Brand name checklist before investing in design

Sinh Vũ has encountered this situation more than once. A client brought a complete design portfolio: a beautiful logo, consistent colors, and printed packaging samples. Then they asked if they could start mass production. The counter question: has this name been checked for trademarks? The answer is often silence. In many cases, the name was registered by someone else two years prior.

Why is it necessary to check the name first

A brand name is not just a word. It is a legal asset, a communication asset, and a perceptual asset all at once. When any of these three layers has an issue, the entire design investment above becomes risky.

According to Marty Neumeier's classification in The Brand Gap, names are at the foundational layer of the brand system. Building on an unstable foundation means the entire architecture above may need to be redone. This is not a theoretical warning. This is a real cost, measured in the time spent reprinting, changing domains, notifying customers, and in many cases, facing legal procedures.

Level one: search for trademarks

This check is mandatory, and nothing else can replace it. In Vietnam, you search directly in the database of the Intellectual Property Office of Vietnam at ipvietnam.gov.vn. One key point to understand: trademarks are registered by class of goods and services, known as the Nice Classification (the international system of 45 classes of goods and services). A name may already be registered in class 25 (clothing) but still be available in class 30 (food). You need to search the right class for your business, and it's wise to search adjacent classes too if you plan to expand.

Beyond the full name, also search for near-sounding variants. If your name is "Navia," also search "Navia," "Nabia," "Naвia" and equivalent spellings. Trademark examiners often refuse registration if a new name could be confused with an existing mark, even when the spelling differs but the pronunciation is the same.

If you plan to export or open an office in another market, also check the WIPO Global Brand Database (the international trademark database of the World Intellectual Property Organization). The cost of registering an international trademark under the Madrid system is much lower than litigating disputes later.

Level two: check domain names

The domain name is the actual address of the brand in the digital environment. Ideally, you should own both the .com and .vn versions of your brand name. In reality, many .com names have been registered for many years or are held by companies that specialize in buying domains to resell (domain squatting).

The domain name checklist should be done as soon as you are still considering names, before announcing it publicly:

• Search on registrars like GoDaddy, Namecheap, or PA Vietnam to see if .com and .vn are available.
• If .com is taken, check whether that site is active or just a placeholder. A placeholder site may be negotiable for purchase.
• Also check .io, .co, .brand if the main domain is unavailable, but be aware that users default to typing .com when remembering a brand.
• Also search the unaccented versions of Vietnamese names. For example, "thunhien" and "thunhyen" both need to be checked if the brand name is "Thư Nhiên".

Level three: multilingual pronunciation

Vietnamese has six tones and some consonant combinations that do not exist in European languages. Therefore, a name that looks fine on paper may produce undesirable sounds when read aloud. This is especially evident when read without diacritics or when someone unfamiliar with Vietnamese attempts to pronounce it.

In naming, there is a checking framework known as the cross-language trap: a name from one market can carry a negative or humorous meaning in another. Chevrolet once sold a car called "Nova" in Latin American markets without realizing that "no va" in Spanish means "it doesn't go." Mitsubishi named a car "Pajero," a word that is vulgar slang in many Spanish-speaking countries.

For Vietnamese brands, the pronunciation tests that need to be conducted are:

• Read the name aloud without diacritics three times, gradually getting faster. Listen again to see if there are any unintended phonetic variations.
• Ask five people unfamiliar with the name to read it for the first time, recording how they pronounce it and their initial associations.
• If the brand is targeting international markets: have native speakers of English, Chinese, or the language of the target market pronounce it and provide associations.

A good name is one that people can say loudly in a noisy room and still be heard correctly.

Marty Neumeier, The Brand Gap

Level four: memorability

The final layer is not related to legal or technical aspects, but to how the human brain processes and stores brand names. Marty Neumeier proposes seven criteria for evaluating names: distinctive, concise, industry-appropriate, easy to spell, memorable, extensible, and protectable. Steven Watkins' SMILE framework condenses this into five criteria: Suggestive, Meaningful, Imagery, Legs, and Emotional.

A simpler test that Sinh Vũ often uses with clients: read the name to someone unfamiliar with it just once. Two minutes later, ask them if they remember the name and how to spell it. If more than half of the test subjects do not remember correctly or spell it wrong, that name will incur hidden costs throughout the brand's lifecycle: customers cannot find it, word-of-mouth becomes distorted, and SEO is diluted.

Order of importance matters

The four layers of checks should not be done in parallel. There is a logical order to save time: start with legal and domain checks, as these are the two layers with binary answers of available or not. The cost of checking these two layers is low, and if they fail, you can immediately remove them from the list. After filtering, you can then invest time in checking pronunciation and memorability for the remaining names.

Proposed order: check trademarks and domain names first, retaining names that pass both filters. Then, conduct pronunciation and memorization tests with actual target groups. Only when a name passes all four layers should you consider budgeting for design.

Sinh Vũ finds that this process often saves weeks of rework rather than taking more time. An afternoon of thorough research and testing at the naming stage can prevent a design project from having to restart from scratch.