After involving a few startups myself, I've a few advices to give you all:
1. Try hard to make a name that is not more than Three syllables: see how Apple names their names from corporate name "Apple" to products like "iPod", "iTunes", "WebObjects", etc. Chances are, you'll chain your company name with another product: "Apple iPod". So keep it SHORT!!
2. Make sure you speak the name 100 times to yourself, just make sure it is easy to say. Imagine your operator has to say "Welcome to XXX" thousand times a day.
3. Make sure non-English speakers can speak it easily, and not embarrased. So please, no weird "Z" or other tricky accent. If your Chinese/Japanese/Korean/French/Italian friends have no problem speaking, you're A-Okay, otherwise do it again.
4. Make sure you get the name right the first time. It is pain in the butt to change company name later.... bank accounts, merchant accounts, address, and other paperwork will drive you crazy. I learned it the hard way.
On a side note, I run a little online flower shop that is catered to a smaller market in Asia. We named it fleur.hk instead of some super long abc-flower-shop.com names. Well, I can tell you we have the shortest flower shop name in Asia, super easy to remember. No problem getting traffic whatsoever.
So if your company only focus for a specific country, go ahead to use some their .com TLDs.
1. Try hard to make a name that is not more than Three syllables: see how Apple names their names from corporate name "Apple" to products like "iPod", "iTunes", "WebObjects", etc. Chances are, you'll chain your company name with another product: "Apple iPod". So keep it SHORT!!
2. Make sure you speak the name 100 times to yourself, just make sure it is easy to say. Imagine your operator has to say "Welcome to XXX" thousand times a day.
3. Make sure non-English speakers can speak it easily, and not embarrased. So please, no weird "Z" or other tricky accent. If your Chinese/Japanese/Korean/French/Italian friends have no problem speaking, you're A-Okay, otherwise do it again.
4. Make sure you get the name right the first time. It is pain in the butt to change company name later.... bank accounts, merchant accounts, address, and other paperwork will drive you crazy. I learned it the hard way.
On a side note, I run a little online flower shop that is catered to a smaller market in Asia. We named it fleur.hk instead of some super long abc-flower-shop.com names. Well, I can tell you we have the shortest flower shop name in Asia, super easy to remember. No problem getting traffic whatsoever.
So if your company only focus for a specific country, go ahead to use some their .com TLDs.