Ask HN: How do you name your product? Are there any standardized ways?

Here’s how we name our products:

We always begin with a prayer — a quiet wish for how the future might change through what we’re building.

It’s not just branding. It’s a form of intention: “May this tool help create the kind of world we want to see.”

Sometimes we use words with double meanings, or sounds that evoke multiple layers. But when no name comes, maybe it’s simply not the moment yet.

Wishing you a beautiful spark of insight soon.

Start with “A” if possible to ensure top-of-list visibility. Use “AI” as a prefix when relevant to anchor the identity in AI/infra/dev tooling. Keep it short—4 to 5 letters ideal, max 6. It must be memorable: phonetically crisp, simple, and sticky. The name should be brandable—distinct, clean, with no generics or clutter. Prioritize domain availability under .dev, .io, .tech, .host, or .xyz. Don’t obsess early; names evolve and rebranding is easy. Examples like “Aidev” balance AI-focus and clarity well. Currently, devo.host and aidev.host are available.

You are to deep into the name finding, first you need to get some distance. Every name will sound shit before that.

Then remind yourself that the name is not as relevant as we want it to be. If it's sounding and kinda rememberable that's usually good enough for a tech product. It also doesn't have to be a .com or .io even if it would be cool.

Personally I always try to pick one ASAP, either it grows on me and feels fitting after a while (it never feels "right") or I need to change again.

I tried building this tool(https://bilgu.com/tools/ai-generated-names) to solve such dillemma, You can also get only those that have .com available.

"Tell me, Tom, have you given it a name yet?"

Tom smiled ruefully. "No. I have a harder job naming some of these things than I do figuring them out. Have you any ideas?"

"How about calling it the Spacelane Brain?" Arvid Hanson suggested.

-- https://www.tomswift.info/homepage/rocket2.html

I hate to be that guy but you can ask an LLM. I cut 'n pasted your query into Copilot and got a long personalized response addressed to me by name, but it came up with: Devique, APiha, Infirtion, Chisel, Scaffold, Launchpad, CodeSprint, CycleUp, SnapAPI, Syntax, Rapidly, Zeed.

I was in a team that made a game over a weekend at a hackathon, one member got an LLM to make up a name, we won a prize, maybe the name was 5% of that.

You might want to be smarter than Microsoft and run a trademark search before you use it!