Naming a business is part creative, part legal, part SEO, part vibes. The temptation is to fall in love with a name before checking whether you can actually use it. The discipline is the reverse: validate first, fall in love second.
The four checks before you commit
- Trademark. Search the Irish Patents Office (IPOI) database and the EUIPO database for any existing registrations in your class. A name that's already registered in your sector is a name you cannot safely use, no matter how clever it is.
- Companies Registration Office. Search the CRO register at core.cro.ie for company-name conflicts. The CRO will reject a registration too similar to an existing one.
- Domain. Both .ie and .com if international ambitions exist. .ie eligibility no longer requires a connection-to-Ireland test (changed in 2018) but still requires an Irish or EU-resident registrant. WeAre.ie and IEDR.ie are the registry sources of truth.
- Social handles. A two-minute check on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and X. Inconsistent handles across platforms (one is "alphapods," another is "alpha_pods") give you a poor digital footprint forever.
The "say it down the phone" test
Read the candidate name to a stranger over a phone. Then ask them to spell it back. If they can't, you've created a permanent friction in your business — every customer service call, every word-of-mouth referral, every podcast intro. Names with creative spellings ("Kwik," "Phoenix" with a silent letter, made-up portmanteaus) lose this test cheaply.
What makes a name work in 2026
- Pronounceable in one pass. No second-guessing.
- Spellable in one pass. Especially for a domain.
- Distinctive enough to trademark. Generic names ("Dublin Plumbing") are descriptive — they work for SEO, but you can't easily defend them.
- Short. Six letters or fewer is a gift. Twelve is acceptable. Twenty is a millstone.
- Survives translation if you might trade abroad. Spend ten minutes checking the name doesn't mean something embarrassing in Spanish, German, or French.
Common naming traps
- Founder-name overload. "John Smith Plumbing" — fine for a one-person trade, hard to grow or sell.
- Geographic lock-in. "Dublin Bookkeeping" works until you take on Galway clients.
- Service-trend lock-in. "Cloud Solutions Ltd" was modern in 2015, dated by 2022.
- Made-up words with no anchor. "Glomptra," "Yenzo." Memorable to the founder, alphabet soup to everyone else.
Domain strategy
For a small Irish business serving Irish customers: .ie is the right primary. Add the .com if available and reasonably priced; redirect it to the .ie. For a business with B2B or international ambitions, the .com is primary; .ie redirects to it. Owning common typo domains and the misspelt phonetic version is sometimes worth €20/year each.
Cost expectations
You can name a business yourself in two evenings if you do the four checks above. Paying a naming consultant €5,000–€15,000 is a real service — they bring distance and pattern recognition — but isn't required for most Irish small businesses. The decision usually comes down to how visible the name will be (a packaged consumer product justifies a consultant; an accountancy practice usually doesn't).