ChatGPT as an AI Business Name Generator? How to Use It Right

What is the difference between a traditional business name generator and ChatGPT as an AI business name generator?

There are a lot of great business name generators you can use online. However, a lot of these tools are tied to name registrars or website-building platforms. This means that, in a lot of cases, the recommendations are based on the availability of domains names.

That is not necessarily a bad thing. After all, a great business name and domain go hand in hand. If the name is catchy and the domain is available, that’s an amazing combo for any business looking to establish itself.

The real issue with most traditional name generators is that they don’t take into account what the business does. You provide a list of keywords and the generator uses them to come up with potential name combinations:

Despite their limitations, traditional name generators can be very useful for brainstorming ideas. You can use them to generate a list of business names and discard the irrelevant ones. The rest can be great starting points for coming up with the perfect name.

When you use ChatGPT as an AI business name generator you can ask specific questions, such as “What are some good name ideas for an Italian restaurant?” There isn’t any single dedicated AI business name generator in the market (yet), but you can use ChatGPT and many alternative AI tools for this task. All you have to do is ask the right questions.

How to use ChatGPT as an AI business name generator (in three steps)

In this tutorial, we’ll be using ChatGPT. We think that this tool is still ahead of other options such as Google Bard and Bing Chat. Moreover, you don’t need to pay for a subscription to use it as an AI business name generator. At the moment of writing, a free account will give you access to ChatGPT 3.5. It’s more than enough for our purposes!

• Step 1: Give ChatGPT an identity
• Step 2: Define the goal
• Step 3: Refine the AI prompt results

Step 1: Give ChatGPT an identity 🤖

One of the coolest hacks you can use while tinkering with ChatGPT is to give it an identity, and we don’t mean that in a HAL 9000 kind of way. By “identity,” we mean providing ChatGPT with a specific set of instructions on how to behave and what information it should return during a specific conversation. To do this, open a new window in ChatGPT and use a prompt such as the following:

For the rest of this conversation, you are an AI focused on helping me come up with the perfect name for my business. I will provide you with a brief overview of what the business does and who my ideal customers are and you’ll return some business name ideas.

You can base your ideas on seed keywords related to the business in question. However, don’t limit yourself to only those keywords when coming up with names. For each name, provide a brief explanation of why it’s a good idea.

Your goal is to provide at least 20 business name ideas for every query. Provide the names in a list format.

In case you’re not familiar with using ChatGPT, the more specific you are, the better the results that you will get. Being specific gives the AI less room to color outside the lines, so to speak. If you simply ask ChatGPT to come up with name ideas for a certain type of business without any further instructions, it will likely provide a lot of results based only on keywords. And, it’s not what we want.

Giving the AI an identity enables you to continue the conversation and keep asking it for more names, as long as you don’t delete the chat or open a new one. We recommend you try the identity hack when asking other types of questions as well.

You can take the above prompt and use it as is, or customize it to suit your needs. For now, here’s what ChatGPT has to say after our prompt:

Once you establish the AI’s identity, it’s time to get to work. To be more accurate, it’s time to sit back while ChatGPT does the work for you.

Step 2: Define the goal 💡

This is where things get fun. At this stage, you should already have a clear idea of what your business goal is and who your customers are. That’s all you need to get started, as ChatGPT can do the rest for you.

After setting an identity for the AI, you’ll need to supply it with information to start generating business name ideas. In our case, we asked it to come up with ideas based on a specific type of business and its ideal customers.

We tasked it with finding potential names for a shoe store for women, focused on a professional clientele that values style over affordability. Here’s a quick overview of the initial results:

One downside of using AI for name ideas is that the software will often draw very literal connections. As you can see, most of the names it suggests are related to the type of business we tasked it with. This is not a bad thing, but it’s important to keep in mind that you won’t get out-of-the-box or creative name suggestions such as Google or Apple (things that don’t have any logical connection with the business itself).

Now, your goal is to narrow down the list of options that ChatGPT gives you and take note of the ones you like the most. If you’re not a fan of the suggestions, you can ask it to offer you more options.

Step 3: Refine the AI prompt results ⚙️

One key aspect of using AI is to let the tool know when you’re not happy with the results and you want it to change something in its answers. In our tests, ChatGPT defaulted to two-word business names only. Even so, you can ask it to return one-word suggestions or to change the style of the names it generates.

We asked ChatGPT to return one-word ideas for our shoe store and use more abstract names. Here’s what we got:

It’s good to bear in mind that, unless you’re using a version of ChatGPT that connects to the web and you tell it to avoid well-known business names, you might get some suggestions that you can’t use. For example, ChatGPT recommended using the name Vogue for our store, which would be a quick way to get sued.

If you keep refining the prompt, ChatGPT can eventually help you find a great name for your business. More importantly, the results are usually much better than what traditional business name generators can offer.

Conclusion 🧐

Coming up with the perfect business name can be challenging. However, using an AI business name generator can help you brainstorm some ideas. For instance, the free version of ChatGPT can generate a list of business names based on your specific requests.

To recap, here’s how to use this tool to explore name ideas for your business:

1. Give ChatGPT an identity 🤖
2. Define a goal 💡
3. Refine the AI prompt results ⚙️

Do you have any questions about how to use ChatGPT as an AI business name generator? Let us know in the comments section below!