Thoughts/Opinions on business naming?

Just curious how people feel about business names. Do you think the name of a company composed of the last names of the owners is "old fashion" (i.e Brown-Smith Web Services, Johnson-Nixon I.T. Solutions, etc.)? Will it hurt their business? Do you think people really care?

Is there a big advantage to having a more "modern name" like, I dont' know, Vibe, BlueWave, etc.?

It's about the brand and personality and the perception you want to convey. Brown-Smith Web Services sounds like you're not very creative.

It's about people being able to remember it.

It's about the URL.

It's about being happy with it since hopefully you'll have to live with it for a long, long time. You don't want to have to change it.

The name does matter but it shouldn't make or break your company. But everything has an impact, big or small.

For a marketing firm I created with a friend we just took half his last name and combined it with half my last name and added "Group" at the end. Took us a few minutes to figure that out. URL available. People loved it, constantly questioned what it meant so they remembered it. Loved the story of how we created it. It didn't sound stodgy or boring...we were a marketing firm so we wanted to convey creativity.

Well, you seem to like creative naming (Big Tuna?)....

Challenge is, many of the .com names are taken - so you have to work hard to get a memorable name.

One approach - go to an online translator and pick a word that you feel best describes your company vision - and then see what it is in another language. See if any variations are memorable. Try it with latin - english dictionaries as well. Sometimes interesting things pop up.

Aside from the creativity aspect, if Brown and Smith have a falling out, then you might need to change the name, which you want to avoid. Also, a lot of startups don't end up doing what they started out doing so I'd also stay away from something that is too specific to your current business, e.g. Bob's House of 5.25" Floppies. Personally, I want a domain name that is exactly the same as the company name so that's one of my standards for judging. It's more of an art than a science and some people will love what you come up with and some will hate it. Just brainstorm a lot and then try them out on people; and wait a period of time to see if you still like it when your mood changes. There are a lot of sites that help you brainstorm by having you enter keywords - some will also check the domain name right away.