What's In a Name? Part 6

Last year, on June 26, I posted part 5 of a series I was working on that journaled my crafting business journey.  That was about the time that I got busy .. no, BUSY with my summer and when I got back to blogging, I didn't realize I had a few loose ends.

I changed my business name last year and outlined the reasons in the post: 

http://gentleadornments.blogspot.com/2009/06/so-why-changes.html

Having come to the conclusion that I needed to change my business name, next came the task of finding one.  What kind of name did I want?  What did I want it to say?  How would I ever find anything unique?  I thought about the type of jewelry I make -- it's delicate, petite, elegant, made with crystals, pearls and semi-precious stones.  I make what I like and I'm not a flashy person so most of my work is small.  My name should reflect that.  When someone sees my name and sees my work, they shouldn't be surprised.  I have a word processing program with a thesaurus -- so the hunt began!  First I made a list of words I thought described my work as well as the word "jewelry" -- then I went to the thesaurus and found all the synonyms.  By the time I got done with my list, I must have had nearly 80 words.  I began putting them together in different combinations -- any combinations.  My list got very long -- over 100 possible names.  Now to pare it down.  I began eliminating names that I just didn't like or didn't really make sense or didn't have a good rhythm (I'm musical -- the cadence of a phrase has to be comfortable or melodic to me -- my kids names are the same way).  I got down to about 25 decent possibilities.

I took that list of 25 names and started looking for them on the internet.  I googled the names to see if any businesses came up anywhere.  Then I checked at Etsy.  Then at yahoo and a couple other email providers.  Those efforts eliminated about 20 names.  Of the 5 remaining, I could eliminate 2 because they weren't my favorites.  With only 3 names left, I went to my groups on Cafe Mom and asked for opinions.  I talked to family and friends to see which ones they liked.  Got some interesting feedback.  My 3 names were Gentle Adornments, Baublemania and Lark Song Designs.  I got them all at Etsy -- I'd liked another name earlier but someone else got it just before I tried -- didn't want that to happen again.  There IS a Baublemania, but it's a store in England -- figured I could work around that.  At the time, I was really leaning toward Lark Song, but there is a music group by that name so I would HAVE to add Designs.  In the feedback, someone also made the observation that it sounded Native American.  I don't have  any problem with Native American, but that doesn't really reflect my work

I've known for some time that I was interested in doing more with brides and wedding jewelry and I felt that Gentle Adornments sounded a bit more "bridal".  It's also a bit more flexible than Baublemania -- if I want to add some other type of craft to my Etsy shop, I can do so without sounding out of place.  Lark Song on Etsy actually belongs to my cousin, but she would have let me have it if I'd wanted it.  So I settled on Gentle Adornments, bought some graphics and launched my new shop.  The graphics .. that's another story!