Paul Graham's long-lost 2006 Infogami essay, "Startup Names"
Goddamnit, startups. I should write a post of my own about this because it really pisses me off.<p>Here is my advice about startup names: Stop It. Seriously though, stop it. You know what I mean: the cute little misspellings, the nonsense words, the dropped schwas in your words...Stop all this bullshit before people begin to think every startup is, like yours, nothing more than hot air.<p>It's that simple: stupid name, stupid business. Your cutesy little letter drop / intentional, web-domain-grubbing letter substitution name speaks volumes about the probable quality of your business.<p>Look at Chinese search engine Baidu （百度）. Startups of the world, I want you to read this shit: <a href="http://ir.baidu.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=188488&p=irol-homeprofile" rel="nofollow">http://ir.baidu.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=188488&p=irol-homepr...</a> .<p>In fact, thee of poor orthography, you read this shit twice: <a href="http://ir.baidu.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=188488&p=irol-homeprofile" rel="nofollow">http://ir.baidu.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=188488&p=irol-homepr...</a> .<p>You fucking soak that shit in because this is the best goddamn company name on the planet: "The poem compares the search for a retreating beauty amid chaotic glamour with the search for one's dream while confronted by life's many obstacles". And this is China's most popular search engine.<p>You know why this is a goddamned great name? Because it took more than 10 seconds to make up. This name is so far removed from cutesy it is absurd.<p>If the only way, in this infinite plain of possibility that is the entire fucking English language,  for you to find an unregistered domain is to misspell already-existing words, I feel supremely sorry for you and your business.<p>Sometimes in musing about the Turing test I think: this shit works two ways. This is not a test of computers at the peak of their creative intelligence, but of man at the lowest point of his machine-like worst.<p>You want a dime-a-dozen bullshit startup name? 
Go here, press a button and BAM: <a href="http://www.dotomator.com/web20.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.dotomator.com/web20.html</a><p>Does the fact that a machine can make up your business's name in a matter of sub-seconds at all scare you into realizing the cheapness of it all? "Oyodo", "Topicpad", "Rhysero"...<p>Worthless, reproducible, empty.<p>Take a look at Apple, even. A soft, fleshy, human, fruit. When it first started, who was it competing against? IBM. DEC. Cincom -- Ugly, faceless, consumer-hostile.<p>If you've learned anything today, let it be this: take your goddamned time. Your rush to buy a domain name has clouded your vision of what your company is and could be. You have cheapened the potentially meaningful creation of goods and services by, ironically, thinking of things in purely monetary terms. The next time you're on the verge of dropping that silent 'e' and calling it a day, think about Song Dynasty poets and creative visionaries. Think about the entire history of human thought and the struggle to give meaning to a confusing planetary existence, and ask yourself: Wouldn't my name, which appears to be a cross between the words "Rhinoceros" and "Serotonin", be out of place here?<p>EDIT: any reason for the downvotes? Sure there was cussing, but what are the grounds for your disagreement?