Paul Graham on Startup Names:
Because so many names have been taken by squatters, a strange new phenomenon has arisen. It’s now uncool to have a name that was obviously bought from squatters. It’s like running Microsoft software on your servers. It suggests you have more money than brains, and that’s not a good thing for a startup brand to suggest.Hence names like Flickr, Writely, and Del.icio.us. These are the stars of recent startupdom, and yet they’re living in decidedly marginal name space. It’s a bit like when fashionable people started living in lofts in industrial neighborhoods.
And as happened with lofts, the features that initially repelled people, like rough concrete walls, have now become a badge of coolness. Weird names are now cool, if they’re the right kind of weird. Nothing could be less cool, at this point, than calling a startup ‘cool.com.’