How to Name your Product

The obvious, not-so-obvious & the legal stuff

Photo by Austin Kirk

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One of the things a Product Manager will be involved in at some point in their career is Naming a product they are working on. Its quite a responsibility, especially if you’ve never “named” anything before.

Sometimes people compare “naming” a product to finding a name for your babies. The first problem with that comparative is not only that Not everyone has kids, but also that your product is not your baby. While for babies a warm and loving name is a job well done, when you are launching a product in the wild you need to take note of several other objective factors.

Several years ago, I found myself with the opportunity to name a product we were working hard to build. All the while we were building the product, the team had an “internal” name for it — “FLEET”. That’s what everybody else in the company called it too. To this day, I don’t know who came up with that name.

Anyway, It was a SaaS product that helped people manage multiple Wi-Fi thermostats through a web app. Said another way, you could manage a “Fleet of Thermostats”.