What Are You Going to Call Your Application?

“What’s in a name?” That Shakespeare guy could have been talking about naming your Android application when he said that “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” In the same manner, it isn’t always necessary to name your application the obvious one. The true test of a name is discovering one that is catchy and memorable.

I’m sure you are all familiar with Google, a company name that we commonly use a verb today. Before we were all “googling” stuff we wanted to know more about, we never used the word Google in a sentence. The name supposedly is derived from the word googolplex, a number that is followed by a googol zeroes. A googol (pronounced the same as Google) is the numerical value of 1 followed by 100 zeroes. The Googleplex is also the name of the headquarters of Google.

I suppose that Google implies a vast number and complications, but even that has very little to do with what Google is most known for, which is its search engine. Google could have chosen “WebSearcher” or “Seekers” for its name, as those would have been descriptive. In the online world, many names are chosen so users will not mix up the company with another. In fact, there are entire companies, such as Interbrand, devoted to naming things to make sure that proposed names are unique don’t translate to something bad in another language.

It is less important what the name is as long as it denotes a brand—a way that a company differentiates its goods or services from others. Google is a good example of a successful brand. Before I discuss branding any more, let me add an important piece of trivia about Google’s name. Google announced on April 1, 2010 that it was changing its name to “Topeka.” As you can see by the date of the announcement, it was an April Fool’s Day prank. In all honesty, if the company had originally chosen the name Topeka, and used similar marketing strategies, we would be “Topeka-ing” things. As it stands right now, Google is a brand, and it would be a mistake for a company as big as Google to suddenly change its name.

If you don’t believe me, here’s an example. You might know of a big fast-food company known as Jack in the Box. In 1985, the company decided that it wanted to remove the juvenile association with a toy and go for a classier image with the name of Monterey Jack’s. It was a colossal failure, and the company brought back its name in 1986. I bring this up to demonstrate the danger of rebranding, and how naming creates a standard that cannot be changed very easily.

Another example of a successful brand is Apple. The name Apple has nothing to do with computers, but the company has done so much in the past few decades that it is an internationally known brand, like Google.

This is the challenge of picking a name. One would think that the most descriptive names would be the best choices, since they are the ones that will turn up on search engines. However, many descriptive names are not protectable against trademark infringements. I will discuss trademarks later in this chapter.

As an Android developer, it is important that you come up with a name that will describe what your application does without going into too much detail. This will make it show up on search engines. Earlier I discussed an application that can organize baseball cards. If I called it Baseball Card Organizer, then I can guarantee it would be difficult to trademark. That name is too descriptive, and it is also way too long. Considering that the Android Market only shows a certain amount of letters, the full name of the app will be cut off. I could call it BC Organizer, but I would have to market that well so people will know what “BC” stands for. BC Organizer could easily refer to organizing events that happened in years BC, for example.

If you want to pick a name that has nothing to do with your product, then you are going to have to do a lot of marketing to make certain people know about it. However, if the name has at least something to do with what your product does and is easy to remember, it helps.

I recently discovered an application known as Thrutu, which allows two Android phone users to share location, contacts, and photos (see Figure 2-5). The name Thrutu means nothing standing on its own, but, after using the application, it implies that I am sending things through to another Android user. In short, the name is a descriptor if you know the product.

Figure 2-5. Thrutu, an Android application with a short and descriptive name, provided you know what it does

Your job as a developer is to find a name that is a balance of originality and a sensible description of what the application does, if possible. Keep in mind that there is a limit to the amount of letters you can use. If your name is too long, it could get cut off when displayed on the Android Market. It is best to go with one original word that is simple to remember. An original word is less likely to have already been used, and marketing will help that word become your personal brand.

Also, to avoid lawsuits, do a quick search on the US Patent and Trademark Office’s Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS). Just go to http://uspto.gov/trademarks/ (or the equivalent sites for any other countries that you want to market to outside the United States). The last thing you want to do is market an Android application that has the same trademarked name as something already out there. I’ll go more into detail about trademarks a little later in this chapter.

Once you have your name down, you should definitely snatch it up as a domain name for the web site devoted to your application. Yes, it is important that you have a web site, and yes, I will go more into detail about it in the next chapter.

Search the Whois database to discover if your name has been taken as a URL. Just go to http://whois.net and type in your particular domain name, along with the suffix (.com, .org, .net, or whatever). If you find that it has been taken, you can add something to the name or insert a hyphen in the name, but only if you are certain that your web site will not be mistaken for this other web site. You don’t want to get your application mixed up with another one, as that publicity you’ll get from this is temporary and dependent on how popular the other application is. The worst-case scenario is that you buy a domain name that is similar to a porn site or some other site that represents some questionable business.