Name and promise

Supports: Developer, week 5 (Brand, website and mockups), Part 1: brand name. Time: about two and a half hours, spread over two days.

1. Why this matters

A name is the first thing anyone knows about your product. It is how people ask for it, search for it, recommend it and complain about it. A hard-to-spell name loses word-of-mouth. A clever name nobody can search for loses discovery. A name that promises more than the product does loses trust on the first visit.

The promise is the other half. It is the single sentence you make to a person about what will be true if they use your product. Everything else, the website, the pitch, the support replies, will repeat it. If you cannot keep it, nothing else you write will matter.

A Product Development Manager (PDM) treats naming as a decision with evidence and risk, not as a creative afternoon. The name carries legal risk (someone else may own it), market risk (people may not remember or understand it) and honesty risk (the promise may be bigger than the product). Agents can brainstorm a hundred names in a minute. Choosing one is a judgement, and it is yours.

What the PDM decides here

You decide	You may delegate to an agent	You verify	Other disciplines involved
The candidates you test, the name, the promise and what you will not claim	Brainstorming candidates; checking spelling and pronunciation issues across languages; drafting a search checklist	Availability checks you ran yourself; what real people remembered; that the promise is true today	Legal (trade marks, claims), marketing (message, domain), sales and support (how people will say it), finance (domain and registration costs)

2. Key ideas

A good name

The week 5 page lists the qualities. Say them aloud:

• Short. Two or three syllables.
• Easy to say and spell, including for people who speak another language.
• Free to use. Not taken by another product or company in your field.
• Honest. It does not promise what you cannot do.

The UK government’s guidance on naming a service adds a counterweight to cleverness: choose a name that describes what the service does in words users would use, so that people can find it by searching for what they need. You do not have to follow it, but ask the question: “If Maya searched for what she needs, would she find us?”

The promise

A promise is one sentence with a person, a result and a limit. Compare:

• “TrailMug is the future of sustainable coffee.” (No person, no result, no limit. It cannot be tested.)
• “Swap a used cup for a clean one at a partner café in under a minute.” (A person, a result, a number.)

Write the promise so that someone could check it. If the product cannot do it yet, the promise says what it does now, or you add the word “pilot”. Figma’s brand storytelling material shows ways to describe what a product stands for. Use it for ideas, then reduce to one sentence a person could repeat.

Plain words

The GOV.UK guidance on content design starts from what people need, then writes the simplest content that meets it. The same applies to a name and a promise: say it as the person would say it to a friend.

Look at the neighbours

Look at who is already in your space. Figma’s competitive analysis guide shows a simple way to compare. List five similar products. Note their names, their promises and their tone. Your name should not be confused with theirs, and your promise should say something they do not.

Availability: three checks and one adviser

Do these yourself:

1. Search. Type the name and the name plus your field into a search engine. Look at the first three pages. Is anyone using it for something similar?
2. Domain and handles. Check whether the domain name and the social handles you would want are free.
3. Trade-mark databases. Search the trade-mark register in your country, and in the regions where you will operate, for the name in your field.

This is a first screen, not legal advice. Before launch, ask a trade-mark adviser. Record what you checked, the date and what you found.

Test with people

Pick three candidates. Ask five people, not friends who will be polite, to look at each name for a few seconds. Do not explain the product. A day later, ask which names they remember and what they think the product does. Names people remember and correctly guess are the strong ones. Names people remember wrongly are a warning.

Decide and write one sentence

Pick one. Write one sentence for why. Then write the promise. Date it and put it in git.

3. Step by step

Step 1: Write the promise first, in rough form

Before names, write: “For (person) who (need), (product) lets them (result), unlike (today’s option).” The name is easier once you know what it must carry.

Step 2: Look at five neighbours

List five similar products with their names and promises. Note what sounds the same.

Step 3: Brainstorm and cut

Write 15 to 20 names. Cut by the four qualities. Keep three to five.

Step 4: Run the three checks

For each remaining name, run the search, the domain and handles check and the trade-mark search. Record the results. Drop any with a clear conflict.

Step 5: Pick three candidates

Choose three that passed.

Step 6: Ask five people

Show each name for a few seconds with no explanation. A day later, ask which they remember and what they think it is. Record the answers, without arguing.

Step 7: Choose

Pick the winner using the evidence. Write one sentence on why.

Step 8: Finalise the promise

Write one sentence with a person, a result and a limit. Strike any word you cannot prove. Check it against what the product does today.

Step 9: Record

Save brand/name-decision.md with candidates, checks, test answers, the decision and the promise.

4. Worked example: TrailMug

TrailMug is fictional. The founder’s rough promise: “For commuters who hate waste, a cup you can swap at any partner café.”

Neighbours. Five cup-sharing or reuse services. Three had names with the word “loop”. Two promised “zero waste” without saying how. She noted that “loop” names blur together, and that “zero waste” is a claim she could not prove.

Candidates. Fifteen names, cut to three: TrailMug, SwapCup and CupRound.

Checks.

Name	Search	Domain and handles	Trade-mark search
TrailMug	No similar product on three pages	.com taken by a hiking brand; a .co variant free; handle free	No conflict found in her field in her country (first screen)
SwapCup	Two similar services	Taken	Not completed
CupRound	One similar service	Free	Conflict in a nearby field

Test. Five people saw the three names for five seconds. A day later, four remembered “TrailMug”, two remembered “SwapCup” and one remembered “CupRound”. Asked what TrailMug was, three said “something for coffee on the go”, one said “hiking”, one said “no idea”. One said the name made her think of walking with a mug.

Decision. “I chose TrailMug because most people remembered it and guessed it was about drinks on the move, and I found no conflict in my first screen. I will ask a trade-mark adviser before launch. The .com domain is taken, so I use the .co variant for now, and I accept that this is a risk.”

Promise. First draft: “Reduce waste with the sustainable cup swap.” She struck “reduce waste” (not proven) and “sustainable” (a claim). Final: “Swap a used cup for a clean one at a partner café in under a minute.” She checked it: the trial cafés could do it in about a minute. She added “pilot” to the website until the trial confirmed the number.

Recorded. brand/name-decision.md with all of the above, the date and the open risk: “trade-mark adviser not yet consulted”.

5. Working with AI agents on this

Delegate:

• Brainstorming. “Give me 40 name ideas for a reusable-cup swap service for cafés. Short, easy to say. Avoid the words loop and eco.”
• Language checks. “For each of these names, say whether it has a known meaning, or is hard to pronounce, in English, Spanish, French, German, Hindi and Mandarin. Mark anything you are unsure about.”
• A search checklist. “List the registers and search steps I should use to check a product name in my country and field. Give official sources.”
• Pressure on the promise. “List every word in this promise that I could not prove with a test. Do not rewrite.”
• A neighbour table. From the five products’ websites, which you give it, ask it to extract name and promise sentences, with quotes.

Do yourself:

• Choose the candidates you test.
• Run the availability checks and record them.
• Ask real people, and listen without defending.
• Decide the name and write the promise.
• Decide what you will not claim.

A brief you can adapt:

Here is my product promise and five similar products. Generate 40
candidate names. Rules: two or three syllables, easy to spell, no real
word that means something unrelated and awkward, and not similar to any of
the five names. Do not check availability and do not claim any name is
free. Output a plain list.
Then, for each name I send back, tell me in one line if it has a known
meaning or is hard to say in English, Spanish, French or German. Mark any
you are unsure about as UNSURE.

How to check the output. Agents often suggest names that already exist as real products, or give confident language claims that are wrong. Verify every name yourself. Treat a language note marked UNSURE as unknown, and ask a native speaker.

Warning about legal claims. Agents cannot tell you a name is safe to use. Do not accept “this name is available” from one. A trade-mark adviser’s answer is the one that counts.

Where this sits on the ladder. The agent skill of a manager climbs four rungs: use one agent, delegate whole tasks with a brief, orchestrate several sessions, and govern them with written policy, hooks and gates. This lesson sits on use. You ask, check and decide, one step at a time. The decision record and the list of banned claims become inputs to later policy, because every page and message must keep the promise. The agent orchestration track covers the upper rungs.

Disclose. In brand/name-decision.md: “AI use: brainstorming and a first language check. The tests, the checks, the choice and the promise are mine.”

6. Common mistakes

• Falling in love before checking. Check first, then choose.
• Clever, unsearchable names. Ask whether a person could find it.
• Names that blur with neighbours. Look at five of them.
• Asking only friends. Ask people who will be honest, and do not explain.
• A promise with no person or no limit. It cannot be tested.
• Words you cannot prove. “Sustainable”, “best”, “secure”, “fast”.
• Treating an agent’s “it is free” as a fact. Check it yourself and ask an adviser.
• Not recording the open risk. Write what you have not yet checked.

7. Practice: choose the name

Deliverable: brand/name-decision.md in your git repo, with:

1. A rough promise, written before the names.
2. Five neighbours with their names and promises (quoted).
3. Fifteen to twenty candidates and the three or more you kept.
4. For each kept name: search result, domain and handles, trade-mark search, date.
5. The answers of five people on memory and meaning.
6. The decision with one sentence of reasoning.
7. The final promise and what you struck out.
8. The open risks.
9. Your AI-use line.

Commit with a message such as Choose product name and write promise.

Check: say the name and the promise to someone in one breath. Ask her to say them back a day later.

Stretch: draw the promise as a test. Write the check that would prove it true in front of a person, with a number.

8. Checklist

• I wrote the promise before choosing a name.
• I looked at five neighbours.
• I ran search, domain and trade-mark checks myself and dated them.
• Five honest people tested my three candidates.
• The name is short, easy to say and spell and honest.
• The promise has a person, a result and a limit.
• I struck every word I cannot prove.
• Open risks are written down, including the adviser.
• I recorded my AI use.

9. Further learning

The UK government’s guidance on naming a service argues for names that describe what the service does. Its content design guidance shows how to start from what people need. Figma’s brand storytelling and competitive analysis guides give frameworks for stating a promise and comparing neighbours. In the next lesson you turn the name and promise into a one-page brand sheet.