

Examples include WeChat and Cymera. Their names easily convey that they are messaging and camera apps, respectively. Other instances of app names reflecting their functionality are Facebook Messenger (messaging), Paypal (online finance transactions), and Codecademy (coding school).

Avoid using long names

Your app name cannot consist of more than 50 characters on both the App Store and the Google Play Store. On Android phones, the device menu will only be able to show up to 12 characters of the name. Apple also recommends keeping the name limit to 23 characters. Longer names will be truncated.

Notice the last three apps on this drawer. The spaces have been removed, and the characters have been mashed together. This is because the entire name of the app doesn’t fit on the screen.

You should try your best to keep your application name to about 12 characters. If possible, you can also consider ‘Wordsmash.’ Some examples would be Facebook, Rappad, Snapchat, and SoundCloud.

Still, make sure that you focus on the core functionality of the apps. In the above screenshot, the names are long, but ‘Nepali to English Dictionary,’ ‘NMB Mobile Banking,’ and ‘Tennis World Open 2020’ precisely say what the apps do. Smash the words only if relevant.

Know your audience

You should use a name that your potential users understand and like. The name of your application should be interesting to your users whom you want to market your application.

In most cases where the target users are from a specific geographical area, you may also use the national language of the area. An example would be ‘Nepali Patro’ (the writer is from Nepal)’, which means Nepali Calendar. The app has more than five million downloads on the Play Store.

Use a name that helps you get discovered

Take a look at Google and Skype. Their names are unique and never-heard-before. However, people often overlook the fact that they were the first apps of their kind. Even though their name is unique, people still use these apps as there are no other apps or software with the same functionality.

To date, there are more than 2.57 and 2 million apps on the Google Playstore and the Apple App Store respectively. The competition is high and you should try to increase your visibility for people who are searching for your service for the first time.

For this, use an app name that will easily pop out in the search results when users are looking for a specific service.

Some apps that became extremely popular in 2019 are Photo Watermark, Sribbl, Epic Privacy Browser, App Notifier, Autosync. They all have a name that closely represents the keywords people type in the search box to find an app of their kind. You should name your app in a similar fashion.

Connect to your customer’s emotions

You will take your app naming game to another level if the name provides an emotional value to your customers. You can state the Value Proposition in your app’s name (the value the app provides to its user) if it is possible.

A great example would be Smoke-Free, which is an app that helps people quit smoking. The name Smoke-Free adds an emotional value, as that is exactly what people want to do with an app like that. It has other great features, mostly of gamification, and the app has more than a million downloads on the Google Playstore.

Other apps that score good marks in this department are MyFitnessPal (virtual trainer), Beauty Plus Camera (a camera with edits that makes you beautiful), and Greenpal (they provide lawn care services, helping your home compound become green).

Image Credit: mzstatic.com

What are the best tools for naming your app?

Many websites can generate names for your app once you enter a keyword. Let us discuss some of the best ones:

NamoBot

You can enter one to three words on the Namobot app name generator, and the site will give you a number of available names. Other than the app name, Namobot can also help name your domain, blog, company, business, and store.

Namobot is free. However, there are times when you click on the ‘App Name Generator’ or the ‘Business Name Generator’ and Namobot only shows recommendations for a Domain Name.

Official Link https://www.namobot.com/app-name-generator

Squadhelp

Image Credit: squadhelp.com

Squadhelp has a unique approach for naming an app. They engage real people (naming experts). Along with the name, their community can also provide a logo and a tagline (slogan).

What you do is provide a brief, which includes the name of your company, the purpose of your app, and other information that you want to add. On the same brief, you can also choose to get a matching domain name. After that, Squad Help will organize a contest within their community of 70,000 experts and the interested experts will start providing you recommendations. If there is a name among the recommendations you approve of, you pay the idea provider.

Using their naming service costs $299. You can also use the platform for creating logos, taglines, and get reviews and trademark checks.

Official link https://www.squadhelp.com/

Business Name Generator

As their name suggests, they generate names for a business. The names generated are usable for apps as well. The best thing about this website is the straightforwardness. Just like in NamoBot, you don’t have to pay or register to get the names. Business Name Generator generates names across 36 industries, some of which include Agriculture, Art, Gaming, Shoes, etc., and for a keyword, the website can return over a hundred and sometimes over a thousand names.

The names can either be one or two words. They also let you know if there is a website already associated with the name.

Official link https://businessnamegenerator.com/

Biz Name Wiz

What Biz Name Wiz does better than other AI name generators is its comprehensive search. For a keyword, you can easily search across 56 industries. You can also select the preferred number of characters and whether your name should consist of one or two words.

Similar to the Business Name Generator, you can also see if the domain for the associated app name is available to purchase.

Biz Name Wiz is free. You don’t have to login, and can start searching for names by visiting their website and searching for terms.

Official Website https://biznamewiz.com/

Namelix

Namelix is very comprehensive. Rather than just letting you enter a phrase and generating random terms, you can enter a keyword and they ask you the length of the name, which can be short (3-6 letters), medium (6-12 letters), or long (12+ letters). They even let you choose between eight name styles, which are Brandable Names (like Google), Foreign Words (like Toyota), Misspellings (Lyft), Real Words (apple), Compound Words (Instagram), Multiple Words (Facebook), Rhyming Words (Subhub), and Person Names.

After you get the names, you can register the domain. If the domain is already for sale (premium), Namelix also provides you a logo.

Official Website https://namelix.com/

Panabee

Panabee’s website is a fun place to be in. Their instructions are humorous and weird – they mention that they hate skinny jeans, and even if you don’t like their names, you will undoubtedly find their dance moves sexy.

Well, the team may be playing around with the content, at one point even comparing philosopher Confucious with the rapper Biggie, but those people are definitely serious about the tool they created.

Panabee can help you find hundreds of easy to read and memorable random names for the keywords you enter. The tool is free, and it also allows you to register for a domain name. You can translate your recommendation to other languages, including Chinese and French.

Apart from the app, business, and domain-names, Panabee can also help you come up with eye-catching social media names.

Official Website https://www.panabee.com/

Brand Bucket

Brand Bucket promises generic names that stand out from the crowd. They have a portfolio of the past names on their site, some being Ultruva, Cosmetrics, and Elegra. Instead of just being a random app name generator, their suggestions are eye-catching.

Brand Bucket, like most of the other tools in this article, focuses on selling its domain names. You need to type two words into their search box, and you will get a list of pre-curated names that the professionals in their company came up with.

Brand Bucket is a free tool, but you will need to make a payment to get anything out of it. You see, their recommendations come with the domain names, and as they have already registered the domain names for themselves, you will need to pay for them. It may cost you between a few hundred dollars to around $8000, or even more. Furthermore, you can also use the sample logo that they provide along with your purchase.

Official Website https://www.brandbucket.com/

Namimium

Naminium is simple and straightforward. You type in a word, and the tool will append or prepend a set of a specific number of letters. For example, if I enter ‘plate’, my recommendations will be on the lines of ‘araplate,’ ‘byplate,” plately,’ etc.

The random app name generator may not be as comprehensive as others, but it may give you some great ideas that you can later modify by yourself to come up with the best name for your application. Still, it has some exclusive features, like the ability to change the target audience. Apart from an application, you can find names for Blog, Brand, Business, Company, Domain, Product, Project, Startup, Trademark, and Websites.

Naminium a free tool. For a word, you can get hundreds, if not, thousands of suggestions, but generally, only a few of them make sense. As you don’t need to register for an account, you can visit Naminium’s site and see if it interests you.

Official Website http://www.naminum.com/

The Name App

The Name App is not just a random app name generator. It allows you to see if the name that you have in your mind is marketable and available on various social media platforms, and also if the domain name for it is already taken.

You insert a keyword in the search box. And as you press enter, you will see if you can use the name for domains including .com, .net, .me, .io, and .co. Similarly, you will be able to view the username’s availability as social media handles, including Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr.

Remember, in the case of social media names, The Name App may tell that a keyword is open even if it has been used for personal accounts. For example, say your search term is ‘drawer.’ The Name App will tell you if it is available on Facebook, even if there is a person with the name, as long as there isn’t a page associated with it.

The name availability check tool is free. You can download it from the App Store, or access it from a supported browser.

Official Website https://thenameapp.com/

Logopony

As its name suggests, Logopony primarily helps you create logos for your brand. Before starting to use the tool, you can either choose your own brand name, or user their name generator to get a name that you want to move forward with.

You can generate up to a few hundred names through the search term, depending on the phrase availability. All of the names are one-worded. In some cases, the tool can combine words, so you can break it up yourself. For example, one of the returns for the search term ‘logo’ was ‘LogoMark,’ which you could turn into ‘Logo Mark.’

One thing to remember is that the names are totally random in Logopony. So, if you like a name, you will have to personally research it on Google to see if it has already been used. Otherwise, the tool is simple and free to use. You will need to pay for the logos.

Official Website https://www.logopony.com/name-generator/

Can I use the same app name in Google Play Store or App Store?

No two names can be the same on Google Playstore or the Apple App Store. When naming your app, you should make sure that it is unique and has never been used before.

Even if you have not published your app, but are using a name that already exists in the Play Store or the App Store, the owner of the original app can use the “first to use rights” to sue you in case your app with the same name becomes popular.

Also, you should research and see if the name you come up with already has a trademark associated with it. To do this, if you are in the US, go to the website of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and search in their trademark database.

It is advisable that you work with a trademark attorney in your jurisdiction when naming your app. They can research for existing trademarks throughout the world, and can also help you register for the trademark in your country.

Conclusion: When naming your app, you should make sure the name is easy to remember. The name should be short and sweet, represent your brand’s core functionality, and be interesting to the app’s user’s demography. Furthermore, it should connect to your customer’s emotions. You can also use various app name generator tools to get recommendations and choose one that best fits your needs. Now get your head cracking to come up with your perfect app name!

Please Share This Share this content