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Summary: Naming quotes, how much does it cost to name a brand
Naming is one of the most structuring decisions in branding. Very complicated to change once the brand is launched, not impossible, but costly and risky. At Wiiv, naming is included in Deepbranding: it is done after strategy, never before. It depends on the market, the target, and the positioning, not primarily on the product. And it must pass the full web test: domain availability, social media, international verification, proximity to competitors. Wiiv is a strategic branding and packaging agency based in Paris, operating in Bordeaux, Lyon, and Milan.
In some cases, naming is already included in the price of our deepbranding, and our rates can be found here: Online Quote
Naming quote: how much does it cost to name your brand (and why it's the wrong first question)
The question we often get asked: "how much does naming cost?" The real question: "have I done everything necessary before I can choose a name?" The answer is almost never yes.
Naming is one of the first decisions a founder makes. And one of the least prepared. You have a product idea, you look for a name, you find one that "sounds good," you vaguely check if the .com is available, and you move on. Six months later, the brand exists with a name that doesn't match its positioning, resembles three competitors, is difficult to pronounce in a foreign language, or has an unfortunate meaning that could have been discovered with ten minutes of research.
Changing a name is not impossible. It's just very, very complicated. A community that has grown attached to a name, mentions in articles, SEO built on a brand, customers who no longer recognize the brand after the change: all these visible and invisible costs make most naming rebrands traumatic for the brands undergoing them. (We've seen them. It's not pleasant to observe from the outside.)
So it's better to do it right from the start. And doing it right starts with understanding that naming is not the first step. It's almost the last.
Naming comes after strategy, never before
We know that many founders already have a name in mind and are already attached to it. The question is whether they will be willing to change it if there is a (much) better option for their brand.
This is the most counter-intuitive and most important principle of strategic branding. Everyone wants a name before they have a strategy. It's human: the name makes the brand real, tangible, identifiable. But choosing a name before defining your real target, precise positioning, and brand essence is like choosing a direction without knowing where you're going.
What naming must convey is the brand strategy. The phonetic register of a name must speak to the real target (not the imagined target). The tone it creates must be consistent with the positioning (a technical name cannot carry a lifestyle brand, even with the best visual branding). The association it produces in the buyer's mind must reinforce the brand essence, not contradict it.
A name chosen before strategy is a name chosen based on the founder's intuition, not on market reality. And the founder's intuition about what their brand should be called is almost always biased by their personal preferences, cultural references, and what they think their target likes. This is not the same as what their real target actually perceives.
At Wiiv, naming is included in Deepbranding: the eleven strategic steps always precede the choice of name. It is only after defining the real target, precise positioning, brand essence, and tone of voice that a solid naming brief can be built. And it is this brief that produces names consistent with what the brand truly is, not with what the founder imagined it would be.
To understand the eleven steps that precede naming, our full article on Deepbranding details each section.
What determines a good name: the market, the target, the positioning. Then the product
Too many founders base their naming on their product, yet it is clearly not the priority axis, and today less than ever.
In that order. Not the other way around. This is where most founders go wrong: they start with the product. "I have a lawnmower, what do I call it?" Wrong question. The right one: "I have a brand that targets such and such a target, with such and such a positioning, in such and such a market: what name register speaks to this precise person?"
The market
Each market has its own sonic codes. The names in luxury cosmetics sound different from those in artisanal food. The names in contemporary premium pet care sound different from those in sports nutrition. Analyzing these codes to identify what is saturated and what is still free is the first step of the naming brief. We are not trying to resemble the sector. We are trying to find the sonic territory that is available and legitimate for this specific brand.
The real target
A name doesn't sound the same to everyone. A name perceived as premium by a 35-year-old urban target may seem pretentious to a 45-year-old suburban target. A short, impactful name can build trust with a target accustomed to digital brands and seem too "startup" to a more traditional target. The real target (not the imagined one) determines the sonic register, the length, and the level of familiarity or distance that the name should create.
The positioning
Premium positioning imposes different naming constraints than accessible positioning. A lifestyle brand can afford an evocative, almost abstract name. A scientific brand needs signals of seriousness and competence in its name. A committed brand can choose a name that takes a stand. Positioning dictates the register. The register dictates the possible names.
The product, last
Yes, the product influences the name. But not first. A name doesn't necessarily have to describe what the product does. It must create the right association in the target's mind for this brand in this market. Billy doesn't describe a lawnmower. It creates the image of the benevolent friend who facilitates well-being. It's a decision of positioning and target, not a product description. And it's this choice, made after Deepbranding, that produced something memorable in a sector where no one had taken that risk.
The new freedoms of naming in 2026
Naming codes have evolved significantly in the last five years. What once seemed mandatory for a serious brand has become restrictive. And what seemed risky has become an opportunity for differentiation.
No need for an obvious link between the name and the product. Brands that have exploded in recent years often have names that describe nothing of what they sell. Notion is not note-taking software, Figma is not a design tool if you read the name out of context. In France, brands like Cycle, Arc, Arbre: names that create a mental image without describing the product. This freedom was seen as risky ten years ago. Today, it is a competitive advantage: descriptive names saturate and age quickly.
Fewer names with explicit meaning. "Naturalia," "Véridique," "Essence de quelque chose": these transparently meaningful names are saturated in almost all sectors. Buyers no longer read them. They blend into the mass. Invented names, hybrid names, names borrowed from other cultural registers (music, architecture, geography) create much greater memorability in an environment where attention is scarce.
More freedom in tone. A name can be funny in a serious sector. It can be sober in an exuberant sector. It can be English in a very French sector or vice versa. These choices no longer need to match the dominant codes of the sector to be legitimate. They must be consistent with the brand strategy. This is an important nuance: freedom does not mean arbitrariness.
The web test: what we check before validating a name
Yes, it often happens that a good naming is not adopted because the market already presents too many closures on that name, which is also why brand names are becoming more and more "special."
A name that passes the strategic test must then pass the web test. And this test eliminates many names that seemed perfect on paper. (We've seen naming workshops result in three strategically excellent names, all three impossible in practice. It's frustrating. That's also why we systematically do this test before getting attached to a name.)
The domain name
The .com remains the absolute priority. An available .com is a signal of credibility that .fr alone does not provide, particularly for brands with international ambitions or simply e-commerce. If the .com is not available, alternatives are .co, .io in some tech sectors, or a slight variation of the name. What is not an option: using a domain with hyphens or a misspelled domain to circumvent unavailability.
The .fr must also be available for brands operating mainly in France. And in some sectors, other extensions (.shop, .studio, .brand) can be strategic choices rather than fallback solutions.
Social media
Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest depending on the sector: handles must be available or very close to the chosen name. A handle @brandname_official because @brandname is taken by an inactive account since 2014 is not a solution. It's a permanent friction in all brand communications and potential confusion for buyers.
Verification must be done simultaneously on all relevant platforms, before any announcement or registration. There are tools that check multi-platform availability in seconds (Namecheckr, Namechecklist). It's five minutes that avoid problems that last for years.
International verification
A name can be perfect in French and catastrophic in another language. The examples are numerous and often embarrassing. International verification covers several points: meaning in the main languages of the target markets (English mandatory, Spanish and German depending on the markets), cultural connotations not apparent in direct translation, and phonetic proximity to negative or inappropriate words in other languages.
This verification is particularly important for brands with export ambitions or targeting multicultural markets. Taking this step lightly means risking discovering the problem after investing in branding, packaging, and launch.
Proximity to competitors
A legally and digitally available name can still pose a problem if it is too close to a competing brand. Phonetically close (buyers confuse them). Visually close in writing (search results get mixed up). Or semantically close (the two brands occupy the same mental territory in the buyer's mind).
This verification requires actively searching for direct and indirect competitors, checking Google results for the chosen name, and assessing the risks of confusion in the medium term if both brands grow simultaneously.
Legal verification
Trademark registration is a distinct step from naming, but it determines the freedom to use the name. Before definitively validating a name, a prior art search at the INPI (for France) and, if necessary, at the EUIPO (for Europe) is essential. A name registered by another brand in the same product classes is legally unusable, regardless of its strategic quality. This search can be done upstream or in parallel with the naming process to avoid validating a name that cannot be protected.
Naming included in Deepbranding: or not
At Wiiv, naming is included in Deepbranding. This is logical: since the name depends on the strategy, and the strategy is built during Deepbranding, the two go together.
But there are situations where it's not necessary. A brand that already has a name, that works well, that is memorable and consistent with its strategy does not need to redo its naming if it comes for a visual rebranding or a repositioning. In this case, Deepbranding is done with the existing name as a constraint, and the work consists of verifying that this name remains consistent with the new strategic direction. If so, we keep it. If the gap is too wide, the question of naming naturally arises.
What needs to be understood: having an existing name influences Deepbranding. It imposes constraints on certain strategic directions. A name deeply rooted in a traditional register cannot easily carry a brand that wants to position itself as radically modern. A very short and impactful name is not compatible with a positioning that requires nuance and explanation. These constraints are not prohibitive, but they must be integrated into the strategic thinking, not ignored.
We have had projects where the existing name was clearly a problem for the targeted positioning. The conversation is always delicate. But it's better to have it at the beginning of the project than after having produced a complete branding on a name that works against the brand.
Billy: an example of post-Deepbranding naming
All Billy's customers love this name; it makes the brand accessible and friendly. Exactly what was intended.
Billy is the product brand created by the founders of Wiiv. The name came after the eleven steps of Deepbranding, not before. And it was precisely this order that produced a name consistent with everything we had strategically built.
The target was defined: open to all, neither gendered nor restrictive. The brand essence was clear: ease and fun in daily well-being. The tone of voice was set: benevolent, close, like a friend. The positioning was lifestyle before cosmetics. And the market had its codes that we wanted to break.
From this foundation, we were looking for something short, little used in the sector, memorable, and consistent with benevolence and closeness. Billy corresponded to all of that: the image of a friend who wishes you well, who is there, who doesn't judge. Without describing the product. Without cosmetic codes. Without heavy meaning. Just an association that reinforced exactly what we had strategically decided.
People love this name. It's no coincidence. It's the logical consequence of naming done in the right order, from the right foundation.
Naming by AI: we tested it, several times, and here's what we found
We're not going to lie to you: we tried. Several times. With increasingly precise briefs, increasingly refined constraints, and increasingly numerous iterations. The result is always the same. AI generates correct names. Clean names. Plausible names. And completely interchangeable with names that any other brand in the same sector could have received with the same prompt.
The problem is not technical. It's structural. AI generates from what it knows: existing names, dominant patterns, combinations that have already worked elsewhere. It produces plausible, not distinctive. But naming is precisely the opposite of that. A good name must break something in the existing landscape, create a rupture, occupy a sonic territory that is not yet taken. And AI cannot do that because it cannot reason from what is missing. It reasons from what exists.
However, AI can be very useful for testing an existing name, especially regarding negative aspects and risks.
AI can, however, be very useful for testing a name that we already have, but rather on the negative aspects and risks. Asking it to evaluate memorability, potential associations, risks of confusion with existing brands, or meanings in other languages: there it is effective because it works on analysis, not on creation. This is an important distinction. We use AI to challenge our naming ideas, not to generate them. The nuance changes everything about the quality of the result.
How much does naming cost
Naming included in Deepbranding is part of the overall budget of the strategic branding project. It does not have a separate cost line because it is not done separately: it is a step in the process, not an autonomous service.
For a standalone naming, i.e., for a brand that already has solid branding and needs a name for a new range, a new product, or a sub-brand, the scope and budget are defined directly. The online quote tool covers complete branding. For naming alone, a direct exchange with the team allows defining the scope and estimate according to the specific context of the project.
What influences the budget of a naming: the number of geographical markets on which verification must be done, the number of product classes for prior art search, the complexity of the sector and competition, and whether the brand needs a unique name or a naming system for an entire range.
Naming in Bordeaux, Lyon, and Paris
Naming Bordeaux and Greater Southwest
Philippe, co-founder of Wiiv, is based in Bordeaux. For brands in the Greater Southwest looking for naming support as part of a complete branding project, local proximity allows for in-person exchanges in Bordeaux, Mérignac, Bayonne, Pau, or Périgueux. Natural sectors from Bordeaux: wines and spirits, Aquitaine food and gastronomy, cosmetics, crafts, and lifestyle. For projects that include naming, the starting point is a direct exchange or the online quote tool for complete branding.
Naming Lyon and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
Cynthia, co-founder of Wiiv, is in Lyon for a large part of the year. For brands in Lyon and the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region looking for strategic naming, her constant monitoring of the Italian and English markets directly informs recommendations on emerging sound codes and those that are becoming saturated. Premium gastronomy, cosmetics, fashion and lifestyle, premium pet products: these are the sectors where we provide naming support from Lyon.
Naming in Paris and National Markets
Wiiv is based in Paris. For Parisian brands and those targeting national or international markets, our naming benefits from an understanding of French and European markets and systematic international verification. E-commerce, cosmetics, food, lifestyle, tech: these are the sectors we support from Paris on strategic naming projects. To get started, a direct chat with the team or the online quote generator for a complete branding framework.
Frequently Asked Questions: Naming Quotes
How much does brand naming cost?
At Wiiv, naming can be included in Deepbranding. It does not have a standalone price because it requires creating or verifying certain aspects of the brand's strategy. It is not done separately: it stems from the strategy built during the eleven steps of Deepbranding. For standalone naming of a brand with existing branding, the budget is defined through direct discussion based on the precise scope of the project: geographical markets, number of product classes, complexity of the sector.
Can you do naming before branding?
Technically yes. Strategically, it's risky. A name chosen before the strategy is chosen intuitively, without knowing precisely who it's for, what sound register speaks to that target, and what positioning it should convey. The result can be memorable by chance. It can also be consistent with the founder's preferences but not with the expectations of its actual target. At Wiiv, naming comes after the strategic steps. Always.
How to choose a brand name available online?
By simultaneously checking .com, .fr, handles on all relevant platforms (Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest), availability in other target markets, and Google search results for that name. Tools like Namecheckr or Namechecklist verify multi-platform availability in seconds. This verification is done before committing to a name, not after.
Should a brand name describe the product?
No, and increasingly less so. Names that directly describe what a product does are saturating most sectors and age quickly. Invented, evocative names or those borrowed from other cultural registers often create superior memorability, stronger distinctiveness, and better longevity. What matters is that the name is consistent with the brand strategy, memorable for the actual target, and legally and digitally available.
How to verify that a brand name is legally available?
Through an anteriority search at INPI for France and EUIPO for Europe. This search verifies whether the name (or a phonetically or visually similar name) is already registered in the same product classes. If so, the name cannot be used or legally protected, regardless of its strategic quality. This verification is done in parallel with the naming process, before any final decision.
What differentiates a good name from a bad name in 2026?
A good name is memorable after a single exposure, distinctive in its sector, adaptable across a range and different markets, legally and digitally available, pronounceable and spellable without ambiguity, and consistent with the brand strategy. What it doesn't need to be: descriptive of the product, obviously related to what the brand sells, or in the usual codes of the sector. The freedoms of contemporary naming allow us to explore still-free sonic territories rather than replicating what already exists.
Should you change your name if your branding has evolved?
Not necessarily. If the existing name is memorable, available, and can remain consistent with the new strategic direction, keeping it is often the best decision. Changing a name is very complicated: a community attached to the old name, SEO to rebuild, customers who no longer recognize the brand. The question of naming really arises when the gap between the name and the new positioning is too great to be bridged by visual and editorial branding alone.
Is international naming mandatory even for a brand that only sells in France?
Highly recommended, even for a brand starting in the French market. A French e-commerce site is by default visible in international search results. Social networks have no borders. And a growing brand will one day face international challenges, even if it's not the initial goal. Anticipating an unfortunate meaning in another language or a proximity to a competing foreign brand costs five minutes during naming. Correcting it later costs infinitely more.
