Youfone changes its name to Yoin in Belgium – Tablets & Phones – News

It's a disease of necessity… For example, if you want a domain name as a business, you want .com, and on the second level a national name, but try to register a simple domain these days. It's often a disaster because the domain setters have taken so many word combinations, that they pay a penny per domain, and simply take all the combinations from the dictionary, family names, etc.

You want a short name, not “vandegeestenberger.be”, because people don't like typing long URLs. So there you have it, your name has to mean something. It's good that you used your family name and spent years building your reputation, but we're not in the 40s anymore. There are 100 times more companies competing with each other. If you don't have huge marketing budgets, try using a combination of “means something” (yes, even in English, just because we're used to English), which sounds a bit corny (aka, not as corny as my grandfather from the street, Because yes, people look at your company name), etc etc…

Take it from me, it's very difficult to have a decent name that you can build a product or company around that also has decent URLs because companies that aren't online, or are hard to find, lose potential customers. Marketing costs money, a lot of money, and every little bit you can make to better profile yourself, you can save a significant amount of money.

And yes, there are “marketing companies” that exploit territory and then convince companies or governments to change something that customers may not like. See Portugal and their whole scandal about the 3 points (changing the flag/symbol) for which they paid 75k and people are angry about changing the old point (which is more complicated and means more).