There are a number of tools you can use to help you find the right name for your business, product, firm or website etc:
- Our Word Lookup Tools page provides thesaurus, dictionary, translation and encyclopædia search tools to help you find the name you want.
- The Online Name Generator website provides various name creation tools, as does Wordlab. The Winning Names website also provides worthwhile guidance.
- Google is a wonderful tool for searching the Internet to help decide on name availability, but both Boardreader and Boardtracker can also be used to search Internet bulletin boards and forums for any term you enter and provide a report with links to the relevant postings.
- There are various facilities online for searching domain names you can use to check if the name you want is available. Our domain name search tool is available here. For example also, namedroppers.com can search for any domain names containing defined keywords, although it is limited to gTLD’s and .us.
- You can use the yell.com, BT Phone Book, 192.com or Applegate business directories to look for businesses with the same or very similar name anywhere in the country.
- The Companies House Webcheck service can be used to check limited companies in the UK, as can Jordans and an ICC database search will find both registered and unregistered companies in the UK and Ireland.
- Reports on registered and unregistered companies can be obtained through the Company Searches Made Simple website.
- Basic limited UK trade mark searches can be carried out via our UK IPO Trade Mark Search web page – but also see our factsheet Trade Mark & Marketing Clearance.
Don’t forget that when you’ve chosen your new name, and checked it’s free, to think about protecting it! – see our factsheet Protecting Your Identity.
Please note that we do not endorse any of the above as we merely offer them here as tools which we hope may help.
