Naming your web company can be a huge challenge to a new partners. Like naming your first child, you might go back and forth on names, argue over them, convince yourself one name might be the only one in the world for you and then change your mind the next day.

The one thing to remember is it’s not easy. But what can you do to make sure you don’t pull out all your arm hair trying to scratch out a good namesake?

Should you ask someone for help?

After a few failed brainstorming sessions, we decided to each pick our five favorite names (15 total), and send out an online survey form to our peers and those we thought represented our target audience. About 26 or so people responded, some of them being outside our target demographic, and none of them showing any particular favor for any of our names. For the most part, nearly everyone disliked the names we had picked and some even mocked the survey we wrote.

Still, the survey was good for us, as we learned what names people disliked.

You could also seek out the help of professional branding and naming services.

Benefits of seeking out help with company naming:

1. Collective input from peers and professionals
2. Get help building a brand
3. Expert advice and more opportunities to develop your target clients

Drawbacks:

1. Potentially costly: A simple survey sent out to friends, family and clients may cost you nothing if you use survey sites such as zoomerang. But seek out the help of an expert and you could spend up to $35,000 on just developing a name, according to Entrepreneur.
2. You may have to sift through a bunch of suggestions you don’t care for.
3. Friends will come up with names that are perfect for you, so why won’t you pick them???

Your name should have a meaning!

One way to make your company memorable is to have a memorable name. That means, when people think or hear your company’s name, they should call to mind feelings or values, as well as products or services, that your company wants to extol.

We got the first part of our name thinking this way.

While strolling through Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village,  we started thinking about what services we wanted to offer. Were we simply a web design company? Were we a web marketing company? Were we strictly search engine optimizers? Well, we’re all that and then some.

We are a company that not only can start other company’s web business strategies from scratch, but also build existing web brands into the apex of web brands. We do this by, well, optimizing them.

“Optimize,” one of us said.

“Optimal,” followed another.

And that was part one! Next came the harder defining part. Optimal what? Were we a media company, web design firm, ect. … We didn’t want to include net, web or online in our name, because that all sounded a little too cheesy for us. But the more we spit out words the closer we came to naming something with the word web in it. Closer and closer we got until someone blurted out “webworks.”

And we were born! Optimal Webworks.

Avoid killing yourself over creating a name

Don’t think too hard about giving yourself an identity. If you’re stuck, take a break and come back to it, or seek help from outsiders. Just remember, this is your company, you have the final say.

In the meantime, check out some tips from Entrepreneur about mistakes to avoid when picking a name for your web company. A couple of those mistakes we actually committed, including “naming by committee” and “thinking up obscure words.”

Got advice for naming a company? Share your ideas!