06 / Naming
Twelve names in,one that spells itself.
A domain name shortlist service for small business. You send one brief; within seven working days you get twelve candidates, each checked for availability, registration history, phone spelling and obvious trademark conflict.
01 / Method
How the shortlistgets to twelve.
We start wide. A brief usually produces 40 to 60 raw candidates from the business name, the trade, the town and the words customers already use for you. Most of them die within an hour. The exact .com is registered, or the name is one letter from a competitor, or it only makes sense if you have seen it written.
What survives goes through four checks, in this order, because each one is cheaper than the next and kills more names.
- Availability. An RDAP lookup on the .com and the obvious alternatives. If the name is registered we note who holds it and whether it looks used, parked or listed for sale.
- History. Archive snapshots and domain blocklists. A name that hosted pharmacy spam in 2017 carries that into your inbox years later. We read the WHOIS history before we read the price.
- The phone-spelling test. Described below. It removes more names than anything else.
- Trademark note. A first-pass search of the US federal register for identical and close marks in your class of goods or services.
Twelve candidates reach your inbox. Not five, which leaves you nowhere to go when the favorite turns out to belong to a cousin's ex-employer. Not thirty, which is a list you will never finish reading.
Candidates on every shortlist, each with a status line, a history line and a phone test result.
The phone-spelling test
Short names are taken. A clear two-word .com usually is not, and it spells itself over the phone. That second half is the test.
We call someone who has never heard of your business and read the name once, at normal speed, no spelling. They type it into a browser. If they land on the right address first time, the name passes. If they ask "with a K or a C?", or "is that one word?", or "the number four or the word?", it fails.
The failure we see most is a name that is clever on paper. A dropped vowel, a doubled letter, a homophone. Your customers will say it to each other in a parking lot and type it on a phone with a cracked screen. Every name that needs explaining costs you mail that goes to someone else's domain.
If you have to say "that's with two Ls", the name is costing you email.
TLD choice: .com, country codes and new endings
For a business selling in the United States, .com is still the default people type without thinking. We look there first, every time. Here is how the alternatives actually behave.
| Ending | When it works | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
| .com | Always the first look. People add it by reflex. | Mail typed by habit goes to the .com, so if someone else holds it, they get your misdirected email. |
| .us | A US business that wants a short name and accepts that it reads as local. | Registration requires a US nexus. No privacy proxy on the public record. |
| Country codes such as .co or .io | Tech-facing products whose customers already know the convention. | Each is run by a foreign registry under its own rules and price changes. .co is often mistyped as .com. |
| New endings such as .studio or .law | A second name pointing at the main one, or a trade where the ending says something real. | Some older spam filters still score unfamiliar endings harshly. Renewal prices on premium names can be several times the first year. |
When the right .com is held by someone else, we say so on the shortlist and note whether the holder seems open to an offer. If you want it, you buy a domain from the owner directly or through escrow. We can run a full domain status check on it first; we will not negotiate the price for you.
The trademark note
Every candidate gets one line on trademark: clear, close, or conflict. We search the federal register for identical marks and obvious near-matches in your class. A "close" result means there is a registered mark that a reasonable person might confuse with yours.
This is a screening search, not a legal opinion. We are not attorneys and the shortlist says so in writing. For the name you pick, an attorney's clearance search is a few hundred dollars well spent before you print anything. We would rather kill a name in week one than have you repaint a window in year two.
02 / Deliverable
What landsin your inbox.
One document, a call to walk through it, and a domain card once the name you pick is registered and pointed.
- 12 candidatesRanked, with a one-line reason for each rank.
- Status per nameAvailable, registered and used, registered and parked, or listed for sale.
- History per nameArchive and blocklist summary in two lines.
- Phone test resultPass, or what the listener typed instead.
- Trademark lineClear, close or conflict, with the mark cited.
Day 1: the brief
You answer six questions by email or on a 20-minute call: what you sell, to whom, where, the words customers use for you, names you already hate, and any name you are attached to.
Days 2 to 5: generate and cut
Forty to sixty raw candidates, then availability and history checks. Usually fewer than twenty survive to the phone test.
Day 6: phone test and trademark screen
Each survivor is read to someone who has never heard it. Then the federal register search.
Day 7: the shortlist and a call
You get the document and 30 minutes with one of us. You register the name yourself, in your own account. If it needs mail, mail setup follows.
03 / Fair questions
Why pay fora list of names?
I can search availability myself for free.
You can, and you should try. The free search tells you whether a name is registered. It does not tell you that the available name was dropped in 2021 after two years on a spam blocklist, or that a florist two states over holds the trademark. That is the part that takes the time.
Do you register the names for me?
No. You register the one you choose, in your own registrar account, with your own card. We do not sell names and we do not hold them. It takes five minutes and we stay on the phone while you do it if you like.
What if I do not like any of the twelve?
Tell us why within 14 days and we run one more round of six from the same brief, adjusted for what you said. If the brief itself has changed, that is a new brief.
Who is this not for?
If you need a brand identity, a logo and a tagline, hire a naming or brand studio. We check whether a name works as an address. A company that already has a name and just needs it to work online wants a domain name check instead.
04 / Start
Send the brief.Seven days.
From USD 450 per brief, indicative. You get a written quote before anything starts.
Use the form on the contact page and pick "Domain name shortlist", or call +1 (861) 555-8670.