A company's name is the first claim it makes, and it makes it before any pitch. For an investor it is also the cheapest diligence question there is: why that name? This piece is about how founders pick names, what the name tells the world they are building, and how to read the answer.


A name is a compressed thesis


Before a founder says a word about the product, the name has already told you something. Amazon's founder first incorporated the company as Cadabra, then changed it a few months later because a lawyer heard "Cadabra" as "cadaver."[1] He picked Amazon from a dictionary because it was exotic and different, and because the Amazon was the world's biggest river, which matched the size of bookstore he meant to build. A name starting with A also sorts to the top of an alphabetized list.[1] That is a thesis in one word: scale, and a place at the top of the list.


Palantir is a different kind of name. Peter Thiel named the company after the seeing-stone in Tolkien's books.[2] In those books the stones show far-off things, and in the same books they can be used to deceive whoever looks into them.[3] A founder who can say both halves, the promise and the danger, knows what they are building. A founder who can only say the flattering half has taken the name's shine and left its self-knowledge behind.


Three ways a name gets made



  • Authored first. The founder sets a name, then builds toward what it holds. Amazon's "biggest river" is this kind: a promise about size, made before the size existed.

  • Found by accident, then given meaning. Google is a misspelling of googol, the number one followed by a hundred zeros, and the name came to stand for searching a very large number of pages.[4] Nobody planned the spelling. What matters is what the founders did with it afterward.

  • Failed the phone test. Cadabra did not survive someone hearing it wrong. A name has to work out loud, to a stranger, once.


None of these is the right way. What they share is that the name ended up carrying a claim about what the company was for, and someone could explain it.


Why I ask


I ask every founder to explain their company's name, and I weigh the answer as diligence, not small talk. A good answer shows how much of the actual thesis the name carries and whether the founder's account matches it. A thin or retrofitted answer is a real, specific gap: the signal that should have arrived with the name now has to come from somewhere else, and that raises the bar on every other "why" I ask.


I grade it, I do not pass or fail it. A great name proves nothing about a company, and Google shows a name can acquire its meaning after the fact. What I am listening for is coherence: does what they built still match what the name promised?


Three names of my own


I have named three things, and I should answer my own question.



  • Osparna is an Aramaic word that appears seven times in the Bible, all in the book of Ezra, in royal orders to rebuild the Temple "completely and correctly."[5] The English word I wanted, diligence, was taken as a web address, so I reached into a tradition I knew and found a word that meant it. The company reads whether founders are building things completely and correctly.

  • Oluwadi is Yoruba, from a root meaning to search into, to investigate or examine. The site says so on its own front page.[6] It names what the work is: investigating the overlooked.

  • Ayni is a word for reciprocity, the mutual exchange between people. With "Do" in front of it, it becomes an act.


Each name already holds the question its site asks. I did not plan that as a system. When I came to sort what each site was for, the names told me. Looking back, that is what a name is supposed to do.


What to ask in diligence



  1. Why that name?

  2. What does it promise, and to whom?

  3. What does it leave out, or what danger does it carry?

  4. If you changed direction in three years, would the name still fit?


A founder who has not thought about the second and third questions has probably not thought hard about the product either.


What I do not know



  • Why the founders of Palantir and others chose what they chose. I found who named it and where the word came from, not the founders' own account of why, and I will not guess.

  • Whether naming well predicts anything about outcomes. I have not seen data, and I would be wary of any claim that it does.

  • How the names of companies in other languages and traditions read to the people who hear them. That is where my own reading is thinnest.


The accounts of how and why I named my own companies are mine. The reading of what each famous name says is my interpretation, not the founders' stated intent, except where a source says otherwise.


Sources



  1. History of Amazon, Founding section, Wikipedia

  2. Palantir Technologies, History, Wikipedia

  3. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Book III, "The Palantir" (the stones show far places and can be used to mislead the viewer)

  4. Google, Founding section, Wikipedia

  5. Strong's Hebrew/Aramaic H629, Bible Hub

  6. oluwadi.com, front page masthead


This is not investment advice.