Naming a network: help sought from native English speakers

[Franco Mercalli]

Hi everybody,

A customer of mine is setting up a Ning network dedicated to small businesses (one where business owners and enterpreneurs can do networking, look for partners/cutomers/suppliers, ask/pose questions relating to running their business, and the like...)

My next task is to help him to find an appropriate English naming for this network.

First issue is that I'm not native English speaker and I'm actually rather poor at the language.

Secondly, to make things worse, for some reason we have to stick to a naming for which the acronym "OF" holds. This is a tough constraint.

I have no clue.

Below is a preliminary list of proposals from my customer himself, but none of them is fully convincing to us.

I hope some fellow NCs here could help a bit...

Thanks in adavance to anyone taking the time to read!

=== current proposals ===

OnFirm.net

OnFirm.biz

OpenFirm.net

OpenFirm.biz

OwnerFriend.com

OwnerFriend.biz

OwnerFriend.net

OpenFornet.biz

Other possibilities:

O = On, Over, Open, Opportunity...?

F = Future?

[J.Wings]

OfficeFocus or some variation is nice

[Franco Mercalli]

Thanks J.Wings!

I see here that Focus/Focused and Office are terms which rank high.

One question about "Office": would it also relate well to businesses like e.g. manufacturing or, say, restaurants, which are not mainly run in office settings?

[J.Wings]

Hmm, maybe not. Honestly now that I think about this, you should convince your client that sticking with OF is a bad idea. You should be naming your site based on a combination of what best describes it and what will be possible to get on the first page of search results on a reasonably well searched term.

He's just being cheap because he doesn't want to get another logo designed, and in the long run it is going to cost him a lot more in members and advertising.

[Franco Mercalli]

Right, but the site you suggested is magic and worth trying.

E.g. what about OpportunityFocus?

[Jayne]

OnForm.net

 

[Eric Suesz]

Does he have a network already of any type? That is, will this be an English version of something else, or only available for English speakers as a standalone thing? 

[Eric Suesz]

Oh, one other question: Are you trying to get a domain name that isn't taken, or would it have something like ning.com in the domain?

[Franco Mercalli]

Eric,

Thank you for asking.

The network will be the international extension of a currently existing, local one (http://www.officineinnovazione.it).

In this network we have a thriving "International" Group in English language (thanks to Ning for Groups language settings!), so thriving in fact that we would like to spin it off to a network of its own.

In order to maintain a uniform image, my customer would like to find out a name that resonates with the 'OF' letters which are part of the current italian logo.

Yes, we would like to associate a custom domain to the ning.com one.

 

[Franco Mercalli]

@Damion and @Jayne

Thank you very much for your help!

One of my colleagues has put together the attached matrix, to support inspiration. I've also added your great suggestions to it.

Not all combinations make sense, of course, but that is just as a stimulus to "creative thinking"...

[Brandon Owens]

A truly spectacular site for finding domain names is http://www.bustaname.com/

It allows you to add a bunch of words you might want to use then mixes & matches them in all possible ways showing you which ones are still available for purchase.  After adding words you can hover over them to get a list of synonyms to also add to your list.

I also suggest using groups after you've added words- bottom of left box.  This allows you to prevent 2 similar words from being matched together - for example if you had 'focus' & 'feature' as two words but you want them paired with 'o' words, you would put all the 'o' words in one group & 'f' words in another group. Then it would just  try to pair one word from each group. 

(I have no affiliation with the site, just think it's crazy-useful)

[Franco Mercalli]

Thank you very much Brando, that really seems a great, grat site!

I go and play with it immediately.

Thanks again!

[Tat Ruck]

Can you use the O and F then another word 

e.g.

Open For business?