What's the story behind the name of your startup/company ?

Our company is named Illuminati Karate, which arose from an MF Doom (as King Ghedorah) song, "No Snakes Alive."

We wanted something memorable, rhyming, and catchy that we could own in Google and get the dotcom. We also liked the themes of higher knowledge and discipline the name implies.

We've been in business for a few years, and if I had it to do over I would probably choose a different name. That said, I started my business with one of my best friends, and a big part of the spark that got it off the ground was our desire to do something different. So in that sense, a ridiculous name like Illuminati Karate captures the spirit that started the enterprise.

Regarding domains, Google my company's name. There's a pretty good story that will come up.

Thanks for informing me about how americans (you are, right?) interpret the name.

We'll see whether this will hinder growth in any way. I hope not ofcourse :)

He 'wrote the book on Rhymes, a Note from the Author.'

Good choice!

One Black Bear We drank lots and somehow a name came from the session. I Highly recommend it, it seems to be well liked.

I recently went through the process of choosing a name for my current project (http://www.webalon.com/gamemanager/). The site is aimed at the casual gaming market. This is a pretty crowded area, and most of the good names - game.com, player.com... - have long since been taken and even average names like - playfire, casualgames, gameking, playhub etc, etc - have been snuffled up. Choosing a name was always therefore going to have to be a big compromise, determined to a large part by what was available.

In cases like this, when most of the best names have already been taken, I find that a thesaurus is invaluable in coming up with a half decent name. My project is a rich interent style app for creating and managing a library of online games. Think iTunes for online games. So I was looking for a name that would capture the ideas of both collecting and playing. Scouring the thesaurus, I came up with a few different words for collections, and eventually drew up a list of potentual urls. This was then whittled down significantly to remove names that had already been taken.

This left me with the following:

playheap.com playhoard.com plather.com (play and gather) plhub.com

To be honest, none of these got me particularly excited. I could live with one of them, if I had to. But ideally I would like something a bit more interesting. So back to the thesaurus, this time looking at alternative words for playing or gaming. This eventually led me to the word: gambol, which means 'to leap about playfully'. That's quite a nice word. It has a pretty cool meaning, and even better it starts with the first three letters of 'game'. On the downside, most people probably won't know what the word means and it also sounds a bit like gamble.

But as I said at the start, choosing a name was always going to be a big compromise. I was never going to get my ideal name. Unfortunately, gambol.com was taken. Back to the thesaurus, then. Wait a sec. Why not stick an "io" on the end. It worked for "tr", after all!

So there you have it, my chosen name for my new project: gambolio.com