What’s in a name? Well, quite a lot, actually. No matter who you are dealing with in business, your chosen business name will be the first thing people will notice about you. In line with this, it needs to sum up what you do, be catchy, and it make you memorable from the outset.

You’ll need to do some forward thinking. You may only be offering one or two services to start off with, but if you expand your repertoire, your name will need to be sufficiently flexible to accommodate this. This applies equally to website names.

And if having to plummet to the depths of your inner creativity for a suitable moniker isn’t hard enough, you’ll also need to bear in mind that there are certain rules and restrictions linked with this process.

For example, if you decide to go down the limited company route you will need to register your new name with Companies House, which holds a record on every single limited company in the UK.

You can always ask an agent to do this on your behalf, the Eco Incubation Clubs Formation Service here!

Companies House will ensure your chosen name passes all the various suitability tests. For example, the name must end in “limited”, and it must not be too similar to one already in existence.

For certain sectors, there are further restrictions still. Log onto Companies House (LINK) to find out more about your particular sector.

It may also be worth registering your name as a trademark, in order to protect it further from imitation. And likewise, researching trademarks will ensure you don’t use any that are already spoken for. "microsoftwebdesign.co.uk" would perhaps not be the best option to go for! Be aware that trade marking is a slow expensive process, and not to be undertaken lightly.

Lastly on the subject of trading names, a word to the wise: make sure you enter your company name into a language translation site such as babelfish.yahoo.com to make sure your company’s name doesn’t translate into an insult or something equally inappropriate in another language. For example, Nova, when translated into Spanish, means “Doesn’t go”. Hardly a desirable label for a motor car!

In fact since the internet revolution of the 1990s, it’s hard to imagine running a business without a little online help. How much you want to rely on your website as a marketing tool will depend on the nature of your trade, but before committing yourself to a company name, make sure you can use it as a website name too.

You can do this by logging on to any web hosting site and entering your chosen name, either as a .co.uk, a .com, or some other top level domain. The site will tell you if your desired name is available.

At this stage, it’s also sensible to seek out a reputable domain name supplier. There are hundreds around, but they are very different in terms of their reliability. Again the EIClub together with the PEIC use INSTAhost.co.uk for all our domain name and hosting needs.

It’s not a bad idea to buy up as many of these different domain types as you can – they are relatively inexpensive and this is a simple yet effective way of preventing someone from potentially cashing in on your hard-earned reputation one day. Particular ones to go for include .co.uk, com, .net and .org And remember, if possible, try and buy them all from the same domain name supplier, as it will save you time and prevent confusion in the long-run.

Equally, when it comes to your domain name supplier reminding you to renew your domain name, it’s vital that you keep the contact details that they hold on file up to date. Otherwise, you may find your website has suddenly disappeared into the depths of cyberspace.

If only one of the top level domains is available for you to buy, it may be worth considering a different name – you’re best off choosing a name which has all the main domain types available to you.

Don’t waste your energy trying to outwit the search engines. Some web anoraks will tell you that the best domain names have major keywords inserted into their titles, e.g. the-best-web-designers.co.uk, but at Bytestart, we disagree. The main thing is that like your company name, your domain name should be memorable and catchy – there’s plenty of time to put the effort into web promotion at a later stage.

For more information on setting up and naming your company, visit our dedicated Company section.