How To Choose A Bad Name For Your Business

Your domain name (or website address) can help or hurt your business. So it is not something you should rush into.

Take the Lumbermen’s Exchange for example. They quite logically chose the domain name lumbermensexchage.com. Unfortunately, many read this name as “lumbermen sexchange” rather than lumbermens exchange.

But unfortunate choices are not limited to the internet. They occur in the real world too. Here is a true story about a poultry company that chose the wrong name for their business.

Egg production is big business here in the Pennsylvania Dutch country. Now, let me give you city slickers out there a little background about egg farming.

An egg producer needs egg-laying hens which they buy from breeders. These breeders need to determine a bird’s sex while it is still a just little chicks.

The problem is that it takes a trained professional to distinguish between male and female chicks. This trained professional is called a chicken sexer. (Okay, I hear you chuckling out there!  Chicken sexer is a legitimate profession and nothing to laugh at... Okay, maybe a little.)

Now, this service is in great demand in egg producing areas like Lancaster County. So much so that a group of professionals formed a company that could sort baby chicks by the tens of thousands.

They chose a short, snappy, descriptive name for their company. A name that succinctly explained what they did. Then they proudly displayed their sign along a state highway outside a small town:

SexChick Industries

It was a name that caused many travelers to do a double take. And after a few years of pranks, crank phone calls and the occasional bit of vandalism, they changed their name to something that attracted less attention - Poultry Services.

So before you name your website or your business, please take a pause and think it through.