Inside the Business of Brand Naming: The Hidden Profession Shaping Modern Brands

From party conversations to elevator pitches, introductions pretty much followed an unchanging script for Hitesh Talreja.

“So what do you do for a living?”

“I name brands.”
A moment of awkward silence followed by an explanatory, “No, I meant as a profession?”

Then comes Talreja’s understanding nod with a forgiving smile, and the compelling backstory of how he founded one of India's leading brand naming agencies, Tiepograph.

For a country obsessed with professions, this dichotomy is outstanding. Lawyers for legal tussles, yes. Pet groomers for grooming pets, yes. Naming experts to name your brand? Uh,

Doesn’t that arise from a founder’s epiphany or from a brainstorm with the team at best?

Movies and stories have misled people into thinking that’s how a brand is named. “But I don't blame them entirely,” explains Hitesh Talreja. “Historically, legacy names have ruled the roost. Most businesses were local, familiar, and built over generations. Customers knew what they were buying and who they were buying from. The name wasn't doing all the heavy lifting."

Today’s D2C and B2B landscape couldn’t be more different and distant.

India’s new-age entrepreneurs are not confined to glossy buildings anymore. They are emerging from the remotest villages and up-and-coming tier-3 cities. “When these entrepreneurs look at successful brands to emulate, they look at the genius of a marketing strategy or an operational marvel. But they miss the USP right before them—the brand’s name,” explains Talreja.

Here enters the professional whose skill can reduce your brand's future marketing costs, sharpen its positioning, provide customer insights, and avoid later-stage trademark complications—the brand naming expert.

When nudged about the process, Talreja takes readers through a week in the life of a naming expert. Why a week? “From the day a brand owner speaks with us to the day we deliver a short list of brand names, it takes nearly 10 working days. But for brevity’s sake, I’ll take you along my week.”

“It begins with understanding the brand, the person running the brand, and the people who benefit from the brand. We personify the brand and its target audience to find the right tone. This also entails cultural-meaning checks for region-specific pronunciations and dialects.”

When done right, brand naming steers the course of a business model. “At Tiepograph, the right way is people-focused and science-based brand naming,” explains Talreja. “Beyond the basics of generating a name that’s easy and memorable, we follow a scientific approach using morphemes; these are the smallest meaningful units of a word.”

“We use morphemes to create unique newly minted names that sound as familiar as dictionary words. For instance, Soventis. We named this Indian export-import company based on the elegant combination of “So” from the roots of solution or source and “Ventis” from the Latin word for wind ventus.”

We combine our analysis of the brand persona, a bunch of befitting names using morphemes, and pan-India sound testing, over the next couple of days.”

Why is it important to test a brand name across India? "If a retailer hesitates while saying your brand, if a customer can't remember it after hearing it once, or if someone struggles to pronounce it over a phone call, you've already created friction," answers Talreja.

“Simultaneously, we conduct trademark screening to protect entrepreneurs from legal risks before final selection.”

Talreja’s process highlights layers and nuances of brand naming, but also raises questions about AI’s role in it. “Like the many professions it threatened, AI was labelled a nemesis of brand naming, too. However, very soon, founders realised AI brings speedy and economical names to the table, while a naming professional brings experience, expertise and an understanding of the Indian marketplace.”

This combination has led Talreja to name nearly 500 products and services across FMCG, retail, B2B, and D2C segments.

Despite the accolades and naming wins under his belt, Talreja patiently addresses every innocent question about the legitimacy of brand naming as a professional.

Yet, his advice to aspiring brand naming professionals would be “to focus on getting the essence of a brand right, and avoid trends like the plague.”

For India’s earnest brand owners, looking to scale their brand globally, he reassures, “hiring a brand naming expert does not mean trading your instinct for someone else's. It means investing in a deep dive into your brand, its audience, and their psychology—an investment in your brand's longevity.