What I've learned from this thread:
It's funny....I'll probably struggle with the name more than any other aspect of my business. Just about everything else I can find answers for using Google.
Yes but remember that Google is an important tool when helping you choose a name.
I struggled with a business name too. I kept a list of business name ideas in an excel spreadsheet for 3 years. When it came time to incorporate I found that I had too many names to decide on since it had grown to a list of 198 names.
I think you are wise to be putting so much time and effort into choosing a name. Naming things properly is well worth it in the long run.
Eventually I had to come up with a strategy to choose a name. So I assigned each name a score. The score was a weighted average of my "1-5 rating" of each prospective name in several categories I defined. Then I printed out a top 20 list and got input from my family and friends. Almost all of them chose BigFrog Computing, especially the ladies so that's what I ended up going with.
It was #6 on my list.
I rated names as 1 - excellent, 2 - great, 3 - good, 4 - fair, 5 - poor.
And here are my categories I rated each in. This is just what I used. You could create and weight your own set.
weight - category
15 - Easy to say
12 - How much do you like the name?
10 - Prospective website names are available
10 - Google keyword competition
10 - Yellowpages keyword competition
10 - Generic enough to cover changing target markets
8 - Instills customer confidence
8 - Logo and motto potential
8 - Name is approachable
5 - Original and unique
2 - Catchy, has a ring to it
2 - Branding potential
---
100
It's a pretty crude, subjective approach, and I probably screwed up the math somewhere, but it really helped by forcing me to evaluate many different aspects of each name.
