How to avoid an invented name trainwreck.

Names should make people smile instead of scratch their head. Especially invented names, which are often mangled gobbldygook. Start-ups and old-school naming firms fall in love with invented names for three reasons: 1) They sail through trademarking; 2) the domain names are always available; 3) they want the ego boost of coining a word. It's the easy way out. But the results are usually disastrous. Most invented names are forced and unnatural sounding. Some of our favorite offenders: Doostang, Motiva, Ziizoo, Fragranza, Advogato, Mathnasium, and our #1 head-scratcher, Xobni. Eat My Words first heard about Xobni when one of their investors wisely suggested we rename them. This internet start-up fails on so many levels: It's difficult to spell, impossible to pronounce, and evocative of absolutely nothing. What is Xobni? It's inbox spelled backwards. Cute to the founders. Dumbfounding to customers. If you have to explain a name to someone, it's a bad name. And if there is a hidden meaning in your name, make it a bonus instead of a brain grinder. For instance, our friends created a cool do-it-yourself ringtone software named DJ Nitrogen. Great name. What's even better is that NITROGEN is an anagram for RINGTONE. Super cool and fun to know. But the name doesn't depend on people "getting" the hidden meaning. For more on the subject of invented website names (and a few more jabs at Xobni), read "How Do You Tell a Web Name From a Typo?" in the Washington Post and David Pouge's "The Dr. Seuss Jumble: Naming Web Sites" from The New York Times.