Startup Name Generator

Names built the way tech names are actually built — dropped vowels, classical roots, blends, repurposed words — each one arriving with its parts labelled and a plain-rules estimate of how contested the matching .com will be.

Every name comes with its recipe

Most generators hand you a column of invented words and nothing else, which leaves you guessing why any of them exist. This one prints the construction underneath each name: the method that produced it, the morphemes it is assembled from, and what those morphemes mean. Lumogen is not a random syllable pile — it is lum-, Latin for light, joined to gen-, Greek for origin, with the linking -o- that classical compounds conventionally take.

That matters at the point where naming actually gets decided, which is a room with other people in it. A founder who can say what a name is made of has an argument; a founder holding a string has a preference. The receipt also catches the reverse problem — a root quietly carrying a sense you did not want, like a health product built on crypt-, Greek for hidden.

The friction score, and what it is not

It is not a lookup. The page makes no network request of its own after it loads and has no view of any registry. What it does is score the letters of a name against a fixed set of rules, printed here in full so you can disagree with them:

• Five letters or fewer adds 3 points; six adds 2; seven adds 1; eleven or more subtracts 1.
• The whole name appearing in the built-in list of common English words adds 4 points.
• The name splitting cleanly into two words from that list adds 2 points.
• Using none of the letters j, k, q, v, w, x or z adds 1 point; using two or more subtracts 1.
• A hyphen or a digit subtracts 2, because those shapes stay available for a reason.

Six points or more is reported as high friction, three to five as moderate, one or two as some, and zero or below as low. The weights assume that short, plain, easily spelled words are the ones every registrant has already wanted. Treat a high score as a prompt to line up alternatives, not as a verdict.

Domain shapes worth checking

Each row suggests two or three addresses, generated from the name itself. When the last letters happen to spell a real top-level domain, the tool shows the split: a name ending in io, ly, is or at can be read across the dot. Otherwise it offers the conventional fallbacks — a get- prefix, an -hq or -app suffix, or a shorter extension.

Two caveats. Those extensions are genuine country-code and generic domains, but registries differ: some require a local presence or an eligibility check, and renewal prices vary widely. And a domain hack reads well in a browser bar while being awkward out loud, because you have to say the dot.

The conventions this builds from

The methods behind the controls are patterns you can observe in existing technology names rather than rules anyone enforces. Clipping drops the vowel before a final r or l, so an -er or -le word loses a letter and stops being a word. Suffixing attaches -ly, -ify or -io to a plain verb.

Classical compounding joins two roots, or a particle such as neo- to a root, inserting the linking -o- where two consonants would otherwise collide. A single root can take a Latinate ending instead.

Repurposing points an ordinary concrete noun at something unrelated. Blending overlaps two words where the tail of one already spells the head of the other. Invented syllables assembles a pronounceable word from onsets and vowels English permits, discarding anything that lands on an unfortunate substring.

Frequently asked questions

Does this check whether the .com is available?

No, and no static page can. Everything above runs as JavaScript inside your browser and makes no network request of its own, so there is no registry on the other end of it. The friction score is a guess computed from the letters using the rules above. A registrar search is the only thing that answers the question.

Is a coined name better than a real word?

They fail in opposite directions. A real word is easy to say down a phone line and impossible to own cheaply. A coinage is cheap to own and means nothing until you have paid to teach people what it means. The middle path is a blend or a classical compound: enough real material to feel like a word, enough distortion to be yours.

Could a generated name run into a trademark?

It could, and this page has no way to tell you. Nothing here consults a trademark register, and a mark can be free in one country or class of goods while being taken in another. Search the registers covering where you plan to trade, and speak to a qualified adviser before the name goes on anything expensive. None of this is legal advice.

Why do the roots come with meanings attached?

Because a name you cannot explain is hard to defend and easy to abandon under pressure. The glosses are short conventional equivalents — one English word standing in for a root a dictionary would give a paragraph — and they show you the sense you are picking up, including the one you did not intend.

Where this tool stops

The built-in word list holds a few hundred common English words, not a dictionary, so an uncommon real word can be scored as though it were invented. The syllable figure counts vowel groups, an approximation that fire and queue defeat. Everything here is English and Latin-alphabet.

It has no opinion on whether a name is already in use by anyone, and no access to competitor names or search volume. What you type stays on your device, though the advertising slot on the page will load third-party resources of its own once advertising is enabled.