Here Are The 7 Types Of Brand Names To Choose From For Your Fashion Brand

Abrand name is important for any brand as that is what clients, and the world at large, will come to use to identify your brand. No matter how big or small your brand is, for it to thrive it has to have a great brand name.

Every fashion brand requires a brand name to help it stand out and become familiar to the clients. For your fashion brand to have a great brand identity, it first has to have a brand name.

A brand is a voice and a product is a souvenir – Lisa Gansky.

Brand names are divided into 7 different types so there is a wide variety to choose from.

Types of Brand Names

1. Eponymous Brand Names:

Some brand are named after their founders, a family member of their founder or a historic figure. Such brand names work by embodying the vision and beliefs of their founder. They are also great for giving the founder a legendary status.

While these names are easy to come by, they can be hard to market, except the founder is a famous personality already.

Brands like Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Fendi, Lisa Folawiyo, Deola Sagoe and Taibo Bacar have eponymous brand names.

2. Descriptive Brand Names:

These brand names work by telling you exactly what it is that the brand does. For companies with low recognition, such brand names makes it’s easy for clients to have an instant sense of what to expect just by hearing the brand name.

These brand names can however be too wordy, unrecognisable and easily forgotten since they contain words that already exist. Many prominent companies that started with descriptive names have over the years changed them to acronyms.

Examples of descriptive brand names are, Nigerian Airways and Cartoon Network

3. Acronym Brand Names:

These names are shorthand versions of descriptive brand names, seeing as an acronym is a shortened version of a phrase. It uses the first letters from each word of the phrase. Acronym brand names are usually unique, snappy and memorable.

H&M, for instance, is an acronym of Hannes & Mauritz, and MAC stands for Make-up Art Cosmetics.

4. Suggestive Brand Names:

These brand names are gotten from real words and their concepts hint and what the brand does without really stating it plainly. It is divided into three categories:

Suggestive Real Names: These names are recreated out of a dictionary and suggest attributes or benefits of the brand, e.g. Uber and Slack.
Suggestive Composite Names: These names are created by gluing two already existing words together. They have a way of being punchy and memorable e.g. Facebook and RayBan.
Suggestive Invented Names: These words are invented by changing, adding or removing letters from words. They are created for impact, e.g. Pepsi and Pinterest.

5. Associative Brand Names:

Brand names that reflect imagery meaning back to the brand are associative brand names. They speak to the feeling, traits and imagery a brand wants to be associated with and evoke the emotions attached to an existing word back to the brand.

Amazon, as an example, is the name of the world’s largest river and so is a fitting name for the website that contains the world largest collection of book, clothes and content, Nike is the goddess of victory so the brand associates with victory and Pampers associates with the concept of pampering a baby.

6. Non-English Brand Names:

While many brands have English names attached to them, there are still a large number of brands that carry Non-English names. These brands get their names from another language or country. Such brand names are exotic and provide an opportunity to tell a great story that has the values of the brand infused in it.

While these names are great, you have to be careful and ensure that the name you pick doesn’t have a negative meaning in another country or language. This will ensure that sales are not hindered in any way.

Alara, which means ‘wondrous performer’ in Yoruba is a great example of a Non-English brand, others like Lego which means ‘play well’ in Danish and Samsung which means ‘three stars’ in Korean are good examples too.

7. Abstract Brand Names:

These names have no intrinsic meaning in English language and so rely on the power of phonetics to create a really powerful brand name. These names are really punchy, memorable and unique.

The greatest weakness of such brands is also their greatest strengths. Seeing as these names have no intrinsic meanings, the names neither inform clients of what they do nor evoke any emotion in them.

Examples include, Rolex, L’Oreal and J.Crew.

While choosing that name for your brand to make it stand out of the crowd, remember that your brand name should; be unique, creative in a god way, not mean anything negative in another language and is one you like and are proud of.