How to choose a good name for your product or project

Recently, at work, we spent a decent chunk of time trying to come up with a good name for a project. It's tough. As part of the process I came up with a list of things to take into account. I am posting it here as a way of remembering it, and hopefully it will be useful to others.

A good name should be:

Interesting

Meaningful

One word, short and memorable

Not a trademark (registered or not)

Not already in use for something else very popular

Search produces few results

The .com domain name available

Easy to pronounce and spell; difficult to misspell

Sounds good

Unique (because you want to build a brand around the name)

Not generic (cannot be trademarked; difficult to find on a search engine)

People would wear it on a t-shirt

Can be paired with a good symbol or mascot

Does not have negative connotations (in any major languages, including slang)

If you are looking for inspiration, try Impossibility, which is a combined name generator and domain name check in one. Very useful.