If you’ve ever had trouble coming up with a creative name for your band, team, business, gaming account name, etc., you’re not alone. Often times my friends will say to me “You must help me come up with a good name! I’m getting furious!!” Well, I’m glad to say I have some advice that might help you in your effort.

For example, the English language has many sayings (aka idioms), such as “Half-Baked”. To someone who has just learned English, when they hear “half-baked” they might think of a cheap potato from Wendy’s, but to a person well versed in the English language, we know it refers to an idea that hasn’t been thought out very thoroughly. Sometimes these sayings (aka idioms) can be pretty decent names for what you are looking for. There are many idioms in our language, and you can check them out at this website or you can just search Google for “English Idioms”, it doesn’t even have to be English either!

Another useful resource when trying to come up with a name is a thesaurus. If you don’t know what a thesaurus is, it is a magical dinosaur that inspires creativity in ones mind….just kidding. A thesaurus (can be in the form of a book, website, or any sort of writing surface) provides you with a word that has a similar meaning to another word. For example, if you look up the word “hat” it may give you words like “cap” or “sombrero”. I like to use www.thesaurus.com. This is often helpful when you want your name to have a certain meaning, but you can think of a word that would fit.

Also, you might be able to find a good name by browsing the urban dictionary. If you look long enough, I’m sure you can find something that you like, but be warned, this site is not for all audiences.

I also like to browse historical and cultural information, you may find a sweet name by searching “list of deities” on Wikipedia, or maybe even searching things like “wild west gunslingers” or “police lingo” in a search engine.

If you use these resources in cooperation with with each other, it will help you think of a creative name a lot faster than trying to think of them straight from your brain. I hope this helps!

Tags: band names, clan names, creative, How-to, information, team names

This entry was posted on Friday, October 10th, 2008 at 9:32 pm and is filed under How-to. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.