Coming up with the name for our studio

Coming up with great names can be a huge pain and it's easy to invest countless hours of brainstorming without finding anything good. In the last years I developed many smaller software projects and of course needed a name for all of them. So naming things isn't new to me, but I still find it difficult. Most of that projects were rather small, so the name was not that important. So some of them are better and others are pretty uninspired. For me the importance of the project makes a huge difference on how picky I am regarding the name.

Last year when the idea of founding a software development company became real, we faced the same task of coming up with a name. At first I looked for the list of possible names I created for the last company we founded two years earlier. But I didn't really find something useful there.

The search two years earlier

In 2023 we faced the same challenge. We were founding a web development studio and also needed a name for it. Back then were searching for countless hours, so this time I could already guess that it would not be so easy.

Here are some of the ideas from back then:

• Artek
• Edgewise
• Webit
• Align
• Creatic
• Black Magic
• Alchemist
• Alchemia
• Fairytale
• Shadow
• Elixier
• Daydream
• Root
• Motion Magic
• Kickoff
• Origami
• Ghost
• Magic potion
• Black potion
• Purple potion
• Undead design
• Dejavu

As you can see we primarily searched for something related to magic back then, although it eventually became something else. We finally decided on Black Lemon.

Coming up with Ghostbyte

After not finding something on the old list the real search begun. I headed to namelix.com and started generating tons of possible names. Later I tried using ChatGPT to generate words but they all felt quite generic and not too good. I tried to find inspiration everywhere on the internet. Read articles about coming up with good names. Browsed Reddit threads. I even read through lists of Greek gods. Just to find out that every name I liked has already been taken by either a huge company or a software development company (same field of work than we are).

This time we initially wanted something space exploration themed, but it became something different again. Here are some of the ideas that made it on the list:

• ByteStorm
• ByteShift
• Moonbound
• Lunar
• Oncode
• Byteflow
• Orbita Designs
• Zero Gravity Creations
• Impossible Studio
• Pathfinder
• Overcloud
• Lunacode
• Polymoon
• Bytecraft
• Portal
• Explorer
• Underspace
• Airpath
• CurvedGravity
• Pixeldust
• Pixelbound
• Pixelflow
• Falling Pixel
• Codedust
• Moonjump
• Moonflow
• Astroflow
• Boxcode Labs

We also checked how they look in some context:

Developed in with ❤️ by Pixeldust

Developed with ❤️ by Polymoon

And finally we decided on Ghostbyte.

In our opinion it sounds good, is pronouncable, not too long and pretty unique. Some smaller projects or social media accounts with the same name do exist, but no company or similar. So we figured that it will not be a problem for our website to be the first to appear when you google for ghostbyte.

Is it the first one? Check it out: Ghostbyte Google Search

The domains ghostbyte.com and ghostbyte.at (.at is the top level domain of Austria) were taken but we decided that it would be cool to have a .dev domain anyway. So there were no reasons not to take it and we were glad that the search was over.

There are many websites for checking the availability of domain names. We are using world4you.com/domain-check because we are also getting our domains from there.

The challenges

In short the hardest challenges we faced were the following:

• The name should be (more or less) unique.
• It should sound good (obvious point)
• It should not be limiting the company to a specific area of operation.
• It should be international and easy to pronounce, to read and to write.
• It should not be too long.
• The desired domain should be available and not be too expensive.

All in all I would say as long as a name fits most of that few points it should be ok. Honestly I think the name doesn't really matter too much. I have the feeling that at the beginning every name feels a bit weird, but after agreeing on one you will get used to it quickly.

Just in case you are searching for a company name too and like some of the ideas on the lists, feel free to take them. They are yours.